In my dissertation project, I study the entanglement between competing authorities, documents, and bottom-up initiatives in the early modern Aegean archipelago. I analyze a set of sources composed mostly of Greek-language notarial documents and some court records and letters as a window to what justice looked like under concurrent systems of power. Centering on three distinct island settings with overlapping jurisdictional regimes and different experiences of the disorder brought about by the prolonged Ottoman-Venetian conflict (1645–1669, 1684–1699, 1714–1718), I explore how by making, using, and keeping documents, ordinary and elite actors contested and affirmed claims to legal, imperial, and religious authority.