Paolo Sachet, Publishing for the Popes, Brill 2020

Review of Paolo Sachet, Publishing for the Popes: The Roman Curia and the Use of Printing (1527–1555) (Leiden: Brill, 2020)

Stefan Bauer, The Invention of Papal History, Oxford University Press 2020

Review of Stefan Bauer, The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio Between Renaissance and Catholic Reform, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020

Maia Wellington Gahtan, Eva-Maria Troelenberg, eds, Collecting and Empires, Harvey Miller Publishers 2019

Review of Maia Wellington Gahtan, Eva-Maria Troelenberg, eds, Collecting and Empires: An Historical and Global Perspective (London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019)

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Robert Aleksander Maryks, and Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, eds, Encounters Between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas, Brill 2018

Review of Encounters Between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas, Eds Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Robert Aleksander Maryks, and Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2018)

‘Good Things […] from Bristol and Ireland’

According to the historical sources, the members of the Creoles elite were ambiguous in their dietary choices: if they mainly had British food when they shared their meals with British colonists, in their private sphere, the dishes served were mainly and with strong traces of slaves cuisine. We hypothesise that their incongruous behaviour was connected with a white planters’ supposed feeling of inferiority for which British ingredients, along with British people, were believed of superior quality and more appropriate to be eaten when they believed British observed them. However, because food tastes and distastes were and are connected with familiar habits, the local élite chose to have their local dishes in their private daily lives. This attitude was connected with the construction of the identities in the colonial space in which food played a significant role, too.

Peter C. Mancall, The Trials of Thomas Morton, Yale University Press 2019

Review of Peter C. Mancall, The Trials of Thomas Morton_ An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019)

The Strategic Mobilisation of the Border in Gibraltar: The Postcolonial (Re)Production of Privilege and Exclusion

The border separating/unifying Gibraltar with Spain is reproduced in public discourse as a threat and an obstacle to the normalisation of political life in the small enclave. Yet, an in-depth socio-historical analysis of local cross-border relations over the 20th century, shows how the Gibraltarian national identity and local government originate from the border rather than in opposition to it. The fencing of the frontier imposed by the Franco’s regime between 1969-1985 allows the discursive (re)production of a Gibraltarian identity distinct from that of the Spanish neighbours - and, in part, from that of the English colonisers.

(Re)Searching the Morlachs and the Uskoks: The Challenges of Writing about Marginal People from the Border Region of Dalmatia (Sixteenth Century)

This paper aims to present various types of documents referring directly or indirectly to the Morlachs and the Uskoks, in order to answer to questions such as which main activities these people developed, and how they influenced daily life in Dalmatia. A significant characteristic and paradox of both the Morlachs and Uskoks is that their names are conventions and denominations found mostly in external sources. Frequently mentioned in sixteenth-century Venetian documents, despite the little additional information provided, the archival material investigated nevertheless offers the opportunity to understand these very active, mobile and adaptable populations, especially with regard to their role as cross-cultural and transimperial subjects.

Connecting people, Trade and Orders of Knowledge: Mediality and Intermediality of Early Modern Auction Catalogues

Auction catalogues are considered a key source in different fields of historical research and are exploited both by traditional scholarship as well as more recent, digital, big data approaches regarding the information supplied on the offered objects (books, art works, or other trade goods). By focusing on auction catalogues as objects, their properties and uses, this contribution seeks to unveil its potential for scholarship on trade, the history of knowledge and, in the case of interleaved copies, early modern note taking practices, in their links to interaction. Indeed, it argues, auction catalogues played a pivotal, productive role, as they facilitated social interaction und advanced knowledge. Moving beyond a data harvesting approach, it opens up a new praxeological perspective on auction catalogues.

Paper, Commerce, and the Circulation of News: A Case-Study from Early Modern Malta

This contribution discusses the vital role of paper in the context of an early modern Mediterranean island-state. From a commerical, but also from a political perspective, the increased amount of seaborne communication not only characterised statehood but indeed made it possible. Paper-based communication was the main channel of formal but also of informal communication, with the latter comprising the exchange of news, rumours, and hearsay between the geographically isolated community and the rest of the Mediterranean and beyond. Such paper transactions comprised manuscript but also increasingly printed genres. The role of these and of other typologies of printed commercial literature went beyond a purely utilitarian one, as very often such forms included decorative iconographical representations asserting either political sovreignity or religious power. Paper-based communication enabled such an island community not simply to receive news but also to be a net distributer of it.