Secret Archives? How Early Modern Historians and Scholars Succeeded (or Failed) to Gain Access to Archival Sources

This paper will approach the history of archives from the perspective of potential users. It will ask how historians, genealogists, and other scholars in early modern Europe attempted to enter archives and/or obtain copies of relevant documents. It will study several case studies from central Europe in order to uncover the mechanisms by which access to archives could be gained - ruse, corruption, patronage, cunning. It thus attempts to insert historiography into the recent developments of scholarship that approach science and erudition as a set of daily practices, social routines, and cultural practices; at the same time it connects historiography to recent scholarship stressing the 'impolite' dimension of the republic of letters, its competition for and manipulation of resources (here: archives) and its (inevitable) reliance on state support to achieve its goals. It will become clear that the 'secrecy' of archives was far less perfect than is often assumed. As a side, the presentation will also discuss the question if and how historians and other scholars could know in advance what was housed in individual archives.