Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin: People, Trade, Gifts and Beyond: The Circulation of Goods and Practices between the Ottoman Empire and Europe (16th-19th Centuries)

Workshop 2015/2016

People, Trade, Gifts and Beyond: The Circulation of Goods and Practices between the Ottoman Empire and Europe (16th-19th Centuries)

04.–05. Juli 2016

The aim of the workshop is to depict a more comprehensive picture of the circulation of objects and commodities between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian world, encouraging contributions that focus on trade, gifts-exchange, and other forms of transfer of goods. Within this conceptual framework, special attention will be also devoted to the networks through which goods flowed, the routes and the carriers. The research questions that we would like to answer are: What is the relationship between these different forms of circulation of objects? Is there any complementarity? What can the suggested enlarged perspective add to the study of the circulation of objects between the Ottoman Empire and Europe and to the study of the relationships between the two worlds? With regard to gift-giving, what was the status of these ritual gifts? What was the consideration about the others and their civilisation that underlined the choice of a certain gift? And, more generally, how did objects change the world that they transited? How were they received and integrated in the daily life practices?

The workshop is a collaborative project supported by the Centre Marc Bloch, the EURIAS Fellowship Program, the European Commission, the ERC Project LuxFass and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

The Workshop takes place at the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin