The Zeeuwsch Genootschap and the Formation of its Correspondence Network
of network analysis and the methods established by sociologists to study relation
ships between people.34 According to Kate Davidson the aim of SNA is 'to capture
how people connect to one another, to what ends and with what results.'35 Cornell
Jackson describes SNA as a toolbox that provides distinct, new ways of seeing the
world, as this approach visualises how individuals turn into a group through the
use of big data.36 Social historians have lately become increasingly interested in
applying this approach to their research.37
SNA's central units of analysis are the connections between persons, groups,
and institutions. These ties form the social network, and the pattern of these con
nections form the social structure.38 To achieve a high-quality analysis, a wide
arrange of biographical information on each individual and organisation is nec-
essary.39 Ties between actors are identifiable through primary sources, such as
correspondence, notes, and diaries, but even tax returns can provide insight into
the social relations of actors.40 The result is a comprehensive dataset showcasing
social relations between actors, to which different techniques of analysis can be
applied.41
The reason why historical SNA research can be challenging is the need for 'big
data'.42 Data can prove to be problematic for historians, as a historian's dataset is
often incomplete. Furthermore, it is hard to classify social relations that occurred
102
34 Kate Davidson, Early Modern Social Networks: Antecedents, Opportunities, and Challenges.
In: The American Historical Review 124, no. 2 (2019), 457; Charles Wetherell, Historical Social
Network Analysis. In: International Review of Social History 43, no. 6 (1998), 125-126; Robert
Michael Morrissey, Archives of Connection. In: Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative
and Interdisciplinary History 48, no. 2 (2015), 70.
35 Davidson, Early Modern Social Networks, 460.
36 Jackson Cornell, Using social network analysis to reveal unseen relationships in medieval Scot
land. In: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 32, no. 2 (2017), 336.
37 For recent research efforts, see: Stanford University's Mapping the Republic of Letters, http://
republicofletters.stanford.edu/index.html; University of Oxford's Cultures of Knowledge: Net
working the Republic of Letters, 1550-1750, http://www.culturesofknowledge.org/; Carnegie
Mellon University's Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, http://www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/
(all accessed on 31 May 2020).
38 Wetherell, Historical Social Network Analysis, 127.
39 Davidson, Early Modern Social Networks, 469; information such as residing place, family
status, work, memberships of organisations etc.
40 Bonnie H. Erickson, Social Networks and History. In: Historical Methods 30, no. 3 (Summer
1997), 149.
41 Morrissey, Archives of Connection, 73; Martin Grandjean and Mathieu Jacomy, Translating
Networks: Assessing Correspondence Between Network Visualisation and Analytics. In: Digi
tal Humanities, 2019, 5.
42 Wetherell, Historical Social Network Analysis, 125.
