Project Details
Projekt
Transcultural Mediators, Strategies and Entangled Modernities. Transportation and Infrastructure in the Imperial Ports of Odessa and Varna in 19 century
Applicant
Professor Dr. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
from 2017 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 354235247
The objective of the project is to reconstruct the trans-Ottoman interactions in the Black sea region by analysing the establishment of the steam shipping transportation system in the 19th century and the infrastructures related to it. Biographies and practical intercultural mediation strategies of key figures in the port cities of Odessa and Varna will be central for the study.The development of the steam shipping transportation system had a cumulative effect upon the establishment of other types of transport infrastructures such as railways, roads, post and telegraph, as well as for the development of trade, banking and insurance sectors. In the case of Varna this concerned accounting and trade law, or in the case of Odessa the education of captains, machine operators and other specialists. It also led to the introduction of new diplomatic relations such as consulates or international companies branches.The research will be divided into three parts. The first one reflects upon the role of the two port cities as trans-imperial places of transfer of knowledge and transregional networks. The second one contextualizes Varna and Odessa ports as centres of cross-cultural, commercial and political influences in the Ottoman, in the Russian Empire and beyond during the 19th century. Finally, the third and most important part analyses the very institutionalization of the steam shipping transportation system in the Black sea as a result of transcultural practices and experiences.The study will follow the methodological frame of the entangled histories and modernities in the field of cultural history and biography studies. The methods include interpretative analysis of original sources; normative documents, diaries, letters; visual analysis of photo archives; network analysis. The project is based on two case studies of shipping companies and four biographies. The case studies include the establishment and further development of the Russian Shipping and Trade Company: RS&TC in 1856, the first joint-stock shipping company in Russia. Then it moves to the Ottoman/Bulgarian case, which investigates the establishment of the first private Shipping Trade Company Providence in 1862 in Istanbul. The biographies analysed will be of the creator of RS&TC, Admiral Nikolay A. Arkas, and of the creator of the Providence company, Petar Petrov, in Varna. Furthermore, the project will follow the biographies of the leading figures for the institutionalization of transport infrastructures in Varna, the Jewish brothers Tedeschi. The hypothesis is that the institutionalization of steam shipping, in spite of the differences between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires, is possible as a result of efforts of persons who act as mobile players. Therefore, their intercultural mediation efforts, practices of translation of the accepted as universal Western knowledge and their networks will be subject of the analysis.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
