By Ignacius Villar de Rohde and Jordan Girardin

Networks are often seen as quintessentially transnational mechanisms: they cross traditional boundaries – political, ethno-linguistic, cultural, religious – and challenge our mainstream understanding of social and spatial realities. For instance, the republic of letters is a great example of how the Enlightenment was spread throughout Europe despite the lack of political stability. This morning’s presentations underlined the decentralised nature of the spread of printed information throughout Europe, highly dismissing the political map of that period. It seemed ambiguous in which way these networks operated: were they physically visible? How actually significant was the connection between actors? Did it include an economic aspect beyond that? Ultimately, the ‘interconnected’ aspect of networks seems quite overwhelming and may sometimes be overrated, giving the impression of a very open world and society challenging all other forms of establishment. Having said that, as historians, we are aware of the impact of these exchanges and how they contribute both to multiple national historiographies and to wider phenomena on the continental scale.

However, these networks are not universal and therefore highlight different boundaries that are also strong and worth analysing and exploring. Even if national frames are transcended by the aforementioned exchange of ideas, their appeal remains limited to certain elites of society: Erasmus’ epistolary correspondence may indeed seem very widely spread geographically, but his own network embraces other frontiers that are of a social nature. This makes us wary of new issues; are social frontiers more engrained in our societies than national ones? How often were they crossed, how socially mobile are they? How do we map them? Should they be more depicted in our visualisations?

This is something we believe has been underrated as networks often seem to be seen as transgressive and positive, bringing together actors on a regional scale, but highlighting latent divisions on a local scale.