Networks and Female Agency - NeFA

Networks are a widespread and much-discussed phenomenon today. Whether they are the often controversial social networks or practical connections in all sorts of areas of life, spanning from migration to politics, they are by no means a modern phenomenon; networks of individuals and social groups have always played a role throughout history. The NeFA project does not only address the general question of how such networks functioned in the past. The project deliberately places its focus on women in order to demonstrate the role that networking played in early modern womens political and social actions. Recent research has shown that women of noble and princely rank were much more politically active than had long been assumed. Moreover, it has become clear that letters and correspondence played a crucial role in this. The NeFA project focuses on Eleonora Magdalena, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. A member of the Habsburg dynasty who has hitherto received little attention, especially in comparison to her granddaughter Maria Theresa, a prominent female princely figure. Nevertheless, a few years ago, a collection of over 1,000 letters written by the Empress herself came to light. It features her letters to her father and brother that had been composed between 1677 and 1716. Replies, particularly from her brother, have been preserved in draft form as well and provide additional insight into the Empresss correspondence. This makes it an exceptionally large and informative collection which renders the actions and strategies of the letter writer at hand more comprehensible. It also reveals her constant exchange with individuals of various ranks and functions who are mentioned in her letters or to whom she addressed her letters. From these references, we aim at reconstructing the Empresss personal network (ego network) and, based on this, at describing how she instrumentalised and used this network to develop and maintain her social and political agency. The project is thus the first attempt to describe and examine the ego network of a high- ranking princely woman. At the same time, the correspondence of Empress Eleonora Magdalena will be fully catalogued and made available to a wide audience through a digital edition. Make sure to follow the progress of our work on the letters at https://kaiserin- eleonora.oeaw.ac.at/ and at https://kaiserin.hypotheses.org/.