Republican Secrets: Silence, Memory, and Collective Rule in the Early Modern Period

How did early modern republics deal with secrets? Focusing on the discourses and practices of political secrecy in territories under collective rule, this project challenges the still popular dichotomy between premodern arcane absolutism and modern public democracy. In the seventeenth century, the European republics followed the contemporary arcana imperii-model of rulership in many respects. Like the princely states, the governing elites established secret councils, negotiated secretly with foreign powers, and limited the access to their archives. Yet at the same time, they were also keen to limit the concentration of knowledge and power. This led to the development of specifically republican regimes of secrecy through which 'public secrets' were to be produced, protected, and stored in a controlled manner. Based on these observations, the project argues that political secrecy did not necessarily enforce oligarchization. Secrecy rather consisted of a modifiable set of practices that structured communication and could serve several aims - including increased political participation. They were constantly modified in correlation with a changing media system and shifting norms of collective decision-making. By analysing variable practices of secrecy in the Swiss Confederacy within a European comparative perspective, this project offers a key for better understanding the political culture of early modern republics, transformations in the political public sphere, and the origins of institutions of secrecy in modern constitutional democracies. With its focus on practices of concealment and the mnemonic aspects of secrecy, the project also promises methodological innovation within the field of political history.