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Borders and Mobility in the Holy Roman Empire explores the history of freedom of movement in the German lands, one of the most fractured landscapes in human history. Focusing on safe-conduct, a key institution for channelling human mobility, the study looks at historical relationships between sovereignty and freedom of movement in a new light.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: The Ordering of Movement
- 2: Theatres of Transit
- 3: Boundaries
- 4: Channelling Movement
- 5: Protection
- 6: Freedom of Movement
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
About the author
Luca Scholz is a historian of early modern Europe who combines social, legal, and intellectual history with geospatial and digital methods. He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence after previously studying history and economics in Paris and Heidelberg. He has published English, German, French, and Italian articles and chapters on passports, serfdom, the politics of protection, and spatial history. After teaching in Berlin and at Stanford University, he is currently a lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Summary
Borders and Mobility in the Holy Roman Empire explores the history of freedom of movement in the German lands, one of the most fractured landscapes in human history. Focusing on safe-conduct, a key institution for channelling human mobility, the study looks at historical relationships between sovereignty and freedom of movement in a new light.
Additional text
Luca Scholz's conclusions reach well beyond the borders of early modern Central Europe. His analysis of embodied and material movement as a critical venue for contestations and theatrics of power is original and important, and scholars studying mobility and state control in the modern period will find much to consider in the alternative landscapes Scholz's subjects inhabited and the meanings they ascribed to them.
