This article explores the conditions under which alum production has developed in the Western Mediterranean, in the second half of the fifteenth century. In two decades, between about 1460 and 1480, several important production sites have appeared in the Italian peninsula or in the Iberian peninsula. They have provided European industries and crafts with quality alum, and they quickly overshadowed sources of supply, that had previously prevailed in Anatolia or the Aegean Sea. The article discusses the useful knowledge mobilized to facilitate this growth, in particular, the techniques used and the players involved in this changeover.
In medieval and early modern crafts, useful knowledge was taught in the workshops. There, innovation took place. Craftsmen exchanged knowledge on journeys or through voluntary and forced migration. This system of knowledge transfer does not need writing, although craftsmen used writing both in the workshop and in the administration of the guilds and the towns. However, transmission of knowledge remained oral. This contrasts with countless craftsmen's manuscripts that conveyed technical knowledge about crafts in text and images. This essay argues that these manuals were equally crucial for the transmission of useful knowledge between master craftsmen as well as the sale of products to clients. A book on plate harnesses and one on bell and gun casting are introduced as examples.
Together with introducing a set of key innovations in commercial practices, the merchant-bankers of the commercial revolution of the 13th century were also the first European economic agents to adopt Hindu-Arabic numerals. As practical arithmetic provided the mathematical foundation for commercial innovations, studying its European spread provides a particularly suitable angle to study the diffusion of practical knowledge in the pre-modern period. Italy was the early adopter of these techniques, while in England these practices became widespread at the onset of the little divergence. In this paper, I discuss in comparative perspective the social diffusion of this knowledge in Italy and England, and its wider impact. On the one hand, this analysis makes it possible to show a number of parallels between the trajectories followed by these societies. On the other hand, it allows to observe the complex interactions between practical knowledge and wider economic, institutional, and social changes.
This contribution discusses the evolution of paper thickness of books produced in the Southern Netherlands in the period 1473 until the middle of the sixteenth century. Changing paper thickness is one of the key elements which in all likelihood helped coping with the problem of the rapidly increasing demand for paper by the press. After a description of relevant aspects of the production of hand laid paper and of the resulting morphology of sheets, a methodology is proposed to deal with the problem of establishing paper thickness in bound volumes and further problems dealing with the compression effect and of binding and rebinding are discussed.
Preisaufgabe, or «prize competitions» were implemented in Saxony in 1764 to promote industry after the Seven Years' War. We investigated the purpose of them and by whom, by analysing primary historical texts to uncover four criteria: (1) the best quality prototypes; (2) equivalent quality to foreign products; (3) establishment of training facilities, and (4) manufacture of new products. The competitions promoted high-quality products and disseminated knowledge. Numerous prototypes were submitted and prizes awarded. Most participants were already engaged in textile or related industries and the strategy relied on this intellectual foundation. Assessment of Saxony's situation and enlightenment principles informed the competitions.
This Open access book provides a survey of the economic, health, and somatic progress of Baltic countries during the period 1918–2018, framed by the outline of the historical-sociological theory of modern social restorations, as originally conceived by the Austrian-American comparative historian Robert A. Kann. The author reworks Kann's theory to analyse post-communist transformations in the Baltic region. The book argues that the purpose of modern social restorations is to make restoration societies safe against a recurrence of revolution. There were two waves of modern social restorations: post-Napoleonic and post-communist. Most post-Napoleonic restorations were brief, because they failed to economically and socially outperform the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary systems. It considers Baltic restorations as laboratory cases of second-wave modern social restorations, because they encompass a triple restoration of the nation-state, capitalism, and democracy. The book assesses the performance success of Baltic restorations by comparing economic and social progress of Baltic countries during the periods of original independence (1918–1940), foreign-imposed state socialism (1940–1990), and restored independence (since 1990). It then elaborates the criteria to assess the ultimate performance success of these restorations by 2040, when restored Baltic states may endure longer than their ancestors in 1918–1940 and the complete foreign occupations era (1940–1990). The author, an expert in historical sociology, uses extensive historical-statistical data in cross-time comparisons to develop his analysis and create future projections. This book is of wide interest to sociologists, social demographers, political scientists, and economists studying the Baltic region. This is an open access book.
Für alle, die im Mietverhältnis wohnen, kann es plötzlich sehr schnell gehen: ein Brief der Hausverwaltung, der die Kündigung aufgrund baulicher Verdichtung und Aufwertung enthält. Mieter*innen sind gezwungen, wegen Abrissen oder Sanierungen auszuziehen oder gar das Quartier zu verlassen, um eine bezahlbare Wohnung zu finden. Die Autor*innen geben durch eine qualitative Studie, angelegt im Schweizer Mittelland, vielschichtige Einblicke in diese Lebensrealität. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Perspektiven Betroffener und deren Umgang mit dem (drohenden) Wohnungsverlust. Das Erleben direkter Verdrängung liefert wichtige Hinweise für wohnungspolitische und sozialarbeiterische Initiativen.
Human capital is central to current debates about the sources of growth and divergence in the premodern economy. Apprenticeship, the key formal arrangement by which occupational skills were transferred in this period, has in the past often been associated with guild monopolies and exclusion, implying a drag on the accumulation of human capital. Several stimulating recent contributions have pointed to apprenticeship as a potentially important explanation for English or European advances in manufacturing and technology in the run up to industrialisation. In this paper, we explore mechanisms that helped improve quality among artisans. We focus on one in particular: the selection of training masters by apprentices.
Interaktionsarbeit im Bereich personenbezogener (sozialer) Dienste ist von hohem Engagement, aber auch vielen Belastungen geprägt. Inkonsistente wohlfahrtsstaatliche Rahmenbedingungen sorgen systematisch für Spannungen, die das Personal strapazieren und vielfach in Zustände der Zerrissenheit führen. In Fallstudien aus der Altenpflege und der geförderten Weiterbildung demonstrieren die Autor*innen, dass Emotionen hierbei eine kritische Rolle spielen. Sie zeigen zudem, wie diese Zustände darauf einwirken, mit wem sich die Beschäftigten in welcher Weise verbunden fühlen und wie es um deren Widerstandsbereitschaft bestellt ist. Wie die bestehenden Verhältnisse sich ändern ließen, wird anhand sozialpolitischer Alternativen und Veränderungspotenziale durch neue Formen kollektiver Interessenvertretung diskutiert.
Die Warnung von Eltern, aufzupassen, was man online teilt, ist allgegenwärtig. Dem schließen sich Datenschützer*innen an und gebieten einen bewussten und sparsamen Umgang mit Diensten und Daten. Eine digitale Desökonomie widersetzt sich diesen Warnungen und sucht den kritischen Umgang mit der digitalen Gegenwartskultur nicht in der Askese, sondern im Exzess. Kunstwerke, Bilder und Daten sind »zu viel«, türmen sich auf und wiederholen sich ständig. Mit Bezug auf Ansätze der Gouvernementalität, der Queer Theory und auf Theorien von Georges Bataille und Roger Caillois analysiert Sebastian Althoff diese unproduktive Produktionsweise des Digitalen und zeigt eine Praxis auf, die Trägheit statt flow schafft.
The putting-out system of production was a key feature of England's woollen cloth industry and is regarded by many historians as a step along the road to capitalism. This paper considers the evolution of the industry in the late Middle Ages, the emergence of clothiers and their dependent out-workers and the nature of the relationship between the two groups. A detailed analysis follows of the growth, between 1475 and 1510, in the value of textile related debt litigation in the Court of Common Pleas, and revised estimates are given for the scale of the industry and the size of the workforce in the early-sixteenth century. Thus an assessment can be made of the importance of the putting-out system and its contribution to the success of the textile industry at that time.
This paper's primary research question is to what extent change in mechanisms and instruments of financial management proceeding from trading knowledge improved the efficiency of late-medieval poli-ties. To do so, we have examined a territorial state experience in medie-val Iberia. In the mid-14th century, Aragon designed its autonomous fiscal system managed by a kingdom's finance. The new supra-local pol-ity made use of financial accounts to keep track of revenues and to ac-cess credit, which led to the refinement of documentary practice and monitoring methods. The analysis brings up the agency of a group of merchants that shaped the functioning of the Aragonese treasury from budgeting to tax collecting. Particular attention is paid to the impact of the increasing prominence of financial numeracy on institutional ac-countability and governance.
The major breakthrough in ship design around 1400 creating the full-rigged ship constituted a general purpose technology. It had far-reaching effects on shipping, trade volume, orientation of trade routes, location of production, settlement patterns and many other aspects of life throughout the globe from 1400 to1800. The greater efficiency of the type in a number of uses led to its dissemination, to a limited degree, throughout the world. Spillovers from the success of the design were extensive and included for example a literature on designing and building ships, improvements in navigation and in government practices. Advances in shipbuilding were one of the very few technologies in the period that qualified as a technological advance with massive consequences.
Trying to comprehend and then to describe the process of technological change and its impact is a difficult task. Explaining it is then extremely demanding. Many of the contributions in the papers offered indicate the value of thick description, of looking closely at relevant documentation, piecing together events from those documents and presenting the information in a comprehensible way. Placing that description within the context of time and place, making the small picture part of the big picture is, after all, doing good history
Writing in the late 1980s, Jon Fiske describes reality as "always encoded [and most especially] by the codes of our culture". The energy transition is one of the latest sets of realities that comes with its own encoded messaging and nomenclatures. Citizens are increasingly expected to actively participate in the energy domain and play their part in transitioning to low-carbon energy systems. Terms like "energy citizen" have been used to describe (the accepted forms of) this participation, typically in quite prescriptive and rather limited roles, such as active consumer and prosumer. However, as with other manifestations of citizen-consumer ideals, where the framing is presented as the embodiment of freedom, the vagueness of such terms lock citizens out of what could potentially be a transformative conceptualization for transitioning to more equitable and empowering energy experiences. This chapter will examine how under-theorized and contested concepts like the "energy citizen" are already framing our collective experience(s) of the energy transition and asks for whom is the emerging energy system designed?
