The Travels of Cristoforo Buondelmonti and Ciriaco d’Ancona in the Aegean Sea: Humanism, Early Colonial Politics, and Agency

This book explores the travels of Cristoforo Buondelmonti and Ciriaco d’Ancona to the Greek lands in the early fifteenth-century eastern Mediterranean.

Drawing on post-colonial studies’ frameworks, such as travel writing and imaginative geographies, this volume offers an innovative examination of colonial discursive and cultural practices within the Latin dominions in the Greek lands. It sheds light on their contributions to the conceptualisation of both the ＂Italian metropolitan＂ space and the ＂Greek＂ identity of the colonised. This volume investigates how Cristoforo’s and Ciriaco’s travel narratives utilised conceptual tools and representation systems of early humanism to support Latin political and economic interests in the eastern Mediterranean. It delves into the imaginative geographies of Venetian Crete, the islands of the archipelago, Constantinople, the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea, and portrayals of the Ottomans as constructed by the two travelers, offering insights into the interaction of Latin humanistic and colonial discourses and the agency of travellers in shaping the colonial space.

The book will be of value to scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students across various research fields, including Renaissance and postcolonial studies, travel literature, Latin dominions in the Aegean, Byzantine and Ottoman histories.

Eleni Tounta is an associate professor of Western Medieval History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, researching topics related to the social and cultural history of the high and late Middle Ages. Her publications include monographs and articles focusing on Byzantine and Norman Southern Italy.