The Role of Legal Resources in Identification Disputes. Venetian Consuls in the Ottoman Empire in seventeenth century

This paper aims at an analysis of the necessity to identify individuals and be identified in the early modern period, in a context where recording the identity was also a mean to assign membership. Firstly, I will analyse decrees and letters exchanged between diplomats and consuls in order to underscore the role played by consuls in the diffusion of legal procedures of identification and registration. Secondly, I will focus on the procedures of identification, interpreted as a method to assign and recognise membership in registration practices. I will present several case studies that involved large claims, numerous Venetian subjects, Ottomans officials, and how they turned into diplomatic crises between the Ottoman and the Venetian representatives. The cases presented will provide important insight on the use of documents in identification disputes arising in the intensive cross-cultural diplomatic negotiations between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, I will point out the complicated relationship between oral witness and documentary evidence in the proceedings of the courts as well as in the negotiation process taking place outside the courts. This paper is based upon documentation preserved at the Venetian State Archive. Primary sources mainly consist of letters sent to the bailo, the permanent ambassador in Istanbul, by the Venetian consuls, and of deliberations taken by Cinque savi alla mercanzia concerning trade and economic policy. This research casts light upon institutional resources available to social actors to produce evidence of their own identity in a context of jurisdictional competition. It will also show that, unlike previously thought, the need to identify and be identified in the seventeenth century did not emerge solely from state requirements for control.