Finding Turning Points in the History of the Republic of Venice through Statistical Analysis of the Time Series of Noble Marriages

The Republic of Venice was one of the longest-lived states in modern history, and its stability and survival has been studied through many different angles, and one of them is to try and find pivotal moments in its history that explain it, or its eventual demise. In this paper, through the rigorous statistical analysis of the dataset of marriages by nobles in the Republic, we will try to define a methodology for the detection of these events through mono and multivariate change point analysis, and validate that methodology through cross-validation of different procedures, as well as matching the results to historical events. Our analysis shows that these change points occur with statistical significance and that they match political and historical events. These results can be built upon for a better understanding of the historical causes of the success and failure of the Republic of Venice and, by extension, other states.