Assoc. Prof. Vittoria Feola
Email: vittoria.feola@unipd.it
Affiliation: Department of Historical, Geographical and Ancient Sciences (DiSSGeA), University of Padua, Padova, Italy
Research Interests: intelligence history, intellectual history, Anglo-Spanish relations, early modern British religious history, history of the book, history of science
Mobility studies have been highlighting the circulation of people, ideas, and objects, which made early modern worlds highly interconnected. Because mobility cut across all segments of society, mobility studies have made it possible to go beyond earlier reflections stemming from the earlier historiographical debates about the Republic of Letters. Global history has been focusing on connected histories of empires for two decades now. The special issue, Cultures of Trust. Connected histories of people and information across early modern empires actively seek contributions for yet another leap forward. Whether economic or political, military or religious, intelligence was trusted, had consequences on the interconnected British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Ottoman, Mughal, Ming and Qing empires, just to mention the most widely studied ones. By focusing on trust relationships, as well as the reasons for which people trusted either informants or information, the issue aims to investigate the impact of different cultures of trust on both the domestic and the international affairs of empires whose paths kept crossing one another. Thus, Cultures of Trust.
Connected histories of people and information across early modern empires will begin to fill the current historiographical gap about trust in early modern geopolitics. Drawing from intelligence studies, intellectual history, imperial history, and connected history, Cultures of Trust. Connected histories of people and information across early modern empires are set to make a difference to the way we look at early modern evidence.
