The Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe (Past & Present, Supplement 11, 2016)

This Supplement builds on a burgeoning body of research that approaches the archive not merely as the object, but also as the subject of enquiry. It explores the phenomenon of record keeping in the early modern period in the context of signifi cant ecclesiastical, political, intellectual and cultural developments that served as a stimulus to it: state formation, religious reformation, and economic transformation; the advent of the mechanical press, the spread of educational opportunity, and the expansion of literacy; changing epistemological conventions, shifting attitudes towards history and memory, and new modes of self-representation. Focusing attention on the impulses behind the surge in public and private documentation in Europe between 1500 and 1800, the contributors to this volume place the processes by which individual, collective and institutional records were created, compiled, authorised, and used under the microscope. They examine the activities of curators and scribes, analyse the issues of credibility and authenticity to which their endeavours gave rise, and evaluate the role of textual, pictorial, material and fi nancial records in managing knowledge and giving expression to senses of identity. Stretching traditional, technical defi nitions of the record and archive, they investigate how writing and document-making of various kinds was shaped by dynamic interactions between ordinary people and by the politics of everyday life. They also illuminate the multiple ways in which archives mediate and construct the past, preserving some traces of it for posterity while consigning others to oblivion.