Making Archives in Early Modern Europe
Proof, Information, and Political Record-Keeping, 1400–1700

Compares the archives of European states after 1500 to reveal changes in how records supported memory, authority and power.

Randolph C. Head (Author)

9781108462525, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 August 2020

366 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.45 kg

'The book is a tremendous contribution to the history of archives and of early modern Europe.' Francis X. Blouin Jr., American Historical Review

European states were overwhelmed with information around 1500. Their agents sought to organize their overflowing archives to provide trustworthy evidence and comprehensive knowledge that was useful in the everyday exercise of power. This detailed comparative study explores cases from Lisbon to Vienna to Berlin in order to understand how changing information technologies and ambitious programs of state-building challenged record-keepers to find new ways to organize and access the information in their archives. From the intriguing details of how clerks invented new ways to index and catalog the expanding world to the evolution of new perspectives on knowledge and power among philologists and historians, this book provides illuminating vignettes and revealing comparisons about a core technology of governance in early modern Europe. Enhanced by perspectives from the history of knowledge and from archival science, this wide-ranging study explores the potential and the limitations of knowledge management as media technologies evolved.

Foreword: writing the history of archives
1. Introduction: records, tools and archives in Europe to 1700
2. Archival history: literature and outlook
Part I. The Work of Records (1200– ): 3. Probative objects and Scholastic tools in the High Middle Ages
4. A late medieval chancellery and its books: Lisbon, 1460–1560
5. Keeping and organizing information from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century
6. Information management in early modern Innsbruck, 1490–1530
Part II. The Challenges of Accumulation (1400– ): 7. The accumulation of records and the evolution of inventories
8. Early modern inventories: Habsburg Austria and Würzburg
9. Classification: the architecture of knowledge and the placement of records
10. The formal logic of classification: topography and taxonomy in Swiss urban records, 1500–1700
Part III. Comprehensive Visions and Differentiating Practices (1550– ): 11. Evolving expectations about archives, 1540–1650
12. Registries: tracking the business of governance
Part IV. Rethinking Records and State Archives (1550– ): 13. Understanding records: new perspectives and new readings after 1550
14. New disciplines of authenticity and authority: Mabillon's diplomatics and the ius archive
15. Conclusion: the era of chancellery books and beyond.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]