Mirroring governance: archives, inventories and political knowledge in early modern Switzerland and Europe.

The comparative study of archival inventories in early modern Switzerland reveals that three major regimes of inventorying logic emerged from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth century. Early inventories constructed as lists gave way first to ideal-topographical inventories that relied on a double mapping of conceptual spaces against archival space and inventory pages, succeeded eventually by taxonomic inventories oriented around an active state apparatus and its needs. Synchronic and diachronic comparisons that focus on major reorganizations have proven effective in illustrating the scope and effectiveness of each of the successive regimes. A similar approach applied to major inventory projects across early modern Europe may identify further systems for making accumulating documents accessible to rulers, and may also allow us to trace genealogies of inventory practice regimes as they appeared in different regions, at different scales, and in diverse political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]