Between secrecy and silent cooperation: The dissemination of knowledge about the Republic of Dubrovnik in the context of the Ottoman–Venetian and Napoleonic wars

Abstract

Despite its exceptional political, commercial and naval strength, the Republic of Dubrovnik was remarkably restrained regarding the public availability of its maps. Only two original maps of the Republic of Dubrovnik are preserved to this date—one created between 1718 and 1746, and the other from the earliest nineteenth century. What links them is that both remained in manuscript form, and both were expressly banned by the Republic’s authorities from being either copied, published or shown to foreign nationals. The turning point in this regard was “Stato di Ragusi”, the first commercial map of the Republic compiled by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli in 1688, according to the information provided by Dubrovnik authorities. Created under the most unusual circumstances, the map remained the only printed detailed map of the Republic of Dubrovnik up until its fall in 1808. The paper analyzes how the Republic of Dubrovnik was represented on maps made by Dubrovnik authorities and how the same space was seen by foreign cartographers. Furthermore, the paper evaluates the impact of the Republic’s diplomats on the dissemination of knowledge about the Republic in the context of the Ottoman-Venetian and Napoleonic wars.