About this blog
The aim of this blog is twofold. In the first place, it serves as an online representation of the work of the research group ‘Practices of Power and Interpersonal Relationships at Dynastic Centres (1500-1800)’. Its members publish entries relating to their respective projects. Themes include: questions of methodology, discussions of specific archival sources, bibliographical reviews and surveys, as well as announcements and reports of relevant events. Secondly, the blog is a platform for the exchange with scholars with similar research topics.
About us
Having studied history and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg, Paris (Sorbonne), and Cambridge, I graduated in 2009 from Heidelberg University with an M.A. thesis on “Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire at the End of the Eighteenth Century. Geopolitical Strategies and the European Balance of Power”. Geopolitical Strategies and the European Balance of Power”. Between 2009 and early 2012 I was member of a PhD-students’ research group on the early modern Ottoman Empire at the Heidelberg University Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”; after that I became doctoral research fellow at the Institute of European History in Mainz, and, in 2013, I was teaching at Heidelberg University as Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the chair for Early Modern History. In spring 2014 I defended my PhD thesis with the title: “On Silent Feet. French Revolutionary Politics and Culture in the Ottoman Empire, 1792-1798”. Since summer 2014, I am working as postdoctoral research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Paris, where I set up the research group on “Practices of Power and Interpersonal Relationships at Dynastic Centres 1500-1800”.
Though born and raised in Switzerland, I left my alpine origins quite early in order to live, work, and study in (Northern) Ireland. From 2008 to 2011, I attended the Queen’s University of Belfast, where I read for a B.A. with a Major in Modern History and a Minor in International Studies. I then took up a place on the M.Phil. degree programme in early modern history at the University of Cambridge in September 2011. Under the supervision of Prof. Ulinka Rublack, I pursued my interest in early modern self-narrative writing and wrote my masters dissertation on the topic of “Conflict in Generational Self-Narratives in England and Switzerland 1650–1700”. I gained my M.Phil in 2012 and spent a further year of independent research at Christ’s College Cambridge as Robert Owen Bishop Scholar. This grant awarded me the opportunity to pursue my interest in transnational history, study the Persian language, and prepare my Ph.D. proposal and topic. In October 2013 I began research for my doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge. Finally, in October 2014 I moved to Paris to become part of the research group “Practices of Power and Interpersonal Relations at Dynastic Centres 1500-1800” at the local German Historical Institute. I continue to be supervised by Prof. Rublack, and thus travel at regular intervals from Paris to Cambridge.
About our projects
Power Strategies in Marriage and Concubinage in French Court Society, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Pascal Firges
My present research project engages with “Power Strategies in Marriage and Concubinage in French Court Society (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)”. In this project I am analysing the specific role marriage and concubinage played in practices of power at the French court. How did these types of interpersonal relationships function at times when aristocrats were building their careers at court, or when they tried to gain wealth or influence? How did they impact on aristocratic families’ bids to improve their status and their political clout?
In early modern nobility, marriages were in the first place family alliances, concluded for the mutual benefit of two families or family branches. Therefore, marriage left little space for individual agency in choosing a spouse. This was quite different in extra-marital relationships, where it can be safely assumed that at least one of the persons involved had deliberately chosen to engage in the liaison. Thus, while marriage was a strategic alliance, concluded with the view of producing heirs, the raison d’être for concubinage lies mainly in the emotional inclinations of those involved.
However, only because the emotional aspects may have played a more important role in concubinage than in marriage, does this exclude strategic considerations and family politics? Concubinage in early modern court societies is hard to imagine without aristocratic families at least tolerating such adultery. But why would they tolerate what even the enlightened authors of the Encyclopédie considered “after homicide the most punishable of all crimes”?
The answers to such questions will contribute to a better understanding of the internal mechanisms of power in dynastic societies, as well as the interplay of politics and gender relations. There are few pre-modern social contexts in which the interactions of female and male agency become more evident than in the court societies of the ancien regime.
Configurations of Gender at the Early Modern Court, 1580-1650
Regine Maritz
My thesis carries the working title “Configurations of Gender at the Early Modern Court, 1580-1650”. It aims to analyse the gendering of the court in this particular time span and link these findings to the broader development of the court as a political entity. For this purpose I proceed on a number of different levels, taking into account the gendered aspects of the spatiality of the court, gender and power in (extra-)marital and parental and filial relations, as well as the gendered aspects of the representation of the ducal family. The main case study for my research is the court of Stuttgart under the dukes Friedrich I. (1557-1608) and his son Johann Friedrich (1582-1628), which provides a fertile setting for this investigation. Friedrich I. was a regent eager to reign more independently of the estates, and his bid to create a new mode of rulership extended well into his family life. He took a number of mistresses, which led to a troubled relationship with his wife Sibylla von Anhalt (1564-1614), who nevertheless bore him fifteen children, of whom ten survived into adulthood. The repercussions of Friedrich’s extramarital affairs were felt even after his death, when his son Johann Friedrich took up his reign. For the young duke Johann Friedrich immediately imprisoned a number of women, who were believed to have had affairs with his father. While most of them were let go quite soon thereafter, one among them was held by the duke for six years, and only escaped her ordeal through pleading her case with the Reichskammergericht. This complex and contested family constellation, documented by great numbers of letters and court documents, is being investigated for the gendered concepts of personhood and fledgling statehood that came to be shaped and expressed within its structures. My work aims to enhance our knowledge of how and why advancing state-building processes intensified and relied on the increasing institutionalisation of gender difference.