This is a book about people caught between home and abroad, crossing imperial boundaries in southeastern Europe at the beginning of the modern age. Through a series of life stories, which the author reconstructs with the aid of many new sources, readers discover how certain men and women defined and adapted their loyalties and affiliations, how they fashioned their identities, how they enrolled their linguistic, political, economic, and social resources to build a family and a career. Travelling between Istanbul, Vienna, Trieste, Moscow, Bucharest, or Iasi, individuals of different backgrounds built their networks across borders, linking people and objects and facilitating cultural transfer and material and social change. The book was awarded an 'Honourable Mention' in the Society for Romanian Studies 2023 Book Prize list.

Constanta Vintila is a Senior Researcher at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest. She is the editor of Women, Consumption, and the Circulation of Ideas in South-Eastern Europe, 17th-19th Centuries (Brill, 2017) and author of many books and articles on southeast European social and cultural history in the early modern era.