Early modern technology and European integration

The project "Early modern technology and European integration" argues that territorial competition, in the early modern period (c. 1500-1800), contributed to shaping a coherent and self-sustaining path of technological development in Europe. Usually, technology-related integration in Europe is perceived as a phenomenon of the late nineteenth and, in particular, the twentieth century. To the contrary, the proposed project aims to show that a taciturn unification process already evolved with increasing speed in the early modern period, still before the onset of industrialisation. The project is thus devoted to analyzing a paradox: In early modern Europe, economic and technological leadership was much sought for. Once it had been achieved in a certain sector, however, after some time it proved impossible to prevent the respective knowledge from circulating across political borders. The continuous struggle among European territories for technological supremacy in the end thus fostered the exchange of technological devices, ideas, and a coherent ideology of innovation. In the early modern period, this competition in particular led to the establishment of "cultures of innovation" to promote technological change like the patent system, scientific academies, and intensive communication networks. While stately support for such "cultures of innovation" assumed them to act for the benefit of a given territory alone, knowledge exchange in fact often occurred on a European level. Not the least, the medial and institutional framework of these "cultures of innovation" itself tended to be shaped quite uniformly across Europe. In the nineteenth century, all such structural similarities facilitated a homogenous development towards to modern industrialized consumer societies. Technology transfer in early modern Europe has usually been perceived as part of national competition. The proposed project, however, explores the integrative function this process had in the long run and, to a great extent, against the intentions of the historical actors. In analyzing this development, the methodological framework of the project draws from approaches of economic history and the history of technology as well as from more recent concepts of a "history of knowledge" that transcends traditional boundaries between "practical" and "scientific" bodies of knowledge. The envisioned outcome of the project is a monographic study that argues for the importance of territorial competition in shaping a coherent development path of European technology in the early modern period. With this approach, the project will integrate research results of economic history and the history of technology into the mainstream of historical research. The issues investigated by the proposed project smoothly enter into research agendas pursued at Salzburg University, in particular those of the chair for economic and social history (Prof. Dr. Reinhold Reith), and the Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies (Prof. Dr. Puntscher-Riekmann).