Publications by Rachel Midura
History, 2023
Tracing patterns of letter interception across the Alps provides a new geography of Habsburg comm... more Tracing patterns of letter interception across the Alps provides a new geography of Habsburg communications, espionage, and counter-espionage in seventeenth-century Europe. Using the correspondence of the Tassis family of imperial and Spanish postmasters, this article demonstrates that despite increasingly martial rhetoric, battles in information security took place along different geography than the military campaigns of the Thirty Years War. Instead of the 'Spanish Road', the article proposes the consideration of two alternative roads debated by postal administrators: the 'German Road' through Augsburg and the 'Swiss Road' through Lucerne. Letter interceptions along these roads demonstrate that information security differed from martial security in two key ways: First, Habsburg postal systems relied upon international cooperation rather than territorial control. The desire to avoid information leaks had to be balanced with the financial necessity of contracting postal operations to Alpine towns such as Lindau. Second, postmasters themselves responded to the information security needs of cosmopolitan private patrons and multiple princes, complicating their allegiances as state agents. Cases such as the imperial Postmistress General of Brussels and Spanish postmaster of Milan demonstrate that postmasters served as both 'honorable spies' and spy-catchers, proposing new itineraries to circumvent espionage.
Journal of Social History, 2021
Before the advent of formal cartography, with its emphasis on observation and accuracy and its re... more Before the advent of formal cartography, with its emphasis on observation and accuracy and its reliance on global standards, the itinerary was the height of geographic knowledge. These lists of cities and their relative distances, represented by many national “miles” or the location of postal waystations, opened European travel to a broad readership. This article traces the repetition and modification of route headings across a newly comprehensive bibliography of eighty-five itinerary books printed from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. The application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) models the organizing logic of the itinerary genre and hierarchization of regions, cities, and routes. Digital methods prove to be key for moving between scales of consideration, from following the fate of one city, to many linked cities, to entire regions or the network as a whole. While the pilgrimage path of St. James and transalpine commercial routes were widely republished, dynamic net...
Print and Power in Early Modern Europe, 2021
By the time of Carlo Borromeo’s 1566 arrival in Milan, transnational espionage networks of the Sp... more By the time of Carlo Borromeo’s 1566 arrival in Milan, transnational espionage networks of the Spanish governors had been identifying suspected foreign and peripatetic agents of heretical print for decades. The plague years of 1576-78 saw authorities join the rhetoric of social control against plague to the combat of heresy as a form of plague, and conversion to a form of “infection.” Policing practices such as regular issue of edicts, ticket issuance and inspection, and memorialization in collections of state edicts (gridari) and religious ordinances (Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis) continued in following decades, as authorities waged a campaign to reclaim the public sphere. The combination of powerful rhetoric and printed authority furthered a contagion theory of dissent, and top-down methods of prevention, quarantine, and treatment.
The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy, 1300-1650, 2019
Over the course of the seventeenth century, European postal systems were revolutionized by new te... more Over the course of the seventeenth century, European postal systems were revolutionized by new technologies, and opened to a more diverse set of clients than ever before. Two new print genres, the postal itinerary and the mailbag novel, grappled with the ramifications for state and society. Ottavio Codogno's Nuovo itinerario delle poste (1608) and Ferrante Pallavicino's Corriero svaligiato (1641) share the Northern Italian geopolitical environment, and depict the constant threat of theft, assault, and espionage to the security of its posts. Codogno's status as a powerful postmaster lieutenant in Milan, and Pallavicino's as a Venetian satirist on the run, shaped their views on the public and its right to know. Together, their works represent the cultural tension of opening the post.
Empires of Knowledge: Scientific Networks in the Early Modern World, 2018
To most twenty-first-century humanists, the most familiar network is the social network. In both ... more To most twenty-first-century humanists, the most familiar network is the social network. In both our research and day-to-day existence, we experience how individual relationships guide the exchange of powers, goods, and ideas. Individual interactions weave a complex web over time and space, providing long-standing patterns that guide future agents in their decisions. Patronage, kinship, and trade networks provide a ready means of placing an individual within a greater social historical trajectory, and allow us a basis for connective and comparative history on an unprecedented scale. In short, network models have much to offer the humanist as both a narrative technique and analytical lens....
Events Organised by Rachel Midura
Renaissance Italy saw a new culture of profession among diplomats, doctors, and lawyers. The earl... more Renaissance Italy saw a new culture of profession among diplomats, doctors, and lawyers. The early modern period cultivated an even wider body of self-fashioned experts, from post-Tridentine bishops to postal officials. Claims to specialized knowledge mixed training and on-theground experience in new and often idiosyncratic ways. From legal courts, to courts of public opinion, we will explore how expertise gained coding by class, gender, and other identities of the "expert." Papers will consider how expertise could be verified and translated into policy, as well as how new print and manuscript genres supported or challenged existing bodies of specialized knowledge.
Organised in partnership with the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Studies - University of L... more Organised in partnership with the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Studies - University of London), this series of panels sought to contribute to a cultural history of Renaissance bureaucracy.
On the occasion of the 2019 meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, we organised a series ... more On the occasion of the 2019 meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, we organised a series of panels exploring the cultural history of Renaissance bureaucracy.
Announcements by Rachel Midura
We seek participants at work on premodern travel studies and with an interest in digital, spatial... more We seek participants at work on premodern travel studies and with an interest in digital, spatial approaches. With the support of a Digital Humanities Advancement grant from the NEH, EmDigIt will host a series of virtual workshops in Spring 2024 to converse, collaborate, and conduct original research using the EmDigIt database of published itineraries (c.1550-1750). The series will culminate with a conference August 5, 2024 in the Washington D.C. area.
IL MONITORE DELLA TOSCANA, 2021
Nel comparto della comunicazione epistolare, fino al 1863 la Toscana è stata caratterizzata da un... more Nel comparto della comunicazione epistolare, fino al 1863 la Toscana è stata caratterizzata da una pluralità dei servizi che accanto alle strutture governative vedeva presenti imprese ferroviarie, uffici comunali, vettori privati. Oggi che con la fine del monopolio postale statale tale modello è tornato attuale, la rivista "Il Monitore della Toscana" fa conoscere la ricchezza della sua nuova e antica storia postale.
Talks by Rachel Midura
Kunsttexte.de: E-Journal für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, 2018
The transalpine zone has long been a major European crossroads, connecting the north and west of ... more The transalpine zone has long been a major European crossroads, connecting the north and west of the continent with the Mediterranean and Adriatic through the Alpine passes and associated traffic arteries. In the early modern period, people moving through this region for a vast variety of motives among them artisans, artists, merchants, pilgrims, pedlars, couriers and diplomats promoted the exchange of goods, ideas and culture. At the same time, the acceleration of migration and mobility, as well as the spread of epidemic disease, religious and political divisions, made the period fundamentally important for the evolution of policies and infrastructures to channel and regulate mobility. This workshop brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers working on mobility between northern Italy and the Alpine zone to explore questions such as: how did mobility and migration shape the history of both major urban centres as well as rural communities along key transit corridors? How did transport, hospitality and communication systems facilitate mobility?
How did high levels of mobility accentuate the perception of difference, and the desire for separation, borders and controls? How did this area of high mobility and cross-cultural contacts promote new kinds of artistic, artisanal or food cultures?
Papers by Rachel Midura
Empires of Knowledge, 2018
Teaching Documents by Rachel Midura
This course covers espionage and surveillance from antiquity up to the beginning of the 20th cent... more This course covers espionage and surveillance from antiquity up to the beginning of the 20th century. We will explore the different motives, ethics, and technologies to gather intelligence and maintain secrecy in matters of state, with special attention to Italy, France and Great Britain. Reading and discussion will explore the role of trust and distrust in communications during times of peace and war.
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Publications by Rachel Midura
Events Organised by Rachel Midura
Announcements by Rachel Midura
Talks by Rachel Midura
How did high levels of mobility accentuate the perception of difference, and the desire for separation, borders and controls? How did this area of high mobility and cross-cultural contacts promote new kinds of artistic, artisanal or food cultures?
Papers by Rachel Midura
Teaching Documents by Rachel Midura
How did high levels of mobility accentuate the perception of difference, and the desire for separation, borders and controls? How did this area of high mobility and cross-cultural contacts promote new kinds of artistic, artisanal or food cultures?