Making archives in early modern Europe : proof, information and political record-keeping, 1400-1700 / Randolph C. Head.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Head, Randolph Conrad, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Archives--Europe--History--To 1500.

Archives.

Archives--Europe--History--16th century.

Archives--Europe--History--17th century.

Archival resources--Europe--History--To 1500.

Archival resources.

Archival resources--Europe--History--16th century.

Archival resources--Europe--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 348 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: Records, tools and archives in Europe to 1700

Archival history: Literature and outlook

PART I: The Work of Records (1200- )

Probative objects and Scholastic tools in the High Middle Ages

A late medieval chancellery and its books: Lisbon, 1460-1560

Keeping and organizing information from the Middle Ages to the 16th Century

Information management in early modern Innsbruck, 1490-1530

Part II: The Challenges of Accumulation (1400- )

The accumulation of records and the evolution of inventories

Early modern inventories: Habsburg Austria and Würzburg

Classification: The architecture of knowledge and the placement of records

The formal logic of classification: Topography and taxonomy in Swiss urban records, 1500-1700

Part III: Comprehensive visions and differentiating practices (1550- )

Evolving expectations about archives, 1540-1650

Registries: Tracking the business of governance

Part IV: Rethinking records and state archives (1550- )

Understanding records: New perspectives and new readings after 1550

New disciplines of authenticity and authority: Mabillon's diplomatics and the ius archivi

Conclusion: The era of chancellery books and beyond.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 19 Jun 2019).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-61436-1

1-316-99913-0

1-108-62065-5