One common assembly of people : the self-governing rural communities of the southeast Adriatic (1680s–1760s)

Abstract

The subject matter of this thesis are the self-governing rural communities of the Veneto-Ottoman southeast Adriatic frontier in the period from the late 17th to the late 18th century. Special attention among these is given to early modern Montenegro, the kernel of the eponymous present-day state. Against a historiographical tradition which was focused on the genesis of the modern statehood and national idea, this thesis is primarily interested in early modern Montenegro as one of the many such rural self-governing polities which seem to have thrived on both sides of the border. The thesis seeks to recover and understand these polities as specific subjects of frontier politics, and to do so in terms which were available to their own inhabitants to represent their subjectivity, agency, and their communal institutions. The rural communities are observed in interaction between themselves and with other subjects of frontier politics—the Venetian and Ottoman state representatives and the urban and ecclesiastical elites of the frontier area—as this interaction is recorded in the textual material produced through collaboration and confrontation between those parties. The common space of textual representation, sustained by shared ideas, practices, and circulation of letters, permits us to piece together the ordinary features of rural communal subjectivity and agency. The thesis argues that rural communal subjectivity is best defined through the institution of communal assembly and through the special services (e.g. military service) which such assemblies could perform for the early modern state in exchange for status and privilege. The full form of communal self-government comprised direct subordination to state representatives and standing administrative and judicial bodies within their assemblies. In their internal and intercommunal affairs, these assemblies functioned by delegating and authorising members to act in the name of the collective.