XVIth World Economic History Congress in Stellenbosch (Südafrika), 9.-13. Juli 2012

Session: INVESTMENT STRATEGIES AND SECONDARY MARKETS: INVENTORIES IN THE DUTCH COLONIAL WORLD

Friday, July 13, 2012 Time: 13:00 - 16:30 Room: Arts Building 222 Session

Organiser: North, Michael; Malan, Antonia Malan, University of Cape Town; Mitchell, Laura J., UC Irvine

The session will present stimulating research on the material culture of the Dutch colonial world to the international economic history community. Inventories and auctions of the assets of deceased or insolvent estates are recognized as rich deposits of local information and resources for comparative economic and social history. Whilst in Dutch historiography the material world of the inventories is still solely regarded as indicator and reflection of wealth, research on colonial inventories shows different investment strategies. The Stellenbosch papers will therefore examine how different social and ethnic groups kept their wealth and invested their surplus, for example in slaves, animals, agricultural implements, houses, domestic interior etc. The second part of the session is devoted to estate sales and auctions as secondary markets for commodities and cultural objects. Products of the East (textiles, porcelain, lacquer, ivory) as imports from the Netherlands were sold to large extent as used goods in estate auctions. The papers will examine in several case studies the circulation of these objects and contextualize sellers, buyers and intermediaries socially. Furthermore, the session will stimulate the comparative research with this kind of sources, since the Digitization of these data-intensive documents (such as the transcription of the Orphan Chamber inventories at the Cape of Good Hope) facilitates work at broad regional (Indian Ocean) and even global scales (Europe and colonial north and south Americas).

Session: DID THE COUNTRIES AND AREAS AROUND THE BALTIC SEA FORM AN INTEGRATED ECONOMIC AREA BEFORE THE FIRST WORLD WAR?

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 Time: 13:00 - 16:30 Room: Arts Building 221

Session Organiser: Hjerppe, Riitta

Paper: Michael North: Integration and Desintegration in the Baltic Sea Region