La Comtesse Maria Mamucca della Torre Kálnoky et sa famille aux carrefours des empires
Countess Maria Mamucca della Torre Kálnoky and her Family at the Cross-roads of Empires

Summary/Abstract: Using as a vantage point the case study of a Levantine family of diplomats of Genovese descent, Mamucca della Torre, the research follows up the intricate trails of physical mobility and sociological ambiguity of a number of transimperial subjects from Italy, which took early roots in the Genovese colonies of the Levant and in the Balkans (Istria). Subjects of the Ottoman Porte, diplomats in the service of Western powers, they settled eventually in Constantinople, Bucharest, Iași, Miklosvar and Kronnstadt (Transilvania), Viennna and Trieste. For three generations, members of the Mamucca della Torre family crossed back and forth the borders of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, trading loyalties and privileges according to their own interests and assuming multiple functions specific to pre-modern societies: diplomats, interpreters, civil servants, military commanders. Based mainly on their secret diplomatic correspondence and on their private letters, the inquiry looked for answers to the issue of the status of the transimperial subjects against the overall process of reshuffling the ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious, social and collective identities in Eastern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The reconstruction of such dynamic and heterogeneous networks of cultural exchange and transfer by the means of cross-cultural history has found in individual biographies (Marc’Antonio Mamucca della Torre and his daughter countess Maria) or in family portraits (Mamucca della Torre, Kálnoky, Ferrati, Neniul) a valuable pool of customs and practices in-between the public and the private, or the East and the West.

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