Book contents
- Globalizing Europe
- Globalizing Europe
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Global Europe
- 2 Global Conjunctures and the Remaking of European Political History
- 3 Making Europe’s Economy
- 4 European Intellectual History after the Global Turn
- 5 Religion and the Global History of Europe
- 6 European Social History and the Global Turn
- 7 Europe’s Place in Global Environmental History
- 8 Global Turns in European History and the History of Consumption
- 9 Global Material Culture in Early Modern and Modern Europe
- 10 Migration and European History’s Global Turn
- 11 Race in the Global History of Europe
- 12 Globalizing European Gender History
- 13 Globalizing Europe’s Musical Past
- 14 Global Histories of European Art
- 15 Globalizing European Military History
- 16 Deglobalizing the Global History of Europe
- Afterword: Global Histories of Modern Europe
- Index
9 - Global Material Culture in Early Modern and Modern Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2025
- Globalizing Europe
- Globalizing Europe
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Global Europe
- 2 Global Conjunctures and the Remaking of European Political History
- 3 Making Europe’s Economy
- 4 European Intellectual History after the Global Turn
- 5 Religion and the Global History of Europe
- 6 European Social History and the Global Turn
- 7 Europe’s Place in Global Environmental History
- 8 Global Turns in European History and the History of Consumption
- 9 Global Material Culture in Early Modern and Modern Europe
- 10 Migration and European History’s Global Turn
- 11 Race in the Global History of Europe
- 12 Globalizing European Gender History
- 13 Globalizing Europe’s Musical Past
- 14 Global Histories of European Art
- 15 Globalizing European Military History
- 16 Deglobalizing the Global History of Europe
- Afterword: Global Histories of Modern Europe
- Index
Summary
This chapter addresses the place of material culture in the global turn in European history. How did extra-European objects come to be part of, and sometimes even define, the materiality of Europe? Goods from outside Europe have gained attention as objects of historical research through several separate pathways: the focus on global goods in the field of economic history on the one hand, and the growing presence of ethnographic objects and anthropological approaches in historical studies on the other. The thinking about material culture in Europe has profoundly changed with the integration of the global turn. From considering European material culture only from within a tightly bordered European perspective, approaches have shifted to not only identifying the ubiquity of non-European goods within European material landscapes but also recognising the impossibility of maintaining a distinction between European and non-European. European material culture is now understood to be full of traces that lead back to empire, colonial oppression, and the exploitation of labour. It includes objects that that were created elsewhere for European consumers, objects that were brought to Europe by collectors and (scientific) explorers, as well as European-made objects consumed and/or recreated in other parts of the world.
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- Globalizing EuropeA History, pp. 123 - 137Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025