15th Century Social Network Analysis?

At the end of Act I, Scene iii of Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” Catesby summons the court to dying King Edward’s bedside, leaving Richard alone on stage.  Two unnamed murderers then enter to receive direction and a warrant from Richard for the extra-judicial murder of Clarence, whom Richard has decided to kill simply because Clarence precedes him in the order of succession.  Richard’s casual bonhomie with the murderers whilst arranging the details of his brother’s death makes the scene chilling.  Such small, extra-judicial conspiracies, often with homicidal aims, are a common dramatic element for Shakespeare, particularly in the histories and tragedies.   As a dramatic structure, they hardly seem worthy of special consideration.  Some aren’t original to Shakespeare, rather coming from his sources, such as Holinshed’s Chronicles or the Brut Chronicle.

However, they may be more interesting structurally than their humble dramatic role suggests.  In the abstract, they signal a decision or action taken outside the usual frame and process of political decision making, by exceptional participants, sometimes for someone’s personal gain.  And, perhaps, they suggest a strategy for applying heterogeneous large data set analysis to historical questions.  It would be a kind of historical social network analysis and it usefulness would hinge, of course, on the kinds, specificity and quality of formal network connections that could be identified within and between the elements of large data sets.   My particular interest derives from studying the life of Sir Thomas Malory and the 15^th century social and historical context within which he lived.  So much of the evidence surrounding his life is provocatively circumstantial and open to multiple interpretations.  Is it possible additional important specific knowledge could be derived from the combined global mathematical analysis of say the databases of Parliamentary acts, recorded judicial actions, affinity structures,  and the financial records of the Exchequer?  Is it possible, for example, that a judicial decision made entirely for partisan reasons might have a characteristic social network signature or be identifiable through a particular kind of cluster analysis?

A few weeks ago, we attended a conference on current work in Southwest Archaeology.  One of the presentations, “An Examinination of Spatial Relationships Using GIS Data from the Basketmaker Communities Project,” by Tanachy Bruhns, showed how the use of cluster analysis applied to correlating diverse and heterogeneous types of information, from cost/distance analysis to local solar radiation might be used to predict the location of archaeological sites and derive additional knowledge about existing ones.  Can social networking information, implicit in large databases of historical societies be studied analogously?  It’s an appealing idea.

But challenging.  I decided to examine  a couple of possible test cases:  the decision to execute Mary Queen of Scots and Richard III’s assumption of the throne.  In both cases, a leader reluctantly assented to a major decision in her or his interest.  However, we generally credit that Queen Elizabeth really was reluctant to order the execution of her cousin queen whilst Richard’s acceptance of the petition by the citizens and nobles of London may have been an act of clever political theatre engineered by his supporters and himself.  In both cases, the number of linked events, the complexity of the affinity diagrams are daunting, not to mention categorization and characterization of linkages in any social networking diagram.  Then there’s the problem of nuance:  the process of abstraction might exclude precisely the information necessary for differentiation between such situations.

Can additional information or even significant conclusions about historical events be derived by mathematical analysis of large data sets?  It seems like an important and natural area of research for groups and institutions conducting “Digital Humanities” research.