Early Childhood and Dynastic Reproduction at Princely Courts, 1600-1800: European and Global Perspectives

Our project aims at shedding new light on the ways in which the continuity of dynastic rule was ensured in early modern Europe and beyond. We start from the observation that the providing for healthy, legitimate offspring in order to reiterate the dynastic line constituted a key challenge of early modern European ruling houses, not least due to the importance they gave to the norm of monogamy. By exploiting as different sets of sources such as the records of German princely courts and European travelogues that describe different princely courts in Asia, we aim to understand how contemporaries tackled this challenge on a practical and on an intellectual level. The project "Early Childhood and Dynastic Reproduction at Princely Courts, 1600-1800: European and Global Perspectives is funded by a five-year PRIMA grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2021 to 2026 ( project number 193073 ).