Multiple Bordering and Multiple Interests in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic Navigation

Paper enables a brief interdisciplinary insight into numerous and multidimensional naval and life practices in the vicinity of multiple borders, and the impact of different imperial interests (the Ottomans the Venetians and the Austrians) on reshaping the Eastern Adriatic (Dalmatian) maritime economies, sailing routes and techniques. Using archival sources of different provenances, from narrative to cartographic, the author correlates possible geostrategic advances as well as obstacles to navigation during the early modern times. The Eastern Adriatic was the territory where different Mediterranean (including even Oriental, Levantine) and Central European practices, not only cultural, but also military, religious, economic or even medical and sanitary, occurred and collided. Primarily due to its geostrategic position and a long lasting unstable political subjection to western powers ; Dalmatia experienced a continuous pressure of being not just the battlefield of empires but also a barrier to Ottoman expansions (e.g. Antemurale Christianitatis). In spite of that, wars did not only interrupt communications of various kinds. They also contributed to greater exchange of not just cannon balls or illegal immigrants, but to appreciated naval techniques and inventions as well.