Welcome to the project 'Paper Princes' -- investigating the role of paper in early modern diplomacy, ca. 1460-1560
How do societies deal with new communications technologies? What impact did the new technology of paper have on early modern diplomacy, state formation, and dynastic or 'international' relations?
The sixteenth century saw an important maturation of political and diplomatic institutions across Europe -- a maturation partly facilitated by paper. This three-part project examines how sixteenth-century diplomats and chancelleries obtained, used, and organized information-bearing paper. What consequences did the adoption of and use of paper have for diplomacy, information management, and foreign policy decision-making between ca. 1460 and 1560?
Procuring Paper. What material constraints did early modern diplomats and the chancellery secretaries with whom they corresponded face in political knowledge management? Where, and from whom, for how much, and in what quantities did they obtain the tools of their trade -- paper, ink, wax, parchment, or pens? The early modern European paper trade is an ideal illustration of premodern recycling. Yet it is one of the least well-known early modern industries, despite the fact that it intersected with the era's booming textile trade, with the highly-capitalized spice and long-distance luxury trades, with apothecaries, with printing and the book trade, with gendered labor practices, and with intellectual property rights, among other well-studied issues.
Processing Paper. With the spread of affordable paper across Europe by 1460, diplomats and chancellery ministers faced unprecedented opportunities for obtaining, communicating and managing knowledge about the political world -- but also unprecedented challenges. The often daily paper-borne correspondence among European rulers and their diplomats inundated chancelleries and dramatically altered routines of political decisionmaking. It is likely no coincidence that paper became more widely available at the same time that the gathering and reporting of strategic information became the crucial, if not the primary, tasks of ambassadors abroad. Paper opened new opportunities and methods for acquiring, accessing, and transmitting information. At the same time, paper also enabled new methods of assimilating, redacting, manipulating and preserving that information. How, in short, did diplomats and statesmen use 'diplomatic' paper? How did they respond to 'information overload'?
Preserving Paper. Ministers and princes soon became voracious consumers of information which they could analyze, deploy, or file away in their burgeoning chancery archives. The late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries saw heavy investment and wide-ranging innovation in European archival collections, as princes and prelates sought to secure records of their privileges and possessions. At the same time ministers and princes sought new tools for organizing and managing old documents, as well as a growing flood of new paperwork. Archival historians speak of a sixteenth-century shift from the preservation of a treasury of 'Urkunden', such as charters or privileges, to the preservation of a much broader range of administrative papers, or 'Akten', that could be regularly consulted in ongoing affairs of state, or even for the drafting of histories. At the same time the types of spaces, furniture, and formats used for the preservation of administrative papers underwent significant changes. How and under what rubrics were 'diplomatic' documents archived? in what furniture or formats? What practices and discourses developed around the archiving of 'diplomatic' papers? Who could access, use, or re-purpose archived diplomatic 'papers'? In what ways were archived diplomatic documents accessed or used?
This project aims to investigate these interlocking questions through a series of publications, the construction of an international network, a 'Day of Paper' for schoolchildren, and an international conference in June 2016. The conference intends to bring together experts in diplomatic history, papermaking, book history, archival studies, conservation, administrative and political history, the history of science, and material culture, among other related topics.
Explore this website to read about recent discoveries and publications, take a tour of the project's online exposition (under construction), find out more about project PI Dr. Williams, or learn more about the role of paper in Renaissance and early modern diplomacy. Contact Dr. Williams with comments or to find out how to get involved.
This project is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under its Innovational Research Incentives (Vernieuwingsimpulse) VENI program for early career researchers (project nr. 275-52-013). It is based at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen, and is connected with the university's Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG).
Image: Detail, (after) Pieter Brueghel d.J., Paying the Tax Collector (1620-40), oil on panel. Source: commons.wikimedia.org.
How do societies deal with new communications technologies? What impact did the new technology of paper have on early modern diplomacy, state formation, and dynastic or 'international' relations?
The sixteenth century saw an important maturation of political and diplomatic institutions across Europe -- a maturation partly facilitated by paper. This three-part project examines how sixteenth-century diplomats and chancelleries obtained, used, and organized information-bearing paper. What consequences did the adoption of and use of paper have for diplomacy, information management, and foreign policy decision-making between ca. 1460 and 1560?
Procuring Paper. What material constraints did early modern diplomats and the chancellery secretaries with whom they corresponded face in political knowledge management? Where, and from whom, for how much, and in what quantities did they obtain the tools of their trade -- paper, ink, wax, parchment, or pens? The early modern European paper trade is an ideal illustration of premodern recycling. Yet it is one of the least well-known early modern industries, despite the fact that it intersected with the era's booming textile trade, with the highly-capitalized spice and long-distance luxury trades, with apothecaries, with printing and the book trade, with gendered labor practices, and with intellectual property rights, among other well-studied issues.
Processing Paper. With the spread of affordable paper across Europe by 1460, diplomats and chancellery ministers faced unprecedented opportunities for obtaining, communicating and managing knowledge about the political world -- but also unprecedented challenges. The often daily paper-borne correspondence among European rulers and their diplomats inundated chancelleries and dramatically altered routines of political decisionmaking. It is likely no coincidence that paper became more widely available at the same time that the gathering and reporting of strategic information became the crucial, if not the primary, tasks of ambassadors abroad. Paper opened new opportunities and methods for acquiring, accessing, and transmitting information. At the same time, paper also enabled new methods of assimilating, redacting, manipulating and preserving that information. How, in short, did diplomats and statesmen use 'diplomatic' paper? How did they respond to 'information overload'?
Preserving Paper. Ministers and princes soon became voracious consumers of information which they could analyze, deploy, or file away in their burgeoning chancery archives. The late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries saw heavy investment and wide-ranging innovation in European archival collections, as princes and prelates sought to secure records of their privileges and possessions. At the same time ministers and princes sought new tools for organizing and managing old documents, as well as a growing flood of new paperwork. Archival historians speak of a sixteenth-century shift from the preservation of a treasury of 'Urkunden', such as charters or privileges, to the preservation of a much broader range of administrative papers, or 'Akten', that could be regularly consulted in ongoing affairs of state, or even for the drafting of histories. At the same time the types of spaces, furniture, and formats used for the preservation of administrative papers underwent significant changes. How and under what rubrics were 'diplomatic' documents archived? in what furniture or formats? What practices and discourses developed around the archiving of 'diplomatic' papers? Who could access, use, or re-purpose archived diplomatic 'papers'? In what ways were archived diplomatic documents accessed or used?
This project aims to investigate these interlocking questions through a series of publications, the construction of an international network, a 'Day of Paper' for schoolchildren, and an international conference in June 2016. The conference intends to bring together experts in diplomatic history, papermaking, book history, archival studies, conservation, administrative and political history, the history of science, and material culture, among other related topics.
Explore this website to read about recent discoveries and publications, take a tour of the project's online exposition (under construction), find out more about project PI Dr. Williams, or learn more about the role of paper in Renaissance and early modern diplomacy. Contact Dr. Williams with comments or to find out how to get involved.
This project is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under its Innovational Research Incentives (Vernieuwingsimpulse) VENI program for early career researchers (project nr. 275-52-013). It is based at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen, and is connected with the university's Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG).
Image: Detail, (after) Pieter Brueghel d.J., Paying the Tax Collector (1620-40), oil on panel. Source: commons.wikimedia.org.
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