Peiresc's Mediterranean world / Peter N. Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Peter N., 1964-

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peiresc, Nicolas Claude Fabri de, 1580-1637.

Intellectual life.

Humanists.

Intellectuals.

Relations.

Commerce.

History.

Naval history.

Mediterranean Region--History--17th century--Sources.

Mediterranean Region.

Mediterranean Region--History, Naval--17th century--Sources.

Mediterranean Region--Commerce--History--17th century--Sources.

Marseille (France)--Relations--Mediterranean Region--Sources.

Marseille (France).

Mediterranean Region--Relations--France--Marseille--Sources.

Peiresc, Nicolas Claude Fabri de, 1580-1637--Archives.

Peiresc, Nicolas Claude Fabri de.

Intellectuals--France--Archives.

Humanists--France--Archives.

France--Intellectual life--17th century--Sources.

France.

France--Marseille.

International relations.

Genre:

Archives.

History.

Naval history.

Sources.

Physical Description:

ix, 630 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2015.

Summary:

"Antiquarian, lawyer, and cat lover Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), was a 'prince' of the Republic of Letters and the most gifted French intellectual in the generation between Montaigne and Descartes. From Peiresc's study in Aix-en-Provence, his insatiable curiosity poured forth in thousands of letters that traveled the Mediterranean, seeking knowledge of matters mundane and exotic--travel times and insurance premiums, rare manuscripts and objects from the Orient. Mining the remarkable 70,000-page archive of this Provençal humanist and polymath, Peter N. Miller recovers a lost Mediterranean world of the early seventeenth century that was dominated by the sea: the ceaseless activity of merchants, customs officials, and ships' captains at the center of Europe's sprawling maritime networks. Peiresc's Mediterranean World reconstructs the web of connections that linked the bustling port city of Marseille to destinations throughout the Western Mediterranean, North Africa, the Levant, and beyond. As Miller also makes clear, Peiresc's mastery of practical details and his collaboration with local traders and fixers as well as scholars, sheds new light on the structure of knowledge-making in the age of Bacon, Galileo, and Rubens. Miller shows that Peiresc's pursuit of Oriental studies, for example, depended crucially on his abilities as a man of action. Exploring the historian's craft today against the backdrop of Peiresc's diverse research activities, Peiresc's Mediterranean World suggests new possibilities for scholarship on the past, but also for the relationship between the writing of history and its readers"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Algiers, June 1932

Marseille-Aix

Marseille and the French Mediterranean

Peiresc's letters

Contingency

Writing to the Levant 1627-1637

Peiresc's names, or, On reading the namescape

The problem of detail

The postal link

The last mile (Mule is king)

Marseille's merchants

Marseille merchant families

Financing, disbursing, reimbursing

Sanson Napollon

Naturalizing merchants

North Africans in Marseille

Northerners in the Mediterranean

Ships' captains and patrons

Tasks entrusted to captains

Port practices : packaging-plague-quarantine

Setting sail

Merchant routes

Mapping the Mediterranean

Sicily

People in motion

Ottoman Empire news

Time and timings

Corsairs

Ransoming

End points

Merchants as intellectual partners

Before Statistik

Peiresc's mixing in Cairo's consular politics

Peiresc and travel

Where Mediterranean meets Orient : Ethiopia, India, Yemen

At the still point

Appendices.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780674744066

0674744063

OCLC:

893709490