Familiar strangers. Xenocratic administration in Swedish Pomerania

Given the bellicosity of the period, xenocracy must be considered a widespread case of rule in early modern Europe. So far, this phenomenon has been discussed for European areas of rule primarily from the perspective of the centers of power as an element of state-building processes or in the context of the emergence and expansion of composite monarchies.

What remains open, however, is how xenocracy and the changed power relations in the new 'provinces' were communicated, legitimized and perceived: By whom were attributions of foreignness thematized, in what way and for how long? How did local administration function under such conditions and what significance did the administration and its actors have for the establishment, maintenance and transformation of xenocracy? This is where the sub-project comes in and examines these questions for a typical situation of xenocracy as a result of wars in the European context: the Swedish rule over parts of Pomerania, which fell to Sweden as a fiefdom with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

With an interdisciplinary, historiographical and art-historical approach, this constellation of xenocracy (1.) is to be examined in which situations of administrative action or the actions of various actors foreignness was used as a category of differentiation in order to create (new) distinctions or when this was not the case.

Building on this, (2.) the extent to which this changed over time needs to be clarified: Did certain attributions of foreignness gradually lose significance in mutual perception? Can processes of de-xenocratization be identified? And what effects did this have on the exercise of local rule?

Finally, (3.) the mediation, legitimization and perception of xenocratic rule in the ruled provinces will be examined in various media, ranging from supplications and petitions, images and funeral rites to monumental architecture and its furnishings.