Apodemics

Apodemics is more than the art of travel – it is also a discipline. Starting in the 17th century, early apodemic treatises formulated codes of prevention and restriction regulating a traveler’s chosen journey – from the point of departure (“when,” “where to”) to the company he or she kept (“with whom”).

Apodemics was closely related to the emergence of ‘Statistiks’ in the Germanies, and to colonizing projects. One of its goals was to train the traveller to become a reliable observer who, when dispatched on long journeys to foreign lands in the service of the sovereign, could return with useful intelligence.