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

早期现代时期(约1450-1800年)见证了货物、思想、人员、语言和艺术形式在跨洲和跨洲流动方面的显著增长。早期现代城市的建筑、广场和街道是由这些流动和与其他地方的交流塑造的，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。拥有广泛的跨洲和洲际联系、多样化的人口和不同的殖民主义经历，16世纪的安特卫普--早期现代欧洲的所谓经济强国，今天是比利时的国际港口城市--将作为该项目的主要案例研究。这项研究从字面上理解了“如果墙会说话”这一说法：它的目的是考察建筑和街道中经常被忽视的历史，这些历史与一座城市与其他地方的早期现代联系联系在一起。通过研究这些，该项目还将揭示这些其他地方的故事，表明相互关联的地方的历史是密不可分的，如果你不理解一个地方，你就不能理解另一个地方。促进这些跨国流动的因素之一是商业中心的商人与他们在遥远地点的代理人之间远距离建立的社会关系。该项目将制作大量安特卫普商人信件(2000多份文件)的英文摘要，记录这些商人的商业交易的公证行为，以及七种不同语言的商人家族编年史。这些将被用来产生一个可公开搜索的数据库，用户还将能够从该数据库创建安特卫普参与的网络的可视化。然后，将制作与安特卫普特定建筑、街道和物体的流动相匹配的互动地图，殖民主义和语言景观等主题为城市景观中跨国影响的模式提供新的见解。第三个研究线索将提供Huis van Aken(安特卫普的一座宫殿)和Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos(属于宫殿所有者的前巴西糖料种植园)相互关联的历史。这将使我们能够深入审查造成这种联系的流动，包括种植园的奴役劳动和回流到安特卫普的财富之间的联系。该项目不仅提高了我们对经济、宗教、政治和社会关系如何对城市结构造成技术、环境和美学变化的理解，也加深了我们对这些交流另一边个人的体验的理解，该项目将有助于知识的非殖民化。它还将促进跨国遗产的概念，以此作为一种有用的方式，了解早期现代流动如何在城市景观中实现，以及一个人如何在属于一个地方的同时，也属于与其家园相连的所有其他地方。这一概念为该项目的遗产政策工作提供了信息。这也是虚拟现实体验的基础，将创建虚拟现实体验，以提供安特卫普宫殿和巴西甘蔗种植园之间相互联系的本能体验。正如联合国秘书长古特雷斯在第27届缔约方会议上警告的那样：人类有一个选择：要么合作，要么灭亡。应对全球挑战的自上而下的方法显然本身并不有效。还需要在社区内部和社区之间培养行星意识。城市是人类一半以上的家园，它们的结构中包含着历史联系，可以产生这种相互联系的感觉和对世界不同地区的责任感。这个项目为城市居民和其他人开发了重要的见解和工具，使这些联系变得生动起来，为我们这个时代的全球危机和不确定性提供了一条前进的道路。

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.