부산대학교 도서관

Tudor Networks of Power is the product of a collaboration between an early modern literary historian and a physicist specialising in complex networks. Together they have reconstructed the information networks that underpinned a century of Tudor history. The British State Papers 1509‒1603 include a body of 132,747 letters which provide crucial information about the organisation of the communication network centred on the Tudor government. Now, for the first time, we know that this epistolary network is composed of 20,560 separate people, covering a geographical span whose peripheries stretch from Manila to Aleppo, Moscow to Havana, Goa to Terceira. By using methods from the field of network science and through the development of bespoke digital approaches, this book examines the contours of this archive to explore the multitude of perspectives it captures and those it obscures. Proceeding as a set of experiments, it examines how the archive records different types of power, from government hubs, to diplomatic brokers, and female mediators. In so doing it provides new perspectives on the Tudor government’s control of its intelligence networks by illuminating its personnel, its geographical coverage, and its concerns.