This thesis explores travel in the Western Mediterranean through a material culture perspective from the 1530s to the 1640s, a period in which the rising Ottoman influence in the region, amongst other factors, stimulated novel kinds of human and non-human mobility. Moving away from the sole reliance on travel accounts which has often characterised studies of early modern mobility, this thesis argues that travellers' things and their interactions with the material world were the subject of intense scrutiny on the part of diverse organisations and individuals in the region, which resulted in the production of a wide array of records. Drawing on these documents, this thesis provides an innovative perspective on mobility in the Western Mediterranean. How did men and women prepare for trans-Mediterranean journeys and how did they materially adapt to mobility? What did travel to the Dar al-Islam (dominions of Islam) mean in practice for Christian travellers, and vice-versa? In regard to travellers' things, did the concept of 'trans-religious travel' even have any meaning?
This thesis puts forward a double comparative framework for exploring the practical underpinnings of Mediterranean journeys. First, it examines how travellers’ possessions were recorded across different types of documents, which were composed to control, attest of, and protect their belongings: customs records, judicial proceedings, chancellery archives, and the records of sanitary boards and treasuries. Second, by using documents crafted in two monarchies whose attitudes and relationships towards North Africa and the wider Muslim world have always been perceived as markedly distinct, this thesis compares the various ways in which mobile objects were recorded across political and cultural boundaries.
Analysing travellers' belongings as an emic concern in the early modern period, this thesis addresses debates intrinsic to the study of the early modern Mediterranean. An exploration of travellers’ things and interactions with the material world challenges prevalent understandings of the relations between northern and southern shores, while allowing us to question the transformative character of human and non-human movement on the Mediterranean region itself. In parallel, exploring travel through a material culture perspective enables us to characterise Mediterranean mobility as a learned practice, requiring specific kinds of expertise. Beyond the specific field of Mediterranean studies, this thesis provides an innovative framework for thinking of materiality and mobility in a connected way by addressing the gap between microhistories of mobility and the so-called ‘global turn’ in material culture.