REVIEWS 35I Neapolitan court, or how the politics of Italy in the era of the Peace of Lodi and the Congress of Mantua influenced the attitude of Venice towards the Turks. Yet he distances himself from some earlier, Albanian, historiography which predictably cast Skanderbegas the national hero defending Shqiperia against Italian imperialism (the Venetians occupying the role of Mussolini's Fascists here). Albanian scholarship on the Venetian presence in Albania culminated in L. Malltezi's Qytet e bregdetit shqiptar gjatM sundimit venedikas ('The Albanian Coastal Cities under Venetian Domination', Tirana, I988); and a great virtue of Schmitt's book is his review of existing literatureon medieval Albania, includingitemsthatremainvirtuallyinaccessiblein westernlibraries. Schmitt is unduly modest about the significance of his work. He contends that 'Venice's commercial interest lay not in Albania, but in the Levant' (p. 222). While no one would deny that the galleyfleetsbound forAlexandria were the glory of Venetian commerce, it is also clearfrom Schmitt'sworkthat the Adriatic was much more than a route to the East. For he also observes (p. 242) that the loss of Dalmatia to the Hungarians in 1350 created a crisis for Venice: the lack of secure harbours in the Middle Adriatic made the acquisition of dominion in northernAlbania especiallyvaluable. In addition, the goods to be acquired there, though modest, were the basic commodities without which the Serenissimacould not feed its substantialpopulation. But Venetian involvement dragged the Republic into a diplomatic quagmire. Serbs, Ottomans, Neapolitans, Hungarians and local magnates all vied for influence. In the fifteenthcenturyVenice did not quite know whetherto fight the Turksor to appease them. In Albania Venice had not merely a 'bulwark' (p. 640) against the Ottomans, but a source of grain and salt which Italian businessmen were keen to exploit. With the loss of Shkoder in 1479 the Ottoman threat to the Adriatic became clearer than ever: a year later the Turkslaunched their attackagainst Otranto in southernItaly. Venice did not let go of its interestsin the southernAdriatic, but henceforth had to find new ways to expressthem. Gonville andCaiusCollege DAVID ABULAFIA Cambridge Liechtenhan, Francine-Dominique. Les trois christianismes et la Russie. Les voyageurs occidentaux face a'l'Egliseorthodoxe russe XVe-XVIIIesiecle.Mondes russes: Etats, Societes, Nations. Editions CNRS, Paris, 2002. 208 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?22.00 (paperback). FRANCINE-DOMINIQUE LIECHTENHAN dedicated her monograph to the image of Russia as seen throughthe eyes of westerntravellerswho visitedthe country over three hundred years from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries.It is a commonplace that forthe population of Europein the middle ages and early modern period the notion of 'the other' was defined more in terms of religion or Christian denomination than nation or ethnicity. However, the subject of the interaction of cultures and their attempts at mutual categorization and interpretation is vast and enormously complex, and one that is likely to continue to provoke the interest of researchers.The 352 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 book under review belongs in the category of workselaboratingon that topic. This is an ambitiousproject,whose realizationgenerallydoes not fall shortof itspromise. The monograph consistsof fourparts,each dealing with aspectsof Russian religious and cultural life as represented in the memoirs, travelogues, and letters written by Italian, German, Swedish, English, Dutch, Danish, and French travellers,merchants and diplomats. The four parts are arranged in chronologicalorder.PartOne, entitled'Firstencounters(I 240- I584)', throws light on the period between the Mongol conquest of Rus'in the mid thirteenth centuryto the end of the turbulentreign of Ivan IV (hereand subsequentlyall translations from the original French are the reviewer's). Part Two: 'The Orthodox, the Catholics and the Protestants (I584-I689)', describes the uneasyrelationsbetween theMuscovitesandtheirforeignvisitors,representatives of the two majorbranchesof westernChristianity.The authormasterfully demonstrates how these relationswere tainted by bitter feelings between the Catholics and Protestants,who tended to add accusationsof fallingin with the 'schismatics',or the 'papists',respectively,to the usual stereotypicalcondemnations of the Orthodox Russiansforbeing ignorant,immoral, and 'pagan'in theirhabitsand customs. PartThree: 'The church of progress(I689-I725)' is dedicated to the epoch of Peter I, who made it his aim to subjectthe Church to the 'reason of the state', and succeeded in this endeavour famously if precipitously. Finally, Part Four:'Heiresses of Peter the Great (I725-I...