The project explores the administrative backdrop of xenocracy in the ancient world. Subproject A studies the early phase of xenocratic rule over the cities and leagues of Hellenistic Greece. Focusing on Egypt, Subproject B examines the office of the strategos, which was key to the administration of Ptolemies and Romans, from a sociohistorical perspective.

The project focuses on the impact late Roman administration had on the local population in the Egyptian Dakhla Oasis during the 4th century on the basis of their public and private documents in Greek and Coptic found on site. These documents allow for an analysis of how the Egyptian population mastered to employ Roman administrative practices amongst one another to their advantage.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, Spain was caught in the crosshairs of various imperial claims of Christian and Islamic provenance. The multi-religious and multi-cultural contact zone was concentrated in Toledo, which was therefore chosen as the area of investigation for the subproject.

From a historical and art-historical perspective, the project asks which categories of difference-making came into play in the context of administrative action in Swedish Pomerania. A particular focus is on the question of how xenocratic rule was conveyed, legitimized, and perceived in different media - from supplications to images and funerary rites to monumental architecture.

The project examines the central importance of visual strategies for the mediation, legitimisation and perception of xenocratic rule using the example of the Habsburg Netherlands in the late 17th and 18th centuries. As the heartland’s first representatives, special attention lies on the highest ranking office-holders and their projects.
 

This subproject examines the local administration in indigenous districts in New Spain and Peru from 1750-1820, focusing on negotiation processes between Spanish officials and the population. Ethnic categorizations played a major role in the administration. Their changes in the course of administrative reforms led to them being renegotiated, stabilized and questioned.

With Fort St. George/Madraspatnam (today: Chennai), the subproject will examine an urban structure as a local space of xenocracy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. An integrative approach will be pursued by understanding Madras as a premodern urban space of communication and resonance. Court proceedings, regulatory measures, forms of protest or ritual acts were practices with performative content that created public spheres within the urban framework. These in turn were the object of contemporary observations and reflections, which were documented in petitions, council minutes, court records, diaries and travel reports.