Jun.-Prof. Dr. Anne Sophie Overkamp
Associate Professor for History of Science and Technology
Research
The Tropics on the Windowsill – Domestication and Commercialization of Nature in the Age of High Imperialism (second book project)
The research project uses the tension between imperial expansion and intimate domesticity, scientific rigorism and aesthetic valorization, commercial interests and popular pedagogical impetus to shed a new and different light on the relationship between nature, culture and society in the age of high imperialism. It explores the market logic behind so-called global goods, examines the material appropriation and domestication of foreign nature and asks about the presence of the colonial in everyday life. With its focus on a specific practice, houseplant culture, the project understands global interweaving processes on an individual level and embeds them locally and area-specifically. The study focuses on Germany and Belgium from the mid-nineteenth century to 1930. The time frame of the project is derived from the exponentially increasing availability of tropical and subtropical plants on the European market since about 1850 thanks to improved transport infrastructure (railways, steamships) and technical innovations in plant transport (Ward's box). The end point is based on the fundamental changes in horticulture and the plant trade that were already announced in the post-war period and then solidified in the course of the world economic crisis in 1929. During this period, both countries were not only regionally fragmented but also socially, politically and economically highly differentiated. For this reason, studying Germany and Belgium brings the interweaving of highly imperial globalization and nation-building on the one hand and colonized nature and the local environment on the other into particularly clear focus.
Of Species and Specimens: Tracing Nonhuman Histories in Times of Imperial Expansion (International workshop and publication of special issue) (together with Sabine Hanke, Universität Tübingen)
Twenty years ago, the historian of science and cultural critic Donna J. Haraway published The Companion Species Manifesto, a thought-provoking text in which she explored notions of cohabitation, co-evolution and cross-species sociality. While Haraway focused on the relationship between humans and dogs in this very personal treatise, her concept of companion species encompasses all organic beings which have shaped and influenced human life, ranging from enterobacteria, rice and tulips to bees and horses. After all, we all exist in in a multi-layered socio-ecological relationship that belies the traditional dualism of nature and culture and the dissociation of humans from their natural environment. This interaction between human and nonhuman life forms was even intensified during times of imperial expansion. Previously distinct societies, flora, and fauna came into contact, were observed, catalogued, mobilized, exchanged, and utilized in particular ways.
In a workshop held at the University of Tübingen in July 2024, my colleague Sabine Hanke and I brought together scholars working on key questions of nonhuman agency in times of imperial expansion, such as the various expressions of agency by nonhuman life forms, multispecies encounters, as well as questions of boundary objects and boundary making. For a report on the workshop see www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-146141
We are currently editing a special issue dedicated to this topic.
Consumption at the German Country House, 1780-1830 (book project)
The period around 1800 is characterized by profound upheavals, albeit in Germany these differed from region to region. The many changes deeply influenced life in the many forms of "country houses“ to be found in the German lands. The temporary abolition of the nobility and feudal burdens in the Rhineland, its mediatization in the southwest and the agrarian reforms in the northeast not only changed the economic conditions for the buildings, but also transformed relations with the population surrounding the house. As a rule, country houses were initially still owned by nobles, but in increasing numbers, at least in the western and eastern part, could also be inhabited by commoners. While the Age of Revolutions led to an increased criticism of the nobility, all these events also had an impact on the self-confidence and claim to leadership of the (noble) country house residents. Law lost considerable importance for the emphasis on status. Wars and reforms caused incomes to melt down.
Against this background, did country house owners seek new ways of manifesting their social status? Consumption and the staging of material culture can be an essential factor for external demarcation and, according to the premise of the sub-project, can thus be examined as reactions to the challenges of profound structural change around 1800. Based on this premise, the project asks about the design of country houses, i.e. the spatial arrangements and interiors, the consumption practices both up- and downstairs and the material culture used by country house inhabitants. Denomination, gender and social class form further categories of analysis.
“Diligence, Faith and Education – Merchant families as polite society [gebildete Stände] in the Wupper Valley, 1760-1840 (PhD project, completed)
In my dissertation, I dealt with merchant-manufacturers living a proto-industrial region, the Wupper valley, asking how merchants became part of a specific social formation, that is „polite society“, or „gebildete Stände“ in German, around 1800. Its main methodological concern was an integrated approach to economic and cultural history against the backdrop of global history.
To do so, my study of four representative merchant families in the duchy of Berg in the late 18th and early 19th centuries looked at the interrelationship and brought into dialogue various research approaches: Global and Atlantic (economic) history, proto-industrialization, history of consumption on the one hand, and research on the bourgeoisie [Bürgertumsforschung] and polite society on the other.
The women and men of the merchant families were analyzed not solely as economic actors, but in the various contexts of their lives. Firstly, I examined techniques of market development and commercial accounting, secondly I studied extraordinary mercantile situations such as bankruptcy, and thirdly, I related these phenomena to cultural norms and religious practices. I also looked at strategies of education, marriage and public conviviality and examined to what extent these were influenced and informed by mercantile requirements. By engaging with the subject at hand in this two-folded manner, so the main hypothesis, economic macro-processes such as global commercialization can be comprehensively analyzed and their cultural conditioning appropriately understood and historicized.
