The Globalized Periphery: Atlantic Commerce, Socioeconomic and Cultural Change in Central Europe (c. 1670 to 1850)

早期现代中欧(粗略地定义为神圣罗马帝国的领土)与大西洋世界之间的社会经济关系被蓬勃发展的大西洋历史研究广泛忽视。这个项目将调查帝国看似内陆的外围地区融入全球市场的情况，重点是非洲和美洲产品的回流及其对帝国物质文化和社会结构的影响，重点是用于非洲奴隶易货贸易和新大陆消费的制成品的出口。这些项目将分三个相互独立但相互关联的子项目进行调查，时间长达18世纪，当时大西洋奴隶贸易和种植园奴隶制以及欧洲原型工业处于顶峰。波美拉尼亚、西里西亚、加利西亚等地的低工资使这些地区的亚麻布甚至可以与印度的棉花竞争，在西欧、非洲和美洲的市场上。因此，西里西亚亚麻布商人在西欧及其他地区发展成海港的经销网络将构成该项目的一个案例研究。由于非洲尤其是买方市场，其消费者塑造了运往那里的各种商品，从而影响了欧洲的生产，因此第二个分项目将分析中欧经法国和葡萄牙对非洲的出口量和结构。它将揭示中欧在奴隶贸易中的利益，并调查胡格诺和塞法迪克商业网络。第三个分项目将研究大西洋消费品和原材料对中欧的影响，包括对纺织品染色至关重要的鲜为人知的商品，如西非阿拉伯树胶。它将询问消费如何促成新的群体(中等类别)和身份的出现。逐渐变化的社会结构的方面将是劳动力、家庭和性别角色、食物、服装、室内装饰等。欧洲外围国家融入全球市场，以及由原工业就业带来的额外收入引发的人口增长，促使人们将这一过程解释为劳动密集型，而不是通常被视为欧洲特色的资本密集型道路。这一假设将挑战目前亚洲和欧洲的二分法，并有助于当前关于不同工业化道路的辩论。为期3年的项目将设在德国和波兰边境的欧洲大学维亚德里纳。它成立于1992年，是一个弥合东西方差距的机构，是开展这项研究的理想场所，旨在克服可追溯到冷战时期的大西洋历史观念的研究空白。

Socio-economic relations between early modern Central Europe (loosely defined as the territories of the Holy Roman Empire) and the Atlantic World have been widely neglected by the prospering research in Atlantic History. This project shall investigate the integration of the seemingly landlocked peripheries of the Empire into global markets, with a focus on- the export of manufactures meant for bartering African slaves and for consumption in the New World,- the reflux of products from Africa and the Americas and their impact on material culture and on the social fabric in the Empire.They shall be investigated in three discrete but interlinked sub-projects, covering a long 18th c., when Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery, and European proto-industry were at peak.Low wages in Pomerania, Silesia, Galicia etc. allowed for linen from these regions to compete even with cottons from India, on markets in Western Europe, Africa and the Americas. The networks of distribution, spun by Silesian linen merchants into seaports in Western Europe and beyond shall therefore constitute one case study within the project. Since Africa in particular was a buyers market whose consumers shaped the assortments of goods shipped there and thus made their mark on production in Europe, a second sub-project shall analyse volume and structure of exports from Central Europe via France and Portugal to Africa. It will shed light on Central European interests in the slave trade and also investigate Huguenot and Sephardic mercantile networks. The third sub-project will study the impact of Atlantic consumer products and raw materials in Central Europe, including lesser known merchandise, e.g. West African gum Arabic, crucial to textile dying. It will ask how consumption contributed to the emergence of new groups (middling sorts) and identities. Aspects of the gradually changing social fabric will be labour, family and gender roles, food, clothing, interior decoration, etc.The integration of European peripheries into global markets and the demographic growth triggered by additional income from proto-industrial employment invite an interpretation of this process as labour intensive, as opposed to the capital intensive path generally regarded as the European characteristic. This hypothesis shall challenge current dichotomies separating Asia and Europe, and contribute to current debates on different paths to industrialization.The 3-year project shall be housed at the European University Viadrina, on the German-Polish border. Created in 1992 as an institution bridging gaps between East and West, it is the ideal place for this research, meant to overcome research lacunae dating back to Cold War notions of Atlantic History.