A business for everything and everyone? Pacotille-Economies in the Ancien Régime

• Applicant: Dr. Annika Raapke
• Subject Area: Early Modern History ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452330448

The European Expansion of the early modern period, as a key push towards globalisation, was deeply characterised by long-distance trading. So far, research assumes that it was merchants (meaning people identifying themselves as such) who transported goods and money across the globe by means of worldwide networks, and sold them to consumers at their respective destinations. Research concepts of economy, trade and the developing markets of the period are based on this key assumption. This project, however, states that the close conceptual link of "trade" and "merchants", and "consumption" and "consumers", while very logical from a modern perspective, has resulted in a historiographic blind spot. Historical documents clearly show that long-distance trading activities by non-merchants - people who did not identify as merchants - happened throughout the 18th century and on an immense scale. Global trading activities which were organised by non-merchants were a relevant factor in meeting local consumption demands. Historiographic impressions of, e.g., organisations of the flow of goods and the paths goods took, but also of the satiation of markets, the popularity of certain commodities and the development of prices, do not take this phenomenon into account in a systematic way. This is highly relevant for our assessment of past (global) economic contexts and developments, because we currently tend to view them mostly from the perspective of merchants, and study them based on merchants' documents. Long-distance trading activities of non-merchants, on the other hand, are viewed in concepts of "household economies". This project wants to systematically study the forms, effects and the economic relevance of long-distance trading activities by non-merchants in the Ancien Régime. It is located at the intersection of economic history, the history of consumerism, and colonial history, and addresses a phenomenon which has never been studied in an adequate manner: The so-called pacotille. In contemporary parlance, pacotilles were selections of goods put together by non-merchants, to be sold overseas (this project only looks at overseas pacotilles). Pacotilles existed in many shapes and sizes, were extremely popular and offered men and women from various societal backgrounds an opportunity to participate in long-distance trading. This project looks at pacotilles traded between France, West Africa, Canada and the Indian Ocean; it explores their (market)economic relevance and the possibilities they offered in the commercial configurations of the blossoming (colonial) trade and consumerism of the early modern period.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position