J. Theodore Bent (1852–1897)

A comprehensive history of San Marino up until 1879, when it was published. The second half, from the middle ages onwards, was the most interesting. One passage that I found particularly enjoyable was regarding the system used, after preliminaries, to elect Councillors:

"the whole Council go in great pomp, accompanied by music and soldiers, to the parish church towards the evening of the day on which the election takes place, their attendants carrying torches to add to the solemnity of the scene. Here the parish priest is in attendance, and having read aloud the names on the three lots, encloses them in three ballot balls, and puts them into a silver urn, shakes it well, and then, in the presence of the assembled multitude, a little boy about eight years old extracts one of the lots..."

It created a very vivid picture. An interesting read about a unique country.… (más)

If you're curious about the history of the Republic of San Marino, a tiny country in the middle of Italy, this is one of the few English language options you'll find. Fortunately, it's fairly readable and, thanks to Google's digitization of works in the public domain, it's easy to access. The author repeatedly refers to documents in San Marino's archives, and it appears that these documents were the author's main source of information, supplemented by secondary histories in various languages referenced in footnotes scattered throughout the text. The book is more than a century out of date, so if you want to know what effect the wars of the 20th century had on this tiny nation you'll need to look elsewhere. The OCR software didn't seem to handle the typeface well, so if you read the Google version, you'll need to be prepared to see “Eimini” for Rimini and “Eomagna” for Romagna, etc. I finally figured out that the abstract illustrations that appear on many pages were the left-hand fingers of the person holding the book in place as it was scanned. Since San Marino has such an unusual history and form of government, the book might be of interest to political science students, as well as to travelers headed for northern Italy.… (más)