SMC 44Genealogical Manuscripts in Cross-Cultural Perspective

9 January 2025

Photo: De Gruyter

Across time and space, and for a range of reasons and motives, humans have been establishing practices and media for cultivating and presenting knowledge about past and present kin. The new volume of SMC is about one of the most important material manifestations of this knowledge: handwritten artefacts.

There is no single form in which people keep records of their ancestry. For one thing, the social practice of creating extended knowledge about historical or now-living individuals considered to be ‘relatives’ – in short, genealogy – can take place orally. For example, a Chinese family reported in the 18th century that they had been transmitting their line of descent orally from generation to generation for 700 years. In various cultures, these histories were also recorded in inscriptions and later often in printed form. And throughout history, genealogies were recorded in the form of manuscripts.

The interplay between these different media is a central focus of Genealogical Manuscripts in Cross-Cultural Perspective, which has now been published as the 44th volume in the Studies in Manuscript Cultures book series. Rather than existing in isolation from one another, the transitions between printed and handwritten genealogies, for example, were often fluid, as many of the contributions in the current volume show. For example, there are numerous cases of prints being updated by using flyleaves and blank spaces. The non-static character of genealogical manuscripts is another important aspect that the essays highlight in various ways. As Markus Friedrich emphasises in his introduction to the volume, such manuscripts ‘change their function throughout their lives; they were “living” texts, constantly in need of reinterpretation and updating, improvement and expansion.’

The production of genealogical documents was and is subject to considerable fluctuations throughout history. Depending on social, political, and religious circumstances, it picks up strongly in some places and then decreases again. Changing ideas of rulership and its legitimacy were often a determining factor here. In societies in which ideas of monarchical rule became connected to notions of dynastic continuity, genealogical research and the manuscripts it produced acquired paramount importance.

For very different reasons, genealogical research is flourishing in the 21st century. In fact, it is probably more popular and widespread today than ever before. New technologies have transformed this practice from an activity primarily reserved for social elites into a pastime that people of all social statuses can engage in. Taking into account a variety of cultural areas, including Western, Central, and Eastern Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the new SMC volume offers a wealth of in-depth analyses for anyone seeking to better understand the historical origins and development of this highly topical social practice.

The volume presents papers from a 2019 conference hosted by the CSMC and co-organised by Jörg Quenzer, Jürgen Paul, and Markus Friedrich. Inspired not least by the conference’s fruitful cooperation, genealogy-related activities at the CSMC have multiplied recently, contributing in particular to the establishment of the DFG-funded research consortium ‘World Genealogy’. Genealogical Manuscripts in Cross-Cultural Perspective, like almost all volumes in the SMC series, has been published in an open-access format and can be downloaded from the publisher’s website.