Serving Aristocracy
Proposal review
Negotiation, Learning, and Mobility in an Early Modern Knowledge Community
Author(s)
Nilsson Hammar, Anna
Norrhem, Svante
Language
EnglishAbstract
Serving Aristocracy is the history of social negotiation and mobility in an early modern knowledge community, centred on the aristocratic De la Gardie family and their sphere of manors and estates in seventeenth-century Sweden. Focusing on underprivileged women and men and the knowledge community that shaped their interactions, social negotiations, and mobility, this book documents ordinary people’s lives and work in an aristocratic sphere. It uses the De la Gardie bureaucracy’s meticulous records to full effect, charting servants’ experiences, learning, and agency. The unique collection of petitions provides an invaluable insight into how servants viewed their own backgrounds, personal predicaments, and hopes for the future, and how they negotiated their work and wage. It reveals the aristocratic estate organization not only as a workplace, but also as a training ground where knowledge circulation was as fundamental as socialization, social negotiation, and networking. At the same time, Serving Aristocracy exposes the flaws in the aristocratic mindset: the De la Gardies’ organization was hierarchical, paternalistic, and feudal, and employees were forced to live at the mercy of their masters. This is the ideal resource for students and scholars interested in knowledge, mobility, and agency in an early modern aristocratic work sphere.
Keywords
social negotiation; petitions; De la Gardie; history of knowledge; estate organizationDOI
10.4324/9781003351092ISBN
9781040321096, 9781040321478, 9781032397283, 9781003351092, 9781032397290, 9781040321096Publisher
Taylor & FrancisPublisher website
https://taylorandfrancis.com/Publication date and place
Oxford, 2025Grantor
Imprint
RoutledgeSeries
Knowledge Societies in History,Classification
History and Archaeology
Social and cultural history
Economic history