Networking the Letters of Revolution is a 2024 DH@MSU seed grant funded project. Inspired by more recent developments in the field of network science and early modern studies, Networking is an open access digital repository of code and data specifically related to relationships and networks of people in Scotland during the Revolution.
This project is a marriage of early modern Scottish history and computational data science. It brings together methods of network science, prosopography, and traditional early modern political histoy surrounding communication. The recent publication of Tudor Networks and Stanford's Mapping the Republic of Letters project are important contributions to the growing field of network analysis in the early modern world. These datasets have asked important questions about early modern communication systems and social networks. The communications revolution between 1450 and 1700 transformed the capacity for Europeans–and those in the British Isles–to communicate and engage with each other. Gutenberg’s printing press and the network of universities around Europe provided useful channels for books, ideas, and letters to travel from country to country. During the late seventeenth century, the evolution of newsletters and newspapers allowed information to travel more quickly along those networks.
We seek to add to this conversation in terms of communication during conflict and regime change. The project's main data comes from the Leven and Melville Papers which are a printed collection of recorded discussions and decisions made by individuals, civil servants, and officials in the nascent Williamite regime during the Revolution and early 1690s. This particular collection is that of the Secretary of State for Scotland - George Melville and includes 599 letters sent between the years of 1689 and 1691 and contain communication between the monarch’s secretary and the monarch, local officials, communications from overseas, instructions, intercepted correspondence, and much more.
The physical manuscript papers are held at the National Records for Scotland as part of the wider Papers of the Leslie Family, Earls of Leven and Melville (1200-1936) in Ediburgh, Scotland. The correspondence has been since digitized as a print book which is available online at the Internet Archive and Electric Scotland which has become a digital surrogate for the manuscript papers. In the future, the aim of the project is to add at least two more letter collections including the Hamilton Manuscripts and Portland Letters.
Networking Letters of Revolution allows further access to critical information about seventeenth century British history and this pivotal period which shaped much of the modern British state. Perhaps more importantly, the project democratizes the pursuit of knowledge and expands the potential for research in the field. In this endeavor, we join a multitude of projects including Tudor Networks, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, Early Modern Letters Online, Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, Records of the Parliaments of Scotland, the Scottish Privy Council Project, and Mapping the Republic of Letters. The study itself currently spans three years with one corpus of letters, to show the complex information system which underpinned the revolutinary government.
The letters exchanged in this period are more than just networks of correspondence; people were bound together through community, print, and dialogue. Exchanging letters in a period of chaotic and often violent warfare was even more complex. Given this, understanding the relationships is paramount to visualizing the data. Context is everything in understanding people, groups, identity, and behavior in the early modern world. Behavior, relationships, and identity changed over the course of the Revolution and Networking Letters of the Revolution traces those changes and connects historical networks with visual interpretation by building a new database and visual representation of the interconnected nature of communication.