This project combines history of the book with digital approaches to explore how a database of sixteenth- through eighteenth-century itineraries may reshape our understanding of historical travel and communication. Printed itinerary books provided early modern travelers with lists of cities along routes. Digital spatial approaches often rely upon modern mapmaking and its built-in assumptions of up-to-date accuracy, decentered viewpoint, stable place identifiers, and direct distances. The data provided has been hand-entered from over 80 multilingual, international itineraries published from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries and formatted for relative ease of use with network and spatial analysis tools.
The data provided here represents the stage of work at the time of publication of Rachel Midura, Itinerating Europe: Early Modern Spatial Networks in Printed Itineraries, 1545–1700, Journal of Social History, Volume 54, Issue 4, Summer 2021, Pages 1023–1063, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shab011. Drawing from the physical and digitized collections of European state libraries, the database includes more than three-quarters of identified itinerary authors (twenty-five of thirty-two) and nearly a third of identified surviving editions (84 of 299, see Appendix). The resulting database consists of 3,655 unique routes, connecting 1,587 cities, published and re-published over the course of two centuries.
All titles featured in the appendix bibliography follow the format of a header (“Rome to Milan”) followed by a list of intermediary cities. Narrative guidebooks are only included if they feature such route tables as a significant component.
I distinguish between a “route,” meaning an abstracted connection between an origin, a destination, and possible intermediaries (“Rome to Paris via Milan,”) and an “edge,” meaning a one-to-one relationship between locations (”Rome to Paris,” “Rome to Milan,” and “Milan to Paris.”). Routes and edges both preserve the original directionality, distinguishing between “Rome to Paris,” and “Paris to Rome,” for example.
This dataset consists solely of the route headers found across the included itineraries and not the intermediary stops within at the present time. Further detail can be found in the included data schema.
Video explanation of the project may be found at:
"HNR Lunch Lecture Rachel Midura: Early Modern Digital Itineraries (1545-1761)," Historical Networks Research Group Lecture Series, 5/20/21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRweVszLFX4&ab_channel=TheHistoricalNetworkResearchCommunity.
Rachel Midura, "Early Modern Digital Itineraries: Modeling European Place and Space, 1545-1747," Virtual DH2020 Conference, 7/22/20-7/24/20, http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/qv7a-9c33.
Digitized example of early modern itinerary:
Ottavio Codogno, "Nuovo itinerario delle poste" (Milan: Girolamo Bordoni, 1608). München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Res/Geo.u. 86. https://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10917825-1.
The included data is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. You may use or transform the included materials with appropriate credit.
January 1, 2024: The anonymously authored itinerary Poste diverse d'Italia, Alemagna, Spagna, e Francia which is available in digitized form from the Bavarian State Library and Google Books is most likely misdated. Rather than 1550, the itinerary was most likely produced around 1700. While labeled within this dataset as SA1550, it should be regarded instead as a later publication.
- R
- Google Sheets
- Rachel Midura (PI)
- Evan Kim (RA)
- Elliot Miller (RA)
- Dr. Patrick Mutchler & Maeva Fincker (consultation)
- Early Modern Mobility Research Group (UPS Endowment Fund)
- Early Modern Digital Agendas (Folger Institute; NEH)
- Networking Archives (Oxford & Cambridge University; AHRC)
- Stanford History Department
- Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis
- Alex Brey, Temporal Network Analysis with R, The Programming Historian (2018-11-04), at https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/temporal-network-analysis-with-r .