Thread by @rcmidura

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 🙃