Diasporas, Space and Imperial Subjecthood in Early Modern Venice: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The article introduces the concept of “diaspora” to examine groups of immigrants and refugees, Jews, Christian Orthodox and Catholic subjects of the Venetian imperial state, and their settlements in the city. Historiography has traditionally studied these groups in isolation from each other, has taken their cohesiveness for granted without considering fully the institutional framework of the Venetian state that shaped their communal formation and has examined them as pre-national formations to be incorporated into national historical narratives. The article seeks to problematize these approaches and to discuss the value of “diaspora” for the study of these groups. It argues that these settlements can be examined as the institutionalization of diasporic groups into communities of imperial subjects through state policy and discourse and that this process entailed the administration of immigration and urban space.