1 00:00:05,280 --> 00:00:09,420 Very good. So this paper is going to be delivered as a double act. 2 00:00:09,420 --> 00:00:19,140 And first of all, we are absolutely delighted to be such a wonderful conference and indeed share the floor with some of the scholars who have most 3 00:00:19,140 --> 00:00:28,590 contributed to the divergence debate and also to the study of the economic and scientific change in the pre-industrial world. 4 00:00:28,590 --> 00:00:36,300 Our paper comes from a project Dark Matter and I have been developing over the past two years, 5 00:00:36,300 --> 00:00:45,060 leading hopefully up to the production, the publication of a book and asked from the title. 6 00:00:45,060 --> 00:00:50,070 It has four key words that are Silk China, Europe and pre-modern, 7 00:00:50,070 --> 00:00:56,580 three of which are well known in the divergence debate and indeed also in the history of capitalism. 8 00:00:56,580 --> 00:01:01,650 China Europe pre-modern yet the fourth that is quite central to what we do. 9 00:01:01,650 --> 00:01:11,160 Silk is less so was silk is at the heart of the economy and culture of China. 10 00:01:11,160 --> 00:01:17,490 It has been a barely mentioned, I would say, in debate, in debates over divergence. 11 00:01:17,490 --> 00:01:29,250 And similarly, an expression that I would like to coin that is silk capitalism is not yet into the scholarly jargon. 12 00:01:29,250 --> 00:01:39,900 By contrast, cotton, very dear to me, has been given great importance in narrative, not just divergence but and industrialisation. 13 00:01:39,900 --> 00:01:49,440 But thanks to the new history of capitalism, to slavery, its contribution to capitalist transformation in the Americas and elsewhere in the world. 14 00:01:49,440 --> 00:01:57,060 Silk never had slave plantations. Slave traders, slave traders might have liked to dress in silk. 15 00:01:57,060 --> 00:02:05,940 It was not the fibre of the industrial revolution and apparently was never much implicated in narratives of divergence. 16 00:02:05,940 --> 00:02:14,130 Yet it was also the same time the most important manufacturing sector in Tang Ming and Qing China. 17 00:02:14,130 --> 00:02:20,370 It was by far the most technologically sophisticated branch of textile manufacturing. 18 00:02:20,370 --> 00:02:27,480 Its products were widely traded along the Silk Roads and later on maritime routes and even in Europe. 19 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:33,870 It emerged in the Renaissance as one of the most important sectors in the production of complex, 20 00:02:33,870 --> 00:02:46,500 high value added products produced through processes that were aided by some of the most sophisticated late mediaeval and renaissance technologies. 21 00:02:46,500 --> 00:02:52,260 So we are all too aware that silk of silk, marginal position in industrialisation, 22 00:02:52,260 --> 00:03:00,670 divergence and the rise of Western capitalism, and partially this is a result of the trajectory of silk. 23 00:03:00,670 --> 00:03:10,220 It did not become. The modern fibre par excellence in the way in which Cotton did. 24 00:03:10,220 --> 00:03:14,450 And yet if we go beyond the purely economic. 25 00:03:14,450 --> 00:03:23,090 It became actually an incredibly important epistemic object informing scientific change, acoustics, construction. 26 00:03:23,090 --> 00:03:28,010 More recently, chemical engineering, polymer research and so on. 27 00:03:28,010 --> 00:03:39,170 Yet not withstanding all of these, as I said, silk and the fact that silk supported local economies in renaissance cities in China and so on. 28 00:03:39,170 --> 00:03:48,660 This never became, in the case of Europe, at least a kind of central feature of of their economies. 29 00:03:48,660 --> 00:03:53,220 But opens for us to issues, the first one is the ways in which, 30 00:03:53,220 --> 00:03:58,440 as we have discussed in the previous panel, divergence have been debated on hard evidence, 31 00:03:58,440 --> 00:04:08,760 GDP, economic growth, etc. rather than on processes of change mentalities, principles of social cultural differences. 32 00:04:08,760 --> 00:04:14,850 Silk might have not embodied all the characteristics that made cult and a good process of divergence. 33 00:04:14,850 --> 00:04:21,030 But both in China and in Europe, as well as in many parts of Asia, the manufacturing, 34 00:04:21,030 --> 00:04:30,210 trade and use of silk was a matter of considerable importance for artisan rich consumers and indeed states, and we come back towards the end. 35 00:04:30,210 --> 00:04:41,280 On the issue of state, the action of states and in relation to knowledge and wealth generation, what we call living well. 36 00:04:41,280 --> 00:04:51,390 The second element is silk brings forth the limited use of bean and cans reciprocal comparisons. 37 00:04:51,390 --> 00:04:57,840 All the limitations of silk that I just outlined are clearly not applicable to China. 38 00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:03,990 From China's perspective, silk, not cotton, would have been the terrain of global competition, 39 00:05:03,990 --> 00:05:07,860 as indeed it was in markets as different as Western Europe. 40 00:05:07,860 --> 00:05:12,480 The Ottoman Empire and Latin America before 18:00. 41 00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:18,390 It is only from an exposed European perspective that cotton is the fibre of choice, 42 00:05:18,390 --> 00:05:25,920 as silk reigned supreme over the entire early modern period pre-modern period. 43 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:27,940 In the rest of the paper, we would like to do two things. 44 00:05:27,940 --> 00:05:38,850 The first one is to say a little bit, and that will be dogma about the overarching shape of our projects and then towards the end, 45 00:05:38,850 --> 00:05:47,700 give you a mini hint to one of the topics that is really that the action of the state in particular and city culture, 46 00:05:47,700 --> 00:05:56,820 and we want in particular to give centrality to the to the concept of innovation or perhaps to try to change that 47 00:05:56,820 --> 00:06:07,950 concept for our young use and to reflect a little bit again on comparative methods in the divergence debate. 48 00:06:07,950 --> 00:06:09,780 Magnus, thank you very much, Jojo. 49 00:06:09,780 --> 00:06:16,530 I would like to continue on before I continue to say one note because I should be really grateful to Patrick O'Brien, 50 00:06:16,530 --> 00:06:20,040 to Maxine Burke, who is actually sitting there and John McCain, 51 00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:25,770 because they are actually the reason why a historian of science who does actually China and the 52 00:06:25,770 --> 00:06:31,230 pre-modern era and an economic historian who does pre-modern to the modern cotton industry, 53 00:06:31,230 --> 00:06:40,050 really sit together and try to think about, like how they can actually do such a project in a way that is rewarding for both parties. 54 00:06:40,050 --> 00:06:45,600 And the reason actually why the book is not ready is because we are a historian of science and an economic historian, 55 00:06:45,600 --> 00:06:55,320 so there is much to debate about. So I would like to give you a little run through through the three major aims of the 56 00:06:55,320 --> 00:07:00,540 book and then also give you an idea about how the book actually tries to approach them. 57 00:07:00,540 --> 00:07:05,280 We cannot go into each chapter, so we give you only short snippets of that. 58 00:07:05,280 --> 00:07:11,730 So one of the aim is that we want to connect history of technology and economic history, debates on innovation. 59 00:07:11,730 --> 00:07:14,940 As you know, as you all know, there is a huge debate on that, 60 00:07:14,940 --> 00:07:24,330 and the history of technology has really moved away very much from talking innovation and economic history is moving again into innovation, 61 00:07:24,330 --> 00:07:27,300 even though it discuss it entirely differently. So, for instance, 62 00:07:27,300 --> 00:07:35,670 economic history very much looks at innovation history as a question of machine and the history of technology and the history of science, 63 00:07:35,670 --> 00:07:39,540 probably more as a question of knowledge as assets. 64 00:07:39,540 --> 00:07:45,180 Then there is this question of technological and innovation and thus knowledge as material practise. 65 00:07:45,180 --> 00:07:52,200 So we've moved away in the history of science is looking at as knowledge as something that is only idea driven 66 00:07:52,200 --> 00:07:58,050 to something that is very much related to the practises in which the people live and from where they come. 67 00:07:58,050 --> 00:08:05,790 And the third aim is to looking at how the human quest for living well relates to technological changes and in particular to cultural approaches, 68 00:08:05,790 --> 00:08:15,660 to novel practises and ideas with which I confess here that even though the history of technology says innovation is not the topic to discuss, 69 00:08:15,660 --> 00:08:22,830 it cannot be denied that certainly in history, in our development, constantly new things appear, 70 00:08:22,830 --> 00:08:28,440 things new for us, things new for society, things new for that place, things new for our time. 71 00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:32,970 Even though if we might find them differently out, 72 00:08:32,970 --> 00:08:40,890 the project that we want to pursue are how we think we get out of this debate and can actually pursue 73 00:08:40,890 --> 00:08:48,180 these three aims is by introducing a new concept that we call Making Things Work and the work. 74 00:08:48,180 --> 00:08:57,130 Of producing value in it. And I now I've lost it. 75 00:08:57,130 --> 00:09:05,020 So here you can see actually the run through through the seven chapters that all begin actually with a 76 00:09:05,020 --> 00:09:12,940 vignette on things and that all try to discuss a different problem that this innovation discourse has done. 77 00:09:12,940 --> 00:09:17,020 And the first is the question of NATO's nature and technologies. 78 00:09:17,020 --> 00:09:21,340 Or do technologies evolve? Are they similar to a Darwinian concept? 79 00:09:21,340 --> 00:09:29,770 Innovation as power writing and codification as a motor of innovation machines as a motor of innovation expert, 80 00:09:29,770 --> 00:09:35,920 humans best practise ideas are the market a driver of innovation? 81 00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:45,250 We think that we can relate all these things to this concept of making things work because we understand things very much from an approach. 82 00:09:45,250 --> 00:09:52,420 But I would at least call informed by Chinese philosophy and Chinese approaches so that we want to look at the nature of things, 83 00:09:52,420 --> 00:10:00,670 the institutionalisation of things. So the work they are doing or they what they should be doing, the working on things things put to work, 84 00:10:00,670 --> 00:10:08,020 working on people and things and the making of things by working together and by making things. 85 00:10:08,020 --> 00:10:22,150 And this is our thing. Silks work as commodity value, money memory, our knowledge, our comparative approach takes on purpose. 86 00:10:22,150 --> 00:10:30,610 The long duration. So we also want to move away from this idea of the 18th and 19th century gives us an answer to the question 87 00:10:30,610 --> 00:10:38,620 of how you actually think about innovation because making things work is actually so to say that we've 88 00:10:38,620 --> 00:10:47,710 somehow forgotten to look at innovation so as the attempt to look to do things in a different way and then 89 00:10:47,710 --> 00:10:55,540 to gain power and wealth as something that is an everyday spectacle so that it's nothing that is aggrandise. 90 00:10:55,540 --> 00:11:03,100 And that also in the 19th century was a big effort, as David Edgerton has shown us, this is actually not the case. 91 00:11:03,100 --> 00:11:08,980 So we look back at two periods the young dynasty, which roughly is only the framework, 92 00:11:08,980 --> 00:11:16,420 which is a period when we have a very global Eurasian context in which silk expands considerably. 93 00:11:16,420 --> 00:11:22,570 So it's a rough idea. But also, I would argue, in which the young dynasty actually really uses very, 94 00:11:22,570 --> 00:11:28,660 very similar methods of looking at trade that you could compare to capitalism. 95 00:11:28,660 --> 00:11:34,810 I wouldn't claim it is capitalism, but that you could compare it to capitalist methods and Italy. 96 00:11:34,810 --> 00:11:41,440 Florence Piedmont And as you can see, these are different periods. 97 00:11:41,440 --> 00:11:51,520 So this comparison is different to what Ken Pomeranz and are being warned if they look that same region, same period. 98 00:11:51,520 --> 00:12:01,930 Yeah, if I may say so. Instead of being synchronic type of comparison we do is they are chronic because we are moving to a much more micro level. 99 00:12:01,930 --> 00:12:05,920 And therefore, once you start moving to the level of one sector, I mean, 100 00:12:05,920 --> 00:12:12,460 to compare Italy with the Yuan Dynasty would be impossible, the sense that you have no silk at all. 101 00:12:12,460 --> 00:12:19,360 So what you are doing is to compare two trajectories that are actually not quite different, not very different, 102 00:12:19,360 --> 00:12:26,050 but they happen in two temporal temporality that are different and see what is different and what is similar. 103 00:12:26,050 --> 00:12:30,640 Of course, the result is not a divergence outcome in any sense. 104 00:12:30,640 --> 00:12:38,950 You cannot get that out of that type of comparison as an output, as an intellectual output, epistemic output. 105 00:12:38,950 --> 00:12:46,960 The other aspect to it is also geographic, because that's a point that came up earlier in terms of how are we doing really? 106 00:12:46,960 --> 00:12:56,320 And that's been really in the debates. Can I move this? Yeah. And there is also the well, then these you might say something about this. 107 00:12:56,320 --> 00:13:02,440 So if so, one thing about the linear idea is suddenly that there is a trajectory that somehow 108 00:13:02,440 --> 00:13:07,390 ends in the contemporary novel and that we then know what we have to look back. 109 00:13:07,390 --> 00:13:10,630 This is why the linearity approach, especially historians of technology, 110 00:13:10,630 --> 00:13:16,150 have said a lot about how that actually doesn't work and how we have multiple temporality is 111 00:13:16,150 --> 00:13:21,430 with different ideas about like how and what knowledge actually is and how you pursue it. 112 00:13:21,430 --> 00:13:27,490 So that's why the linearity cannot be an issue in this comparison with the space. 113 00:13:27,490 --> 00:13:34,150 The issue is if you look at a specific space in order to understand the technological change, 114 00:13:34,150 --> 00:13:38,170 then these are always arbitrary boundaries and six shows that very clear. 115 00:13:38,170 --> 00:13:45,910 So when we think of China, we talk about shifts. Most of you will have in mind that actually entire China was somehow producing silk. 116 00:13:45,910 --> 00:13:54,080 This is entirely not the case in the US, in this state. But the only place that actually did this, but there is no point on that skip. 117 00:13:54,080 --> 00:13:55,230 Yeah. All right. 118 00:13:55,230 --> 00:14:04,470 Actually, the red shirts and the orange regions, so probably those regions that you nowadays you not even consider to have hats at all. 119 00:14:04,470 --> 00:14:12,870 So at the very north of China, not the very south and from their expansive network in the Yuan Dynasty, 120 00:14:12,870 --> 00:14:20,820 that is of a very different nature and they're not cutting up grass by any political boundaries. 121 00:14:20,820 --> 00:14:26,730 So when you look at Italy, you would certainly think the city state is very cannot be the same, right? 122 00:14:26,730 --> 00:14:30,420 It's a totally different dimension. How can you actually compare them? 123 00:14:30,420 --> 00:14:39,900 But now I show you a different map. So similar in the film on this period or in this period happened, certainly not in the city. 124 00:14:39,900 --> 00:14:42,600 It happens in a large region. 125 00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:50,610 But I think as William, for instance, mentioned, there is a processing plant as a manufacturing part, there is a joining together part. 126 00:14:50,610 --> 00:15:01,080 This all goes over very broad regions, very long geographical networks in which these manufacturers actually happen. 127 00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:08,490 And I think these, for instance, also include the the broken lines of transmission that we cannot explain. 128 00:15:08,490 --> 00:15:11,220 So for instance, when you look at Europe, 129 00:15:11,220 --> 00:15:21,930 then there is a huge network of silk that moves from the Eurasian plain over Africa into Spain, where we know lots of silk produced. 130 00:15:21,930 --> 00:15:28,590 But that has totally been erased from the picture of understanding how actually this network has developed. 131 00:15:28,590 --> 00:15:34,350 But that is also very interesting to look at because when it starts to look at silk two hundred years later, 132 00:15:34,350 --> 00:15:41,610 it totally ignores this, this whole tradition. So how do we explain such things? 133 00:15:41,610 --> 00:15:50,070 Last night, I wanted to show you is related to that. Why do we actually want to talk about textile technologies? 134 00:15:50,070 --> 00:15:53,880 Textile technologies are in the 18th and 19th century, 135 00:15:53,880 --> 00:16:00,600 and here we come back to this very idea of what divergences and also useful, reliable knowledge put. 136 00:16:00,600 --> 00:16:08,040 All those are about to take a world that they really petition in terms of materials, in terms of technologies, 137 00:16:08,040 --> 00:16:15,180 in terms of economy, and to give them the very specific ideas about how these things work. 138 00:16:15,180 --> 00:16:21,150 So here you see a map that was produced by James Yates, 139 00:16:21,150 --> 00:16:27,930 who was a Manchester manufacturer and who kind of envisioned parts of the world as a kind of economy in 140 00:16:27,930 --> 00:16:34,270 which you can see you can petition the world in different fibres and those different fibres of India custom. 141 00:16:34,270 --> 00:16:39,930 And then then there is hemp and linen. And then there is this fur region up there with wool. 142 00:16:39,930 --> 00:16:49,510 And here you're very young. That's ActionScript. So it's very much at the very end of it, these. 143 00:16:49,510 --> 00:16:52,230 And when you look at the authenticity, 144 00:16:52,230 --> 00:17:01,440 then you can see that you have similar ideas in mind about how actually technologies may work with regard to a specific fibre. 145 00:17:01,440 --> 00:17:14,940 So the dynasty itself in very, let's say, Chinese approach to consider the US as the Mongols, who then were actually foreign to China itself. 146 00:17:14,940 --> 00:17:19,620 They consider themselves felt fur and plant based region in the north. 147 00:17:19,620 --> 00:17:24,240 So this area then that this is where the new silk was actually happening. 148 00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:29,160 It's only roughly it's in Sichuan and the north of China. 149 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:36,060 Then down there you have a region in which you basically have snacks, bust and plant based fibres. 150 00:17:36,060 --> 00:17:43,140 And then from the very least, from the very best, I'm sorry, wrong direction. 151 00:17:43,140 --> 00:17:48,690 You have cotton flocks to it by the end of the young dynasty. 152 00:17:48,690 --> 00:17:55,260 That idea of where fibres and rescue them ends and where these capital intensive 153 00:17:55,260 --> 00:18:01,290 these very important industries of this era actually are is very different. 154 00:18:01,290 --> 00:18:09,810 First, because the Yuan Dynasty like mutually invested in just so you see a map of their actually their 155 00:18:09,810 --> 00:18:17,300 area of trade down there and then up there where they establish made major living centres. 156 00:18:17,300 --> 00:18:24,240 I say weaving centres because in these places we know they have more than 300 500 new standards. 157 00:18:24,240 --> 00:18:30,390 So this is quite considerable for trading this sort of in this region. 158 00:18:30,390 --> 00:18:39,240 And I think then very briefly, because I don't know how much time we actually have in India by only 50 years later, 159 00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:43,410 the whole idea of where silk is has totally changed. 160 00:18:43,410 --> 00:18:47,520 So this is where we actually should be. That's the orange part of it. 161 00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:55,210 And we have cotton that is has changed too. So you have a full region in which you have silk and cotton overlapping as torture. 162 00:18:55,210 --> 00:19:04,030 Textile production regions. So this image has entirely changed. 163 00:19:04,030 --> 00:19:11,940 You have no longer one region in which you have served, but you have a large region in which you want to have both. 164 00:19:11,940 --> 00:19:16,300 So how can I have a interjection here? 165 00:19:16,300 --> 00:19:22,360 In many ways, Europe is the similar because the development, the early development of the cultural industry in Europe, 166 00:19:22,360 --> 00:19:28,010 in northern Italy and southern Germany is exactly more or less the same era in which silk. 167 00:19:28,010 --> 00:19:35,110 Places like Bologna thrives in the 14, 15, 16 century, so there is an overlap. 168 00:19:35,110 --> 00:19:43,450 In many ways you might say that going north. The the cotton story of the Lancashire is not followed necessarily is followed 169 00:19:43,450 --> 00:19:49,660 by a good start with the long gone factories in Derby in the 17th Venice, 170 00:19:49,660 --> 00:19:55,330 but is not really followed by and large scale silk industry in the UK. 171 00:19:55,330 --> 00:20:07,520 So you can see that that is again an overlap but not totally realised is more what they wanted rather than what they get, at least in. 172 00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:17,180 No definite, no connexion. So I think one of the things that we actually tried to do in this project is taking 173 00:20:17,180 --> 00:20:24,320 the Chinese idea of what you actually do in order to gain wealth and live well and to 174 00:20:24,320 --> 00:20:30,110 gain knowledge how that actually related to a very specific idea of what silk is and 175 00:20:30,110 --> 00:20:36,620 what is about how that changes over 100 to 150 years when that is really in focus. 176 00:20:36,620 --> 00:20:43,400 And then based on this very party, very successfully, but also a very difficult project, 177 00:20:43,400 --> 00:20:51,400 look back at what actually happened in Europe and how they tried to make these things work in the long run. 178 00:20:51,400 --> 00:21:00,350 Yeah, and certainly in the short run to. So we want to go also against some of the ideas that we think are in, 179 00:21:00,350 --> 00:21:08,540 like very much informing these ideas about the great and the big or the small little divergences that you actually have. 180 00:21:08,540 --> 00:21:13,070 And I think many of you really, especially in the last panel addressed this issue. 181 00:21:13,070 --> 00:21:19,790 Is this question on how much innovation actually was this out of systematic and accidental? 182 00:21:19,790 --> 00:21:26,210 I think you can actually see it. I would really flash that throughout most of the dynastic period. 183 00:21:26,210 --> 00:21:31,100 So innovation was extremely systematic and nothing was lax. 184 00:21:31,100 --> 00:21:34,820 Left to accident doesn't mean that it always worked, 185 00:21:34,820 --> 00:21:42,470 but it does mean that there is a huge investment and a huge body of thought about, like how they actually wanted to make that happen. 186 00:21:42,470 --> 00:21:51,980 We also debate the notion that there was little economic growth during the pre-industrial period, which by inclination, I would say like this. 187 00:21:51,980 --> 00:22:02,360 I think as the previous session already set a really very different concept because it is not changing so dramatically in the 19th and 20th century, 188 00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:10,940 the idea of industrialising textiles and the ideas of how you actually produce that have all been around for a long period, 189 00:22:10,940 --> 00:22:15,410 and they have been employed very differently in these regions and they are coming back, 190 00:22:15,410 --> 00:22:23,150 which is an important point to when you think about energy consumption, sustainability and the idea in the long run. 191 00:22:23,150 --> 00:22:30,230 And I think there is also a very important point about like how the very important factor that 192 00:22:30,230 --> 00:22:37,010 these whole debates do not take into account is that when you look as this grows as a power, 193 00:22:37,010 --> 00:22:44,270 as a question that makes things work, what you really need to factor in is the time factor that things actually have. 194 00:22:44,270 --> 00:22:51,830 So things have a time when they are produced and when they are consumed and when they are disappearing. 195 00:22:51,830 --> 00:22:58,730 And when you bring this into the debate of how you make things work by thinking of and about time, 196 00:22:58,730 --> 00:23:08,750 and I think you can answer these questions about what does energy consumption actually do to how is sustainable innovation coming about? 197 00:23:08,750 --> 00:23:15,740 What does sustainable growth and living well well actually mean if we can at least try to answer 198 00:23:15,740 --> 00:23:21,650 them in a way that satisfies historians of science and technology more than the current debate? 199 00:23:21,650 --> 00:23:26,480 That's.