The Projector as a pioneer of global trade. The Augsburg merchant Konrad Rott and his failed pepper monopoly in 1579/80.
Final Report Abstract
The project focused on the Augsburg merchant Konrad Rott and his failed attempt to establish a pepper monopoly in Europe in 1580. Initially, Rott had concluded a contract with the Portuguese king Sebastian I regarding the exclusive sale of pepper discharged in Lisbon. This contract obliged him to purchase an amount of 92.000 hundredweight of pepper per annum from the Portuguese crown and was renewed by Sebastian’s successor Henry in 1578. In addition, the merchant agreed to another contract, which commissioned Rott to buy 30.000 hundredweight of pepper annually in India and ship it to Lisbon. While targeting such a high import quota, Rott tried to exhaust the pepper market in India, in order to drain the second trade route to Europe through the Levant and Venice. The financier of this enterprise became Elector August of Saxony, whom Rott promised to divide the continent up into trading provinces. By means of controlling all pepper imports to Europe, Rott and August intended to establish a pepper monopoly and convert Leipzig into the Holy Roman Empire’s preeminent spice trading center. However, the merchant’s financial limitations, the project’s conceptual shortcomings, and the death of King Henry I of Portugal, which prompted a Spanish invasion, caused the collapse of the ambitious plan after only one year. This research project unearthed new sources and took a novel approach to analyze Rott’s case, which has been well known to economic historians for a long time. The basic assumption was that Rott cannot only be described as a common merchant, but should also be seen as a projector – a specific type of entrepreneur at early modern courts. Projectors campaigned at courts for monetary funding in order to finance their business ideas, which they presented as innovative and lucrative opportunities to promote the common good. Actually, these ideas often carried a high risk and often failed, causing spectacular losses and considerable frustration. Although projectors had rather dubious reputation in early modern societies for this very reason, they frequently obtained influential positions at courts and gained the support they had applied for, which points to their influence on early modern politics. Based on Rott’s case, the researcher analyzed how early modern economic projects were actually carried out and how they shaped attitudes and practices within their social environment. In this way, this project contributes to a better understanding of economic change by focusing on the confrontation between historical actors, newly acquired knowledge, and its experimental use for economic purposes.
Publications
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Der Projektemacher als Pionier globalen Handels. Der Augsburger Kaufmann Konrad Rott und sein gescheitertes Pfefferhandelsmonopol 1579/80. In: Annales Mercaturae 5 (2019), 117–134.
Markus Berger
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Verhängnisvolle Expertise. Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 50(3), 457-499.
Markus Berger
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„Was Ich sonsten schöns vnd Seltzams zuwegen bringen khan“. Jenseits von Handel und Hochfinanz, 17-38. De Gruyter.
Berger, Markus
