The Globalized Periphery: Atlantic Commerce, Socioeconomic and Cultural Change in Central Europe (1680-1850)

Sub-projects

The three sub-projects supplement each other in order to assess the primary research question in several ways. The first sub-project (A) has a regional focus, emphasizing questions of interconnectedness: how Silesian merchants distributed their linen, what was imported in return and how, and whether proto-industrial production went hand-in-hand with an increase in consumption locally. The second project (B) investigates commodity flows, the underlying commercial networks, and the agents behind them: Central European merchandise reaching Atlantic markets, reflux of Atlantic products into the Continent, merchants handling the goods. The third project (C) looks chiefly at the consumption side: what kind of Atlantic materials reached Central Europe, how they were processed and consumed, who consumed them, and how society as a whole was impacted by these patterns. As a whole, the research project moves between the general and the specific, making Central Europe visible as an Atlantic – or even global – player in the early modern economy, on both the demand and the supply sides.