Introduction: Movable Objects

Abstract

This volume analyzes historical processeso fm obility by focusing on material objects. It is our principal thesis that flows of things, objects or materialsare the key for any understanding of the nature and scope of as ocial relational space transformed, constituted and shaped through mobilities. Mobility-as ashorthand for various related processeso fm igration,t ransfer, entanglement and translation-involves human actors, immaterial elements such as ideas and knowledge, but also objects in various forms and functions. For example, as material infrastructures, they form the basis for transporta nd travel; as goods they are the object and purpose of trade or giftexchange. In all of these cases, objects are deeply entangled withhuman actors as well as immaterial elements. By focusing on the ways in which objects determined certain historical processes of mobility and how their social meaning and materiality wast ransformed in these processes, we hope to gain ad eeper insight into the question of how mobility defined trans-regional relations from along-term perspective.The case studies presented in this volume are part of acollaborative effort to reconstruct from the particular perspectiveofobjects and materiality amobility space we call Transottomanica. Rather than to denote afixed geographical entity, the term Transottomanica is used in aheuristic fashion, identifying achanging set of entanglements and transfers sustained by flows and networks between the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The name refers to the fact that, between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, many of these flows and networks originated in or passed through the Ottoman Empire. But the other empires that dominated the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the early modern period such as Poland-Lithuania, Russia and the Safavid Empire in Persia are also an integralp art of this research perspective. Af ocus on this area will act as a balance to the lively scholarly interest in transfers between WesternEurope and the Orient. Moreover, where transfers between the Middle East and Eastern Europe were studied, they havebeen often conceptualizedasbilateral relations between states or empires. Examples of goods such as silk, which wast raded between Persia and Western Europe via Russia, or carpets that were exported Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0