Global encounters: overseas goods and European consumer cultures, c. 1740–1820

How did Europeans encounter, conceive and use global goods during a crucial economic and social transformation (1740-1820)? The usual answer is through mahogany furniture, silk dresses, Chinese porcelain, and the ritualized drinking of sweetened tea. Global encounters are thus reduced to a narrow range of goods and practices, with little thought given to how knowledge of places, goods and uses was spread.

This project offers a different approach and new perspectives, moving away from national and often inventory-based analysis constraints. Instead, we seek to explore more varied ways in which consumer goods from across the globe were represented, promoted and used by householders in Sweden, England and Germany. We draw on three sets of primary sources that are familiar yet under-utilised, especially in international comparative studies: fashion journals, advertisements, and cookbooks.

Our project significantly departs from the established research by approaching the representation, marketing, experience and use of global goods from a comparative and decentred perspective. It draws fresh insights from familiar but under-used sources. These allow us to offer a better understanding of, inter alia: societal attitudes to global goods, how they were understood and valorized, and how they were mentally and physically integrated with European goods, practices and cultures of consumption.