Information and the government of the composite polities of the Renaissance world (c. 1350–1650)

ABSTRACT

This special issue uses information as a lens through which to examine the operation of the Renaissance world’s composite polities and political unions, such as the Venetian thalassocracy or the Spanish Empire. To date, late-medieval and early modern scholarship has mostly neglected the role of information in ruling those polities. Yet information was crucial, for it allowed authorities to know what was happening in their dominions and colonies and thus shaped their policies and interactions with local political societies. The authors of this special issue suggest that a focus on information can help us fully understand how composite polities operated, whether on a regional, Mediterranean or global scale. This introductory essay examines the historiographical debate about late-medieval and early modern composite polities and unions and discusses how and to what extent communication strategies, record-keeping practices and data accumulation can be used to understand how authorities relied on information to exercise their rule over their various dominions. It also discusses this approach in relation to this special issue’s six case studies and other examples of pre-modern composite polities.

KEYWORDS:

• Government
• information
• Renaissance
• composite polities
• communication
• negotiation
• data management
• travels
• distance
• archives

Acknowledgements

For their comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Filippo de Vivo, Isabella Lazzarini and Flavia Tudini, as well as the anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful to the editorial team at the European Review of History for supporting this publication project, including Lia Brazil who helped me through the editorial process of this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Koenigsberger, “Monarchies”; and Elliott, “A Europe.”

2. Greengrass, ed., Conquest and Coalescence.

3. Greengrass, “Introduction,” 7.

4. Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, 11.

5. As discussed by Brendecke, The Empirical Empire, 42–55, Spanish monarchs needed the support of advisors and bureaucrats to manage information originating from each corner of the world. More reflection on the crucial role of bureaucracies in empires and conglomerates of territories is found in Crooks and Parsons, eds., Empires and Bureaucracies.

6. Dover, The Information Revolution, 1.

7. See the prominent example of early modern Venice, as studied by de Vivo, Information.

8. Watts, The Making of Polities, 206.

9. In addition to Chittolini, “Introduzione,” see his article “The Private”, and bibliography therein mentioned Among the various publications by Fasano Guarini, see at least “Gli stati dell’Italia” and “Center and Periphery.” For a broad historiographical reflection on these themes, see Lazzarini, “I nomi dei gatti.”

10. On Milan, see Gamberini, The Clash, and its bibliography. On Venice, see Law, “The Venetian Mainland”; and Varanini, I comuni, as well as, for the early-modern era, Viggiano, Governanti.

11. On Italy, see Lazzarini’s essay included in this special issue.

12. Körner, “The Swiss Confederation,” 328. More broadly, on the idea of confederation, see the conceptualization by a political scientist such as Forsyth, Unions of State .

13. Elliot, “A Europe.”

14. Stein, Magnanimous Dukes.

15. Guenée, “Espace et État.” It was Strayer, On the Medieval Origins, 53, who employed the concept of ‘mosaic state’ to define Medieval France.

16. Desplat, “Louis XIII,” 75. Similarly, after conquering Flanders in the mid-seventeenth century, Louis XIV, preserved the Netherland cities’ privileges, but within the French institutional framework (Lottin, “Louis, XIV,” 89).

17. See respectively Crooks, Green and Ormrod, eds, The Plantagenet Empire and Khvalkov, The Colonies, as well as bibliographies therein mentioned.

18. Ortalli, Schmitt and Orlando, eds., Il Commonwealth veneziano.

19. Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire,” 185. On the negotiation between Venice and their Stato del Mar’s political elites: O’ Connell, Men of Empire, 31–3.

20. On this union, see Gustafsson, “The Forgotten Union” and Imsen, “The Union of Calmar,” as well as the bibliography.

21. On the Crown of Aragon, see the recent companion by Sabaté, ed., The Crown of Aragon and its bibliography.

22. Frost, The Oxford History, 36. On unions in Medieval Europe, see the recent volume edited by Srodecki, Kersken and Rimvydas, Unions and Divisions.

23. Koenigsberger, “Monarchies,” 202–3. Later, John Elliot, “A Europe,” 51 wrote that early-modern France “was still essentially composite in character.”

24. Ibid., 52–5.

25. Elliott, “A Europe,” 68–70. On the above-mentioned rebellions, see respectively Ryder, The Wreck of Catalonia, and Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans. Russell, “Composite Monarchies,” played down monarchs’ ability to govern their “multiple kingdoms,” as he called the 1603 union between England and Scotland (which also included Ireland and Wales). Outside English-speaking academia, scholars described the post-1580 Spanish and the Portuguese Empires as polycentric monarchies, unions characterized not solely by vertical relationships between centres and peripheries but also by horizontal interactions between various political communities of the empire (Cardim, Herzog, Ruiz Ibáñez, and Sabatini, eds., Polycentric Monarchies).

26. Frost, The Oxford History, ch. 5.

27. Among the exceptions, see the essays collected in Gaudin, Castillo Gómez, Gómez Gómez and Stumpf, eds, Vencer la distancia, which mostly discuss the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

28. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government.

29. On information and knowledge, see respectively Dover, The Information Revolution and Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, as well as their bibliographies. On the ‘archival turn,’ see Head, Making Archives; de Vivo, Guidi, and Silvestri, “Archival Transformations”; Walsham, “The Social History”; as well as Ketelaar, “Archival Turns.”

30. Clanchy, From Memory. At the urban level, see for instance the monograph by Chastang, La ville.

31. On the science historians’ interests towards archives, for instance, see Hunter, ed., Archives. On the informational strategies within the ecclesiastical world, see the works scholars dedicated to the Jesuit archival and communication system, such as Friedrich, “Archives as Networks,” and “Government”; and Nelles, “Cosas y cartas.”

32. On the importance of paper for the pre-modern world “Information Revolution,” see Dover, Information, ch. 3, and the bibliography.

33. See respectively Marchi van Cauwelaert, “Instructions”; and Simon, “La Gestion.”

34. Bellingradt and Rospocher, eds, The Intermediality.

35. De Weerdt, Holmes and Watts, “Politics.”

36. de Vivo, Information, 5.

37. Raymond and Moxham, eds, News Networks.

38. On medieval diplomacy, see for instance, the monograph by Péquignot, Au nom du Roi, dedicated to the Crown of Aragon’s diplomacy under James II of Aragon (1291–1327), in particular chapters I and III, as well as Bombi, Anglo-Papal Relations, focused on the diplomatic relationship between England and the Papacy.

39. Lazzarini, “Creazione di un genere.”

40. Dover, “The Resident Ambassador”; and Lazzarini, Communication, ch. 4.

41. de Vivo, “Archives of Speech.”

42. Among the most significant exceptions, for instance, see de Vivo, Information, and Soll, The Information Master, respectively dedicated to Venice and France in the seventeenth century.

43. On these questions, see the reflections by Dover, Information, 147–8.

44. See, for instance, the information Toribio Mogrovejo, archbishop of Lima, shared with the Iberian sovereign in the late sixteenth century about the ecclesiastical affairs of the New World, as discussed by Tudini, “Conoscenza.”

45. The question has been investigated by Parker, The Grand Strategy.

46. The methods and analytical tools of ‘new diplomatic history’ could be successfully employed for examining communication within composite polities. In this respect, see Watkins, ed, Towards a New Diplomatic History in addition to the publications mentioned at note 49.

47. Higgs, The Information State.

48. Soll, The Information Master, 67–9.

49. Senatore, «Uno mundo de carta», ch. 4.

50. The variety of the documentary tools developed since the later Middle Ages is evident, for instance, in the essays collected in Fossier, Petitjean and Revest, eds, Écritures grises.

51. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families.

52. Burke, “Classifying the People,” 27–8.

53. Merluzzi, Sabatini and Tudini, eds, Conoscenza.

54. See, for instance, Peytavin, Visite et gouvernement.

55. Merluzzi, Politica. Note that non-state actors such as the church and mercantile companies also used questionnaires to gather information and exercise control: see respectively, Di Paolo, “La ordinaria amministrazione”; and Schotte, “Distilling Water.”

56. Gaudin, El imperio. For the age of Philip II of Spain, see Brendecke, The Empirical Empire.

57. Brendecke, “Knowledge,” 132. Interestingly, he also suggests that even when Spanish authorities possessed the information they needed, they might neglect it for political reasons.

58. Conde y Delgado de Molina, Reyes y archivos, 42–8; and Rück, L’ordinamento. More broadly on archives in Renaissance Italy, see Varanini, “Public Written Records.”

59. Friedrich, The Birth of the Archive, 35.

60. See respectively Castillo Gómez, “The New Culture of Archives”; and Poncet, “Les Archives.”

61. Brendecke, “Knowledge,” 137–45.

62. Donato, ed, Early Modern Archives as well as Donato and Saada, eds, Pratiques d’archives.

63. Bautier, “La phase cruciale.” On archives as colonial tools through which governing occurred, see Stoler, “Colonial Archives,” which focuses on the nineteenth-century Dutch colonial state.

64. In the context of the ‘archival turn,’ these questions are stressed with particular emphasis by Head, Making Archives, ch. 3.

65. On the use and spread of recordkeeping, see Guyotjeannin, ed, L’art médiéval du registre and Lazzarini, ed, Scritture.

66. This is the case, for instance, of the influential monograph by Blair, Too Much to Know, dedicated to the development of technologies of information management among premodern scholars. See also the essays collected in Blair and Milligan, eds, Towards a Cultural History of Archives; and Head, ed., Archival Knowledge.

67. Head, The Making of Archives, chs 4 and 6.

68. For instance, Sellers-García, Distance and Documents, suggested the importance of documentation for ruling the peripheries of the eighteenth-century Spanish Empire. Outside of political and institutional history, both Friedrich, “Archives” and Corens, “Dislocation” have highlighted the importance of archives and record-keeping for creating unity among dispersed communities, respectively the early-modern Jesuit network and Catholic communities in England.

69. Soll, “Accounting,” emphasized the importance of financial and fiscal information. For a recent survey on the topic: Dover, Information, ch. 3; for a specific focus on financial information within composite polities: Silvestri, “Too Much to Account For,” on the Crown of Aragon.

70. Dover, Information, 148.

71. Becker and Clark, eds, Little Tools of Knowledge.

72. On emergence and diffusion of inventories, see Head, Making Archives, ch. 7.

73. de Vivo, “Archival Intelligence,” 64. As explained by Senatore, «Uno mundo de carta», 108, the sommari could be also collected into specific books.

74. Brendecke, The Empirical Empire, 264–5, and more recently, Cunill, “Margins.”

75. A different perspective, for instance, from the influential anthology by Corens, Peters, Walsham, eds, Archives and Information, which aimed to improve our “understanding of the relationship between archives and state formation.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Silvestri

Alessandro Silvestri is an associate professor of Medieval History at the Università degli Studi di Salerno. He is author of the monograph L’amministrazione del regno di Sicilia. Cancelleria, apparati finanziari e strumenti di governo nel tardo medioevo (Rome, 2018), as well as of various essays and journal articles dedicated to administrative history, information management, and taxation in Sicily and the Crown of Aragon of the later Middle Ages.