This project has been over a decade in the making. It was in the spring of 2013 when my first sabbatical leave took me to Venice. My primary goal was to study the early modern news networks. However, as a student of communications, I received exactly zero hours of instruction on how to conduct archival research. It was Mario Infelise—on whose door I knocked in Venice as a complete stranger—who undertook the audacious task to introduce me to the archives at the Frari. He literally threw me into deep water one morning: showed me how to order my first batch of documents and made me fight for survival (yet remained close enough in case I would start drowning). Ever since, his sage advice has been guiding me on my journey, steering me in the right direction every time I started losing my bearings. It is not an exaggeration to say that without him, this project would have never seen the light of the day. I am very grateful not only to him, but also to his wife, Francesca, for many an evening spent together over a delicious dish of seafood.
I am equally indebted to all others who touched my life from the moment I decided to change the course of my professional path: from being an architectural engineer to a journalist, and finally ending up as a communications scholar about two decades ago. I received my doctoral education at The Penn State University, where my advisor was political economist Ron Bettig, an encounter which profoundly impacted my thinking. I am appreciative to Jorge Schement and Amit Schejter, who sensitized me to see the media as large technological systems that reflect basic cultural and political values of the societies within which they operate. I am equally grateful to Matt McAllister, who mentored me through the process of getting my first job. A major thank you goes to Deryck Holdsworth, into whose office in the Department of Geography I stormed unannounced one morning as an anxious grad student in search of an outside member of my dissertation committee, and whose mentoring and deep personal friendship helped me see the world through the lens of urban historical geography—a professional bias I eagerly embraced that left an undeniable imprint on this volume.
This book is a product of innumerous other encounters with colleagues whose work I deeply admire. Carolyn Marvin was the first who inadvertently introduced me to communications studies during a lengthy interview she afforded me in Philadelphia, when I covered the 2004 elections as a journalist. She was a student of James W. Carey, whose essays have been my favorite academic readings ever since. In recent years, it has been Richard R. John—the godfather of postal history in the American context—to whom I owe thanks
This book was directly inspired by a thesis proposed by Wolfgang Behringer, with whom I had the honor to spend several moments in friendly conversation years ago at a conference in Trento, and who is undoubtedly not even aware of how profoundly his thinking impacted my own. I must mention Gabriele Balbi as well, another intellectual powerhouse and witty companion too, who—despite all linguistic and cultural turns taken by recent research—stubbornly resists fashionable trends and remains focused on the material aspects of infrastructure that shapes the symbolic communication processes in a subtle, yet decisive way. There were many others who helped me to find my own bearings and whose thinking can be clearly discerned in my writings and I will name a mere few of them: Elihu Katz, John Nerone, Pete Simonson, John Durham Peters, Jeff Pooley, Nelson Ribeiro, Susanne Kinnebrock, Christian Schwarzenegger, Stephanie Seul, Michael Stamm, Mark Brayshay, Renzo Chiovelli, Rachel Midura, and Michele Santoro.
My research sojourn at various archives in Italy has been funded mainly by internal grants provided by my home institution, St. Lawrence University. I had multiple opportunities to extend my stays in Venice while teaching summer classes there, just before my students arrived or after they left. However, the single biggest funding opportunity for my research came from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, whose generosity allowed me to stay long enough to complete all previously begun inquiries and bring the manuscript to its final shape. I am grateful to Laura Benedetti, whom I met one summer at the Frari archives where she mentioned this opportunity to me.
The bulk of the first chapter of this volume was already published in a relatively newly established journal titled Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, edited by a group of economic historians with the revolutionary idea to engage closely with their authors in developing their essays. It was my pleasure to collaborate with Marc Flandreau and Carolyn Biltoft, who pushed me to prove my understanding of the historiographies related to the commercial revolution. Likewise, a significant portion of Chapter 8, focusing on the postal wars between Venice and the papacy, was published in the proceedings of the second International Congress of Postal Historians that gathers every two years in Prato, Italy, at the palace built by the famous medieval merchant Francesco Datini. In recent years, this venue has become my true intellectual home, and I am extremely grateful to the conference’s generous organizer and prolific student of the early modern postal era, Bruno Crevato-Selvaggi, for this opportunity.
My thoughts go to friends in my native Slovakia, where this book started taking shape during my second sabbatical that coincided with the long covid pandemic. Veteran editor Ján Roháč and his wife, Irena, have been my friends and mentors for years, advising me in my own editorial pursuits, together with diplomats and literary movers and shakers Mirka and Stano Vallo, whom I befriended many years ago while working as a journalist in Rome. I am likewise grateful to local historians and preservationists at our home in Banská Štiavnica where I was writing the first draft of the manuscript—Katarina Terao Vošková, Peter Konečný, and Andrea Nižňanská—for keeping me sane and serving as sounding boards at times of deepest uncertainty and social isolation.
An indispensable part of this volume are the maps that show different postal routes as they developed over time, in relation to the defining geographic features. While struggling with their production, I was assisted by my computer-wizard friends, Jeff Weeks and Adam Weeks Marano, father and son who gave me not only technical advice but proofread the maps and helped me to improve their readability. My two Italian colleagues, Alessandro Giardino and Marcella Salvi, likewise proofread the glossary and are therefore solely to take blame for any mistakes found in that part of the book. I hope there are none, but I am grateful to them anyway!
Finally, my thanks go to my family. It takes a village to raise a child, and a strong family support is instrumental when one embarks upon an intellectual
But my deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Beth, who practically co-wrote this book with me. She has been my companion during many extended research trips to Italy and effectively shielded me from all earthly matters so that I could fully focus on my work. She was the first to hear about my new archival adventures and discoveries at our breakfast table and during our walks. But most importantly, as native English speaker, she literally read every word I ever wrote not just once but multiple times. Indeed, she patiently edited countless drafts of this project, passionately fought with me for every word that did not sound right, and—despite of all those challenges—made sure that our marriage remained happy and strong. You are the love of my life, and this book is dedicated solely to you. I am forever grateful.