The Baroque Nobility in the Czech Historiography of the Last Decades

The present study expounds the most important approaches that have been applied in Czech historiography in the field of aristocracy research between 1620-1740 in the last decades.The significance of this particular field of interest has been presented in several more or less successful modern attempts at a comprehensive interpretation or at interpretations putting aristocracy in a political, economical, cultural and social context within the Bohemian Crown Lands in the Early Modern Period.These research attempts sought to understand the true identity of this particular social structure and reflect its social status, the attitude towards power, the experience of faith and confession as well as its peculiar lifestyle. In particular, the younger generation of researchers who are influenced by the new cultural history has been trying to achieve more than a description of accumulated facts.In fact, thanks to inspiring methodological impulses from other related scientific fields, in particular from cultural anthropology, sociology and political science, and thanks to new theoretical approaches, their work shows a new way of asking questions, and interpreting historical documents in a wider (comparative) context. This approach is quite often an transdisciplinary one.