Merchants and miracles: global circulations and the making of modern Bethlehem

伯利恒在世界各地拥有标志性的地位，但这个小镇和它的人民仍然鲜为人知。该项目以数字档案馆和专著的形式提供了两个主要成果，并伴随着一场公众参与运动，使伯利恒现代全球运动和交流的历史栩栩如生。通过这样做，它创造了一种新的方式来思考全球影响在中东历史上的作用。1860年至1930年间，该镇的商人在全球各地流通，出售伯利恒制造的祭祀物品，如十字架、念珠和模型神殿。他们创造了一个伯利恒品牌，帮助创造了今天这个沉睡的山顶村庄耶稣诞生的形象。但它也给真正的伯利恒带来了前所未有的变化。随着该镇居民越来越多地采用跨国生活方式，他们将小小的伯利恒变成了中东地区最具全球联系和社会活力的城镇之一。这关系到对该地区更广泛的理解，因为在这一关键时期，全球动态通常被描述为通过欧洲帝国主义、犹太复国主义和西方传教士从外部到达。相比之下，这个项目让阿拉伯巴勒斯坦人重新成为该地区与全球化纠缠在一起的积极塑造者。最近的学者们密切关注19世纪末和20世纪初奥斯曼帝国叙利亚(包括巴勒斯坦)的大规模移民--这些运动奠定了当今全球阿拉伯侨民的基础。但这些移民对当地中东社会的影响尚未得到系统的探讨。伯利恒提供了这样做的机会，不仅是因为它的居民的迁徙本质上是循环的，还因为他们是数十万人追随的“先驱”。来自该地区各地的人们模仿他们在出售圣地物品方面的成功，经常假装与伯利恒和耶路撒冷有联系，那里根本不存在。与伯利恒商人一样，他们大多来自小城镇，倾向于将新财富再投资于原产地。到20世纪初，中东出现了一个明显的移民暴发户，对阶级、家庭、性别和宗教结构产生了颠覆性的影响，但迄今没有记录。该项目的两个主要成果将从不同但互补的角度探讨全球移民和局部社会变化之间的相互作用。首先，数字档案馆将提供一个开放访问的在线资源，包括数千幅图像、视频/音频记录和交互式3-D模型，使用户能够追踪塑造伯利恒发展的全球网络。一旦档案的最初收藏向公众开放，它将通过来自伯利恒及其侨民的众包捐款来扩大规模。其次，一本使用全球微观历史方法的专著将建立在档案中收集的材料的基础上，以重建该镇一位商人生活中的开创性时刻，这些时刻概括了伯利恒的全球互动带来的变化。PI与来自伯利恒的广受好评的电影制作人Leila Sansour的合作，将把这部作品定位于学院内外，以伯利恒为案例研究，为围绕中东移民和流动性的紧迫公共辩论提供新的线索。今天，我们习惯于看到巴勒斯坦人行动受到限制的画面，但很少有人向我们展示任何更长的历史背景。该项目的外联方案将通过将伯利恒曾经享有的高度机动性与该镇今天在以巴冲突断层线上面临的严重问题进行对比来解决这一差距。这些活动将把伯利恒独特的故事带给新的公众受众，并在其全球侨民之间重新建立联系，从而帮助恢复伯利恒以前的连通感。

Bethlehem holds an iconic status around the world, but the town and its people remain little understood. With two key outputs in the form of a digital archive and a monograph, and an accompanying campaign of public engagement, this project brings to life Bethlehem's modern history of global movement and exchange. In so doing, it creates a new way of thinking about the role of global influences in Middle Eastern history. Between 1860 and 1930 merchants from the town circulated the globe, selling Bethlehem-made devotional objects such as crosses, rosaries and model shrines. Their creation of a Bethlehem 'brand' helped produce today's image of the sleepy hilltop village of the nativity. But it also brought unprecedented change to the real Bethlehem. As the town's residents adopted increasingly transnational lifestyles, they transformed tiny Bethlehem into one of the most globally connected, socially dynamic towns anywhere in the Middle East. This matters to wider understandings of the region because global dynamics in this critical period are usually presented as arriving from the 'outside' via European imperialism, Zionism, and western missionaries. By contrast this project reinstates Arab Palestinians as active shapers of the region's entanglement with globalisation. Recent scholarship has paid close attention to the mass migrations out of Ottoman Syria (which included Palestine) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - movements that laid the foundations of today's global Arab diaspora. But the impact of these migrations on local Middle Eastern society has not yet been systematically explored. Bethlehem provides the opportunity to do this, not just because its residents' migrations were inherently circular, but also because they served as 'pioneers' for hundreds of thousands to follow in their wake. People from all over the region mimicked their success selling 'Holy Land' objects, often feigning affiliation with Bethlehem and Jerusalem where none existed. As with the Bethlehem merchants, they largely hailed from small towns and tended to reinvest their new wealth back in their place of origin. By the turn of the 20th century a discernible migrant 'nouveau riche' had appeared across the Middle East, exerting a disruptive but hitherto undocumented impact on structures of class, family, gender and religiosity.The project's two major outputs will explore this interplay between global migration and localised social change from differing yet complementary angles. First, the digital archive will provide an open access, online resource consisting of thousands of images, video/audio recordings, and interactive 3-D models that allow users to trace the global networks that have shaped Bethlehem's development. Once the archive's initial collection is made publicly accessible it will expand through crowd-sourced contributions from Bethlehem and its diaspora. Second, a monograph using a 'global microhistory' methodology will build on materials collected in the archive to reconstruct seminal moments in the life of one merchant from the town that encapsulate the transformations wrought by Bethlehem's global interactions. The PI's partnership with Leila Sansour, an acclaimed film-maker from Bethlehem, will locate this work between and beyond the academy, using Bethlehem as a case study to shed new light on pressing public debates surrounding Middle Eastern migration and mobility. Today we are used to images of Palestinians being restricted in their movements, but we are rarely presented with any longer historical context. The project's outreach programme will address this gap by contrasting the hyper-mobility once enjoyed by Bethlehem with the grave problems the town faces today on the fault-lines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These activities will help restore Bethlehem's former sense of connectedness by bringing its unique story to new public audiences, as well as re-forging links across its global diaspora.