- 422 - SHAPING THE LEVANT IN THE 17 TH CENTURY: FRANCESCO LUPAZZOLO AND HIS ISOLARII (1638) 1 George Tolias Abstract A member of apostolic missions and an agent of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, a liaison of the Venetian intelligence operation during the War of Candia and the consul of Venice in Smyrna, Francesco Lupazzolo (1587-1702) was an agent who was active in most of the Western infiltration policies that shaped the Levant during the 17 th century. In the summer of 1638 he compiled a map and two isolarii of the Aegean Archipelago, proposing an innovative assess- ment of insularity, one that fosters connectivity over isolation and singularity. Through the appraisal of Lupazzolo’s empirical perception of Levantine insularity, this article aims to examine the Levantine model of the gradual shift in the perception of maritime and insular space from an aggregation of scattered and isolated localities to an interconnected web of interacting environments. “… mais faut-il conquérir un pays pour y négocier?” 2 The case I present in the following pages is associated with the gradual consolidation of the early modern Levantine economic, social and cultural zone and with Smyrna’s transformation from a small provincial Ottoman town to a chief Levantine port city, “the Rendezvous of Merchants from the four Parts of the World, and the Magazine of the Merchan- dize they produce”, as Tournefort described the city in 1702. 3 The example I will describe comes from the Italian ex- perience in the area: it is an ensemble of three manuscript works compiled on Chios and Folegandros between July and October 1638 by a Piedmontese, Francesco Lupazzolo. It comprises a map and two versions of an isolario of the Aegean, surviving in one copy each, in the archives of the Propaganda Fide in Rome, in the British Library in London and in a Greek private collection in Paris. The reason that guided this choice of example is double: in my view, these small and secondary geographical works conceptualise empirically the novel Western perception of the area, while their author exemplifies the workings of the subtle transformation of the Levant throughout the 17 th century. A genuine product and an active agent of the varied networks that gradually gave shape and content to the Levant, Francesco Lupazzolo serves as an illustration of the diverse practices of adaptation of Westerners after the final collapse of the Latin East and the transferral of Western infiltration in the area into the hybrid and ambiguous zone of the Levant: the economic, social and cultural extension of the West on Ottoman islands and shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, sustained by dense communication webs among the scattered Catholic communities, trading ports and consular outposts, weaving ties be- tween them, as well as with the relevant political, economic and spiritual centres in the West. During this period, Western maritime supremacy was considerably enhanced and as early as 1609-1618 Hugo Grotius and John Selden opened the discussion on the new forms of imperialism rising on a global scale, relying on the control of communication networks and the hegemony over maritime spaces (Mare liberum and Mare clausum). Maritime trading enclaves such 1 Special thanks are due to Michel Espagne, for the kind invitation to the conference, to Father Markos Foskolos, for his generous sharing of unpublished material, and to Maria Fusaro, for the valuable comments and discussions. 2 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois 21.8. 3 Tournefort 1741, vol. 3, 334-335 (original French edition, Paris, Imprimerie royale, 1717, vol. 2, 495); for Izmir, cf. Goffman 1990 and 1999.