Artisan mobility, innovation and the eighteenth-century Republic of Things

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This project aims to examine how movement across borders in eighteenth-century Europe and encounters between artisans from different backgrounds promoted technical innovation in the cities. Mobility to and from Paris suggests that the cosmopolitan city’s society and culture were as important as markets and institutions. The project will study male and female artisans, producers of manufactured goods in the eighteenth century, who played a vital but largely forgotten role in transferring applied knowledge between European centres. This project aims to provide a historical grounding for debates on links between cosmopolitanism, culture, and technical innovation in a globalising world.