Artisan mobility, innovation, and the eighteenth-century Republic of Things

The project examines how historical movement across borders in eighteenth-century Europe and encounters between artisans from different backgrounds promoted technical innovation in the cities. Mobility to and from Paris suggests that the social and cultural environment of the cosmopolitan city was as important as markets and institutions. The project studies male and female artisans, the key producers of manufactured goods in the eighteenth century, who played a vital but largely forgotten role in transferring applied knowledge between European centres. It aims to provide a historical grounding for debates on links between cosmopolitanism, culture, and technical innovation in a globalising world.