Spoils of Knowledge

Emma Hagström Molin, Ph.D. (2015) is a researcher in History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, Sweden. Recent publications include “Provenance Research. Book History, Historiography, and the Rise of an Epistemic Category” (Studies in Book Culture, 2022).

Preface


Acknowledgements


List of Figures


Abbreviations





Introduction: In the King’s Treasury


 1 Uncovering Spoils of Knowledge in Swedish Collections


 2 Writing Histories from Spoils: Methodological and Contextual Considerations


 3 Cases and Sources: Spoils in Inventories, Lists and Catalogues


 4 Some Prerequisites for Swedish Imperial Collecting





1 Placed in Chests: The Making of Cultural Spoils in Seventeenth-Century Europe and Beyond


 1 Plundering and Ruining in the Age of Grotius


 2 Plundering, Ruining and Cultural Plunder in Swedish Sources


 3 Cultural Plunder in Livonia, Prussia and Denmark


 4 Collecting and Conserving Archives and Libraries


 5 The Notable Absence of Spoils, Spolia and Trophies


 6 Conclusion: Unstable Spoils of War





2 Archive Trouble: The Mitau Files in Vasa History


 1 Archive Fever in Vasa Administration


 2 The Documents from Mitau


 3 The Material, Geography and Rarity of Archival Spoils


 4 ‘As a Soul within a Body’: Archive Rooms


 5 Utter’s Archive Order: Documents Narrating Vasa History


 6 The Mitau Documents’ Transformations


 7 Restitution and Rebirth


 8 Post-Fire Order, Collectors and Thieves


 9 Conclusion: Archive Trouble





3 Library Confessions: Catholic Books, Jesuit Epistemology and Temporality at Uppsala University Library


 1 ‘It Is Not Extraordinary’: Library Beginnings


 2 The Material, Geography and Confession of Library Spoils


 3 Parting of the Prussian Spoils


 4 Library Materialisations


 5 Ordering the Collections


 6 The Effects of Spoils


 7 Material and Immaterial Movements


 8 Mould and Disorder: The Challenges of Preservation


 9 Back in the War Chests


 10 Conclusion: Library Confessions





4 War Museums: Spolia Selecta in Carl Gustaf Wrangel’s Skokloster


 1 The Encyclopaedic Museums of Skokloster: Beginnings


 2 The Creation of the Rothkirch Spoils


 3 Confessional Spoils


 4 Varieties of Booty


 5 Practical Spoils


 6 The Wrangel Library at Skokloster: Past and Present


 7 Discrepancy in the Descriptions and Numbers of Wrangel’s Book Spoils


 8 Bibliotheca Selecta, Spolia Selecta


 9 Wrangel’s Armoury and the Rothkirch Spoils


 10 Art Chambers, War and Genealogical Spoils


 11 Skokloster’s Geography


 12 Skokloster’s Narrative and Temporal Tangle


 13 Conclusion: War Museums





Conclusion: Spoils of Knowledge, Triumph and Trouble


 1 Making Spoils in the Seventeenth Century


 2 Triumph and Trouble: The Effects of Knowledge Spoils


 3 Enduring Instabilities: From Spoils of Knowledge to Swedish Spoils of War, Reconstructions and Restitutions




Bibliography


Illustrations


Index