The Ordering of Movement

Early modern authorities attempted to promote, restrict, and channel the movement of goods and people for reasons that ranged from economic considerations to political motives and public health. In practice, however, these interferences only had mixed success. In the Holy Roman Empire’s dense landscape of ill-defined, overlapping political entities, the control over moving goods and people was a permanent point of contention. While the Empire’s history has often been written in distinctly diachronic terms, this study approaches the Empire in a spatial perspective and stresses its interest beyond the bounds of German history. Conflicts around the ordering of movement were often framed as matters of safe conduct, a quasi-sovereign right to authorize and protect the movement of various goods and people. While safe conduct always maintained a protective function, at the hands of the Empire’s territorial authorities it became a powerful instrument of political, fiscal, and symbolic power as well as a vehicle for gaining control over important thoroughfares.