Mieszczańska kariera w szlacheckiej Rzeczypospolitej? Francesco De Gratta i jego social network
A Bourgeois Career in the Nobles’ Commonwealth? Francesco De Gratta and his Social Network

Summary/Abstract: Michał Salamonik published his doctoral dissertation in 2017. The book addresses an important topic of the presence of the bourgeois in the early modern Polish-Lithua- nian state. This is a biographical account and a study of the career of Francesco De Gratta, a citizen of Gdańsk of Italian origin. The purpose of the article is to present the subject matter from the perspective of original methodology used by the author: social network analysis, evaluation of the narrative based on it and the effectiveness of its use in historiography. It also contains reflections on the legitimacy of using studies of relationship and networks (family, work, financial) and broadly understood quan- titative methods for biographical research. The article also poses a question of the ex- tent to which one can speak of planning or deliberately constructing the bourgeois career within the social and political structures of the seventeenth-century Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth. The presented analysis has shown that the application of the SNA methodology for creating biographies should be considered interesting and useful, especially when the social connections of the main character are closely con- nected with other spheres of his activity. It seems that a study from the social network perspective gives the entitlement to studying characters that are understood as integral elements of social processes and relations, which adds a great research value of this approach.

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