Artisans, Vendors, and Practitioners from the Eastern Mediterranean in Early Modern Italy

Abstract

This thesis investigates the contribution of artisans, vendors, and practitioners from the Eastern Mediterranean to cultural, scientific, and artisanal production, experimentation, and innovation in early modern Italy, from the mid-sixteenth to the later seventeenth centuries. In recent years, scholars have explored the significance of cross-Mediterranean diplomacy and trade in shaping early modern European culture and recovered the contribution of Greek, Ottoman, and North-African actors to European intellectual enterprises. However, not much attention had been paid to the cultural significance of encounters, cohabitation, and exchanges with Europe’s Eastern-Mediterranean long-term visitors and new residents yet. This thesis shows that people from the Eastern Mediterranean (and sometimes the broader Islamic World) were highly visible in the artisanal landscape of early modern Italy, especially in urban centres such as Rome, Florence, Livorno, Venice, Ancona, and Naples. Many partook in artisanal undertakings associated with the production and dissemination of innovation, including making a life as street pedlars, mercers, simplicists, and shopkeepers. As vendors, these displaced individuals disseminated and popularised Islamicate objects amongst local non-elite consumers. As makers, suppliers, and customers, these migrant residents also engaged in productive collaborations and exchanges with some local artisans and shopkeepers, including tailors and apothecaries. Similar collaborations took place across some of Italy’s most vibrant spaces of artisanal experimentation, such as pharmacies, kitchens, shops, and domestic dwellings, thereby enabling the transmission of foreign artisanal knowledge as well as the participation of Eastern-Mediterranean people in local quests for technical improvement, cultures of invention, and experimentation. This was particularly the case for migrant remedy-inventors and other non-academic practitioners. By shedding light on these overlooked cross-cultural exchanges, experiences of cohabitation, and practices of artisanal collaboration, this thesis contributes to the history of knowledge, culture, science, and migration in the pre-modern Mediterranean.