Bücher von Randolph C. (University of California Head

Drawing on a wide range of archives, from Lisbon to Vienna to Berlin, this detailed comparative study shows how recorded political knowledge was understood, organised and managed in chancelleries and repositories across Western Europe from the High Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.

This is a 1995 study of one of the most unusual political entities in early modern Europe: the Freestate of the Three Leagues in the Grisons, a rural confederation of peasant villages in the Swiss Alps. New light is shed both on an early democratic state and on the role of community in the history of early modern democracy.