Dr. Rachel Midura Profile picture
Jun 30, 2021 11 tweets 6 min read Read on X
My article "Itinerating Europe: Early Modern Spatial Networks in Printed Itineraries, 1545–1700" in the Journal of Social History is available as of yesterday! In celebration, here is a brief thread on #earlymodern navigation 1/10 Illustration from Franciscu...
I'm a traveler in sixteenth-century Europe- say, a northern scholar headed south to Italy. How do I know how to get there? Certain pilgrimage routes are well known, in fact, the earliest printed road maps shows the "Roman Way" (orientation flipped!) 2/10 Erhard Etzlaub's Romweg Map...
Famous routes like this one, or the path of Saint James to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, also circulated in guidebooks and lists of cities (itineraries) in MS and print. Travelers would also often note journeys in an itinerated form, see Thomas Hoby's 1564 journal 3/10 Image
Maps and cosmographies often remained costly and unwieldy. I've often heard historians say people must have just asked directions. Many groups had professional knowledge of routes, such as merchants, diplomats, and of course (my specialty) couriers and postmasters 4/10 Cursor Germanus (c. 1558-70)
These groups also had serious side-hustle and took advantage of the popular press. By the mid 15C we see printed itinerary books appearing across Europe, from Spain to Germany. 5/10 Pedro Juan Villuga, Reperto...
These were small books, intended to be carried on the road. Here you see four examples of an itinerary authored by the postmaster lieutenant of Milan held at the British Library, which included hundreds of journeys (!) but are shown with a two-pound coin for scale. 6/10 Four copies of itinerary bo...
I've looked at hundreds of itineraries, which can be found in most major collections and have frequently been digitized. They often show marginalia as travelers corrected information, added notes, or seemingly checked off and dated their own travels. 7/10 Image
In the article, I explore how we can read across this remarkable genre, which gives us such unique insight into the "mental map" of early modern Europeans. I use network analysis on 84 itinerary books to highlight continuity and discontinuity across time. 8/10 Network model of itinerary ...
Check out "Itinerating Europe" at doi.org/10.1093/jsh/sh… , soon to be joined by several other pieces and an open-access annotated pre-print version provided by the @chnm! 9/10
So much thanks for helping this happen to @lincolnmullen and @smrobertson3, @AmandaBergado, Giovanna Ceserani and the rest of @cesta_stanford, all instructors and participants of @FolgerLibrary EMDA Network Analysis and @chnm /JSH workshop + @emmobility! 10/10
Errata: Thomas Hoby's 1546 journal entry, by the mid 16C/1500s. Morning brings out my dyscalculia 🙃

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Dr. Rachel Midura

Dr. Rachel Midura Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(