• Material Culture and History of Consumption
• Economic History as Cultural History
• Urban History
• History of the Nobility (18th and 19th Century)

New Worlds of Goods. Urban Retail in Württemberg, c. 1700-1850

The history of stationary retailing in the German region has received little attention. The existing research characterizes the period before 1850 as undynamic and irrelevant to later developments. However, studies on Great Britain and the Netherlands have found ample evidence that a Retail Revolution already took place in the Early Modern period, which conditioned the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant transformation into the Modern world. The PhD project examines the development of retail trade and its significance in the larger political and commercial processes as well as in the developing consumer culture, using the example of the residential, administrative cities (Oberamtsstädte) and Free Imperial cities in the Württemberg region between 1700 and 1850. In addition to the numerical and geographic distribution of stationary retail stores, it explores the nature of stock, supplier and customer networks, the use of sales techniques for example advertising, and the importance of global goods in areas of the German “Hinterland”. It thus contributes to a better understanding of trade and consumption in southwestern Germany during the Early Modern globalization.