Ermanno Lunzi: Storia delle Isole Jonie sotto il reggimento dei Veneziani. Venezia 1858-1859 First edition, large in 8vo,contemporary leather over boards,spines richly gilt, complete in two volumes, ex libris in front past down of the Manoir de Roncheville and of the famous Petritzi collection,text clean and bright,overall in almost fine condition. Ermanno Lunzi belonged to the nobility of Zakynthos, he was a native intellectual of the Seven Islands. He lived through the transition from the Napoleonic era to the British Protectorate, and his work was a way to reclaim the history of the islands for their own people.Lunzi argued that the soul of the Ionian Islands was shaped by Venice. He documented the four centuries of Venetian rule,c. 1400-1797, that kept these islands as the only part of the Greek world never conquered by the Ottomans. As a jurist, Lunzi provides an incredibly detailed look at the Statutes of the Ionian Islands. He explains the feudal systems of Zante and Corfu nobility, which were quite different from the municipal liberties in Ottoman Greece. Although focused on the Venetian period, his work, written in the 1850s, was deeply colored by the contemporary debate about the Union, the Enosis with Greece. Lunzi’s history served to remind that the Ionian identity was ancient but very particular, European and Greek.