EWS Spices and stockings: Studies of early modern consumption. A Nordic/Southern European comparative approach

The series of Workshops are part of the development of a research project for an ERC Starting Grant within the Horizon 2020 Work Programme. The project involves an international group of early career female academics working in the field of Consumer Histo ry and it explores the appropriation /assimilation of new consumer goods (e.g. porcelain, coca, tobacco, coffee, tea, cotton, time period 1600-1850) in a transnational and comparative perspective. The European historiography on consumption demands the dia logue with studies from the periphery, and this research aims not only to contribute significantly to the different national historiographies involved, but also to enhance possibilities of reciprocal contribution by looking at Nordic countries as an integ rated part of Europe. A North-South perspective will enable us to overcome present paradigms based on Anglo-Saxon analytical tools and to strengthen Nordic historiographies into the international stage. Through a varied corpus of sources in and from diff erent nations, the project will explore how production, distribution, consumption and ideological/religious/scientific constructions all interacted to promote and sustain the appropriation of new goods. It will how new consumer products created new forms of sociability and consumption, as well as promoted changes both with respect to democratization of new mundane forms of consumption, as well as national economic growth. To do this the different projects will deal with a selection of early consumer goods and their arrival and spread in Europe, focusing on different northern and southern countries. Where possible and relevant some of the same goods will be studied, making it possible in the final stages of the project to not only identify general patterns , but also make concrete comparisons of specific processes.