Connecting Histories, Connecting Heritage: Early Modern Cities and Their Afterlives

现代早期（C。1450-1800年）见证了货物、思想、人员、语言和艺术形式在各大洲之间的流动的显著增长。早期现代城市的建筑物、广场和街道都是由这些流动和与其他地方的交流所塑造的，这些交流虽然有时是互利的，但往往是不平等的，可能导致迷失方向、压迫、剥削甚至暴力。凭借其跨洲和洲际联系的范围，多样化的人口和不同的殖民主义经历，16世纪的安特卫普，现代早期欧洲的所谓“经济强国”，今天是比利时的国际港口城市，将成为该项目的主要案例研究。这项研究从字面上理解了“如果墙壁会说话”的表达：它旨在研究嵌入建筑和街道中的经常被忽视的历史，这些历史与城市早期现代与其他地方的联系有关。通过研究这些，该项目还将揭示这些其他地方的故事，证明相互联系的地方的历史是密不可分的，如果不了解另一个，你就无法了解另一个。便利这些跨国流动的因素包括商业中心的商人与其在遥远地点的代理人之间远距离建立的社会关系。该项目将用英文对大量安特卫普商人信件、记录这些商人商业交易的公证书和商人家族编年史（原件用七种不同语言）的缓存（2000多份文件）进行摘要。这些将被用于创建一个可公开搜索的数据库，用户还可以从中创建安特卫普参与的网络的可视化。然后将制作交互式地图，将流量与安特卫普的特定建筑物，街道和物体相匹配，其中包括殖民主义和语言景观等主题，为城市景观中的跨国影响模式提供新的见解。第三条研究链将提供Huis货车Aken（安特卫普宫殿）和Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos（宫殿所有者的前巴西甘蔗种植园）的相互关联的历史。这将有助于深入研究造成这种联系的流动，包括种植园的奴役劳动力与回流安特卫普的财富之间的流动。该项目不仅提高了我们对经济、宗教、政治和社会联系如何在城市结构上造成技术、环境和美学变化的理解，而且提高了我们对这些交流另一方的个人经验的理解，将有助于知识的非殖民化。它还将促进跨国遗产的概念，作为一种有用的方式来理解早期现代流动在城市景观中的实现方式，以及一个人如何在属于一个地方的同时也属于与其家园相关的所有其他地方。这一概念贯穿于该项目的遗产政策工作。它也是虚拟现实体验的基础，将为安特卫普宫殿和巴西甘蔗种植园之间的相互联系提供一种发自内心的体验。正如联合国秘书长古特雷斯在COP 27上警告的那样：“人类有一个选择：合作或灭亡。“自上而下的应对全球挑战的方法本身显然是无效的。行星意识也需要在社区内部和社区之间培养。城市是一半以上人类的家园，其结构中包含着历史联系，可以产生这种相互联系和对世界不同地区的责任感。该项目开发了重要的见解和工具，为城市居民和其他人带来这些联系，在我们这个时代的全球危机和不确定性中提供了前进的道路。

The early modern period (c. 1450-1800) witnessed a remarkable growth in flows of goods, ideas, people, languages and art forms both across and between continents. The buildings, squares and streets of early modern cities were shaped by these flows and exchanges with other places, exchanges that, while sometimes mutually beneficial, were often unequal and could lead to disorientation, oppression, exploitation and even violence. With its range of trans- and intercontinental connections, diverse population, and different experiences of colonialism, sixteenth-century Antwerp, the so-called 'economic powerhouse' of early modern Europe and today an international port city in Belgium, will serve as the project's principal case study. This research takes the expression 'if walls could talk' literally: it aims to examine the often-overlooked histories embedded in buildings and streets that are linked to a city's early modern connections to other places. Through examining these, the project will also reveal the stories of these other places, demonstrating that the histories of connected places are inextricably linked and that you cannot understand one without understanding the other. Among the factors facilitating these transnational flows were the social relationships forged over long distances between merchants in commercial centres and their agents in far-away locations. The project will create summaries in English of a large cache (2000+ documents) of Antwerp merchant correspondence, notarial acts documenting these merchants' business transactions, and merchant family chronicles, the originals in seven different languages. These will be used to produce a publicly searchable database from which users will also be able to create visualisations of the networks in which Antwerp participated. Interactive maps will then be produced that match the flows to specific buildings, streets and objects in Antwerp, with themes like colonialism and the linguistic landscape offering new insights into the patterns of transnational influences in the cityscape. A third research strand will offer an interconnected history of the Huis van Aken (an Antwerp palace) and the Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos (a former Brazilian sugar plantation belonging to the owners of the palace). This will allow for an in-depth examination of the flows creating this connection, including that between the enslaved labour on the plantation and the wealth flowing back to Antwerp. Improving our understanding not only of how economic, religious, political and social connections wrought technological, environmental and aesthetic changes on a city's fabric, but also of the experiences of individuals on the other side of these exchanges, the project will contribute to the decolonisation of knowledge. It will also promote the concept of transnational heritage as a useful way of understanding the way that early modern flows have become materialised in the cityscape and of how, in belonging to one place, an individual also belongs to all the other places connected to their home. This concept informs the project's heritage policy work. It also underlies the virtual reality experience that will be created to provide a visceral experience of the interconnectedness between the Antwerp palace and Brazilian sugar plantation. As UN Secretary-General Guterres warned at COP27: 'Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish.' The top-down approach to addressing global challenges is clearly not effective on its own. Planetary consciousness also needs to be nurtured within and between communities. Cities, home to more than half of humanity, contain historical links within their fabric that can engender this sense of interconnection and responsibility to different parts of the world. This project develops crucial insights and tools for bringing these connections alive for urban residents and others, providing a path forward amidst the global crises and uncertainties of our age.