Württemberg and Montbéliard: Knowledge and Administration in the 18th Century

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Renate Dürr
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 423426482

For many years, historians have been interested in the early modern intensification of administrative action. While older studies chiefly concentrated on processes of the consolidation of government and the development of the modern state, more recently, the focus has shifted towards enquiries into scopes of action and processes of negotiation between centralised power and local actors. Choosing an approach firmly rooted in cultural history, newer studies explore the relationship between knowledge and power, as well as practices of the production and dissemination of knowledge. Taking its cue from this new approach to administrative history, and using the example of the Württembergian duchy of Montbéliard, this project interprets information-based government at a distance as a process of translation.In the case of Montbéliard, an extraterritorial dominion of the ducal family of Württemberg as well as a French-speaking enclave, this government at a distance relied to a particularly high degree on the written exchange of knowledge (in both directions) and on the translation of administrative matters, which extended to texts and other media. It is the main hypothesis of this project that government can be understood as a process of translation; in this case, a process of translation in terms of language, culture, and content. For this reason, this project will analyse linguistic translation as well as translation between different media. This objective demands a praxeological and microhistorical approach, since this is best suited to show how much government at a distance and ‘face to face society’ were really interconnected. The other main hypothesis is that a broad spectrum of actors were involved in administrative action, including not only court officials in Württemberg and in Montbéliard, but also merchants, friends and relatives, not least the wives of officials and professional administrators. The number and diversity of involved actors in turn led to a multiplication of translation processes. The third hypothesis is that processes of translation were not only one of the fundamental elements of exchange, but also the root of many misunderstandings and of the disappearance of knowledge, as well as a space that allowed multiple actors to become involved.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants