An Interrogation of Venetian Couriers from 1723

Authors

  • Vuk Uskoković European University Institute Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24847/v9i22022.336

Keywords:

couriers, Veneto-Ottoman, early modern communication, mobility, Cattaro, Montenegro

Abstract

The paper studies one typical interrogation (costituto) from early eighteenth-century Venetian couriers who walked the republic’s overland connection from Cattaro to Istanbul. In considering how time and space are reported in the included primary source, this article looks at how these modes of spatial and temporal representation relate to the structural realities of early modern long-distance traveling, thereby recovering the early modern road with its infrastructure and courier networks as a dynamic locus of contemporary politics.

Author Biography

  • Vuk Uskoković, European University Institute

    Vuk Uskoković is a PhD researcher in history at the European University Institute in Florence. His research focuses on rural communes on both sides of the early modern Veneto-Ottoman border: the institutions of their communal self-government and their participation in the Venetian and Ottoman imperial administrations, while at the same time seeking to recapture how the inhabitants of the frontier society conceptualized their autonomy and their relations with their sovereigns, how they formulated their political and legal claims, and how they constructed their identities.

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Published

2022-08-23

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Section

Roundtable