Cotton in Context: Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-speaking World (1500–1900) PDF by Kim Siebenhüner, John Jordan, Gabi Schopf

Inhalt

Preface
There is a saying that cotton changed the world: a fabric that for centuries had been imported predominantly from India first revolutionised the European textile industry, then the erstwhile polycentric world order. The engagement with cotton has also altered historiography, albeit in a slightly less radical way. For some time now, it has positioned the history of textiles at the intersection of global history, the history of material culture and the history of consumption and shopping, thus remapping a field of research which it shares with art historians and museologists.

This volume aims to contribute to the remapping of the field. To do so, it firstly seeks to draw attention to the German-speaking world and, secondly, to engage the German-speaking world in current debates in this field. The volume is based on a conference held at the University of Bern between 14 and 16 April 2016. We wish to take this opportunity to once more thank all the participants for the enriching, interdisciplinary dialogue – alongside the authors in this volume, this includes Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, Karolina Hutkova, Ulrich Pfister, Burkhard Pottler and Meha Priyadarshini. Our special thanks to the authors for agreeing to revise their contributions to the volume. Their work is joined by a contribution by Claudia Ravazzolo, who was a member of the project team from the outset.

The fact that we were able to hold the conference in the first place is thanks to a number of donors. Here, we must first thank the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation as well as the Burgerbibliothek of Bern. We are very grateful to these institutions for their financial support.

The conference volume is part of the larger research project “Textiles and Material Culture in Transition: Consumption, Innovation and Global Interaction in the Early Modern Period”, which was conducted between 2013 and 2018 at the University of Bern’s Institute of History under the direction of Kim Siebenhuner. We are once again grateful to the Swiss National Fund for financing this project and the accompanying research professorship.

It gave us the freedom for an intense period of research, the results of which in part inform this volume. Bern provided us with the perfect environment for our work. At the Institute of History, we benefited from our affiliation to the division of Early Modern History and the collaboration with Christian Windler and his team. We can look back on stimulating joint lunches and colloquia which proved that even historians interested in diplomatic history and those suddenly interested in textiles can learn from one another! Andre Holenstein has been an enthusiastic supporter of our project from the very beginning. He saved us from the pitfalls of Swiss history on several occasions. It goes without saying that any reference in this volume to Switzerland as a single entity, rather than the Swiss cantons, is entirely our fault. Stephan Scheuzger influenced our work to an extent he is perhaps unaware of. We are indebted to him for encouraging us to define the extent to which our project, which is predominantly based on sources and objects held in Swiss archives, can claim to add to a global historical perspective. Thankfully, this claim does not result solely from our adventures in Indian textile workshops! We had wonderful collaboration partners on site, not least in the person of Joachim Eibach and the team from the “Doing house” project. We are very grateful to him as well as to Nadine Amsler, Sarah Baumgarten, Michael Hirt, Meike Knittel, Michael Offermann and Sarah Rindlisbacher for the joint discussions and teaching events, critique and feedback.

Along with the Bern University of the Arts (HKB), the Abegg Foundation in Riggisberg and the Bern Historical Museum, the other advantages of our Bern location included the presence of the professorships in Early Modern Art History and History of the Textile Arts. From the very beginning, we found a co-champion for the history of material culture in Christine Gottler. We are indebted to Birgitt Borkopp-Restle for everything she taught us about textiles and the applied arts in the early modern period, from the simple difference between plain weave and satin weave to an understanding of the materiality of production techniques. We thank her not just for putting us in touch with curators but also for the joint visits to collections, which broadened our horizons.

Since April 2016, the work on our research project, the dissertation projects and the conference volume went hand in hand. John Jordan has taken on the task of copy-editing the contributions by predominantly German native-speakers for an English-language academic audience; Kim Siebenhuner has finalised the manuscript; and in Jena, Hannah Gratz, Anna Bundt and Frances Hollein have thankfully created the index. It is thanks to the ever-empathetic and capable Dorothee Rheker-Wunsch and the team at Bohlau that the manuscript has been transformed into a book. For this, we extend our sincere gratitude.