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

多年来，历史学家一直对近代早期强化的行政行为感兴趣。虽然早期的研究主要集中在巩固政府和发展现代国家的过程上，但最近，重点已转移到对中央集权和地方行为者之间的行动范围和谈判过程的调查上。新的研究选择了一种牢固植根于文化史的方法，探索了知识和权力之间的关系，以及知识的生产和传播的做法。该项目以这种新的行政史方法为线索，并以蒙贝利亚德符腾堡公爵领地为例，将远程信息化政府解释为一个翻译过程。在符腾堡公爵家族的域外领地蒙贝利亚德以及讲法语的飞地的例子中，这个遥远的政府在很大程度上依赖于书面知识交流(双向)和行政事务的翻译，这一过程延伸到文本和其他媒体。该项目的主要假设是政府可以被理解为翻译的过程，在这种情况下，就是从语言、文化和内容的角度进行翻译的过程。为此，本项目将分析语言翻译以及不同媒体之间的翻译。这一目标需要一种行为学和微观历史学方法，因为这最适合于展示远程政府和“面对面的社会”真正相互联系的程度。另一个主要假设是，参与行政行动的行为者范围很广，不仅包括符腾堡州和蒙贝利亚德州的法院官员，还包括商人、朋友和亲戚，尤其是官员的妻子和专业行政人员。所涉行为者的数量和多样性反过来又导致翻译过程的倍增。第三个假设是，翻译过程不仅是交流的基本要素之一，而且也是许多误解和知识消失的根源，以及允许多个参与者参与的空间。

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.