Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies

Inger Leemans, Anne Goldgar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000330328
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies researches the development of knowledge economies in Early Modern Europe. Starting with the Southern and Northern Netherlands as important early hubs for marketing knowledge, it analyses knowledge economies in the dynamics of a globalizing world.

The book brings together scholars and perspectives from history, art history, material culture, book history, history of science and literature to analyse the relationship between knowledge and markets. How did knowledge grow into a marketable product? What knowledge about markets was available in this period, and how did it develop? By connecting these questions the authors show how knowledge markets operated, not only economically but also culturally, through communication and affect. Knowledge societies are analysed as affective communities, spaces and practices. Compelling case studies describe the role of emotions such as hope, ambition, desire, love, fascination, adventure and disappointment – on driving merchants, contractors and consumers to operate in the market of knowledge. In so doing, the book offers innovative perspectives on the development of knowledge markets and the valuation of knowledge.

Introducing the reader to different perspectives on how knowledge markets operated from both an economic and cultural perspective, this book will be of great use to students, graduates and scholars of early modern history, economic history, the history of emotions and the history of the Low Countries.

1

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge – market – affect: knowledge societies as affective economies

Inger Leemans and Anne Goldgar

In the anonymous painting ‘Glorification of Commerce and Science’ we find a colourful visualization of an early modern knowledge economy (Figure 1.1).¹ Painted sometime between 1625 and 1645 in the Southern Netherlands, it depicts a world full of knowledge which is directly connected to trade, commerce, and prosperity. In the building at the left, producers of knowledge are busy at work: men of letters read books, examine globes, discuss their findings and write them down. They study geology, geometry, astronomy, and the fine arts: all aspects of useful knowledge that might result in better fortifications, safer navigation or other practical results. One of the scholars points out the three young consumers of knowledge in the centre of the picture, assiduously acquiring forms of literacy such as writing, reading, and – as the books and instruments around them indicate – also medicine, philosophy, mathematics, accounting, cartography, and the arts.

Figure 1.1 Attrib. to Jan Brueghel II, Glorification of Commerce and Science (The Children of Mercury), c. 1649. Oil on canvas, 70 × 92,3 cm. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: SK-A-3027

Figure 1.2 Collecting Knowledge. Antwerp 1570. Design: Jan van der Straet. Engraver: Pieter Jalhea Furnius. Publisher: Hieronymus Cock. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-102.543

Figure 1.3 Meeting in a bookstore. Scene from A.J. Montfleury’s theatre play L'Impromtu de Condé (1698). Engraving: Caspar Luyken. Publisher: Adriaan Braakman. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-1896-A-19368-1595

This studious and industrious knowledge society is presided over by Mercury, god of commerce and of the arts. Through Mercury the painting seems to indicate that the search for knowledge is strongly connected to the economy. This is also underlined by the urban landscape and harbour in the right-hand corner, and by the riches Mercury distributes across the land. The implication is that those who sail out in search of knowledge can return with ample credit, a cornucopia full of riches. Economic prosperity can both be the cause and the effect of the development of knowledge.

The painting also indicates that the knowledge economy is a highly affective phenomenon. The younger and older learners seem passionate about gathering knowledge. Mercury’s golden chariot is drawn forward by desire: roosters, symbols of watchfulness and lust, are lured to new heights by the exotic birds flying before them. The search for knowledge and profit is propelled by fascination for the unknown, by the promises of the market, the desire for more, and – for these roosters – maybe even by the wish to become a better version of one’s own species.

This desire, however, is also mocked in the ‘underworld’, where monkeys experiment with alchemical equipment, trying to distil new, powerful elixirs and thereby a shortcut to riches. This is a place of animal spirits, of excess, and of comic inversion. That these creatures are trying to stretch the limits of knowledge too far is not only implied by their nature – they are monkeys aping the natural order – but also by the pile of books between them and the children, where Virgil and Galen lie next to Dr. Faustus. Solid knowledge can contribute to a broader human enterprise and to economic benefits, but the possible profit can also turn out to be risky, a monkey’s game. Mercury’s cornucopia not only distributes pearls, tobacco, music, and joy, but also masks and dice. The open theatre and the masked commedia dell’arte figures further warn against the possibly hazardous and idle nature of human endeavour.

This anonymous painting was not anomalous, but instead can be placed in a series of similar depictions of the relation between knowledge, commerce, and affect. We take this image, and comparable images from the period, as an emblem for our enterprise in this book, where we examine the complex relations between these three crucial entities in the early modern period. The fact that the painting was one of several on this theme signals that in this period a change occurred in the way knowledge was valued.²

The value of knowledge

What is the value of knowledge? What is the relation between knowledge, market, and affect? These questions have gained urgency as our current global knowledge economies are undergoing fundamental shifts. Traditional bastions of the consolidation, valuation, and transmission of knowledge, such as universities, media, and publishers, are currently being challenged. Criticism is growing about educational institutions which run their ‘business’ like factories, reducing knowledge to numbers and income. In the political realm, terms such as ‘post-truth politics’, ‘alternative facts’, and ‘emocracy’ indicate a re-evaluation of knowledge versus beliefs, lies, and emotions. The global information network is now perceived as a disconnected series of social media bubbles, while at the same time information flows are increasingly monitored and controlled by states and corporations.

These current shifts in the global knowledge society demand critical analysis, historical perspectives, and methodologies to analyze such complex and problematic notions as ‘knowledge’, ‘marketed knowledge’, ‘global knowledge society’, and ‘knowledge economy’. When and how did knowledge become a commodity: a fixed and reproducible product that can be distributed and sold through markets? How did large groups of people become so passionate about knowledge that they did not hesitate to regularly invest a considerable percentage of their income in knowledge products? How can we study the valuation of knowledge?

This volume aims to analyze the connection between knowledge, market, and affect, by turning to one of the defining moments in the history of knowledge societies: the early modern period. This period witnessed an explosive expansion in the production, distribution, and consumption of knowledge on a global scale. It was a period of rapid change which posed challenges to existing modes of the organization of knowledge. New media developed, and the landscape of traditional knowledge authorities was thoroughly reorganized. Through the invention of the printing press, the growth of state bureaucracies, the founding of academies and of knowledge-hungry trading companies, the production and distribution of knowledge evolved into an international, even global, interactive process.³

In 2015, the international research project Creating a Knowledge Society in a Globalizing World (1450–1800) was established to study the development of knowledge societies in the early modern period, with the Northern and Southern Netherlands as primary case studies.⁴ Our volume results from this project. We focus on the economics of knowledge societies by analyzing the interrelation between knowledge and markets, specifically from the aspect of affect and emotion.⁵ Our claim is that the commodification of knowledge in the period 1500-1750 has been under-researched, and that in order to understand the development of knowledge economies in the early modern period, we need to take emotions, or affects, into account. This volume provides eleven case studies, which analyze the interrelation between knowledge, markets, and affects. Before we introduce these three key concepts, we will first explain why we have focused particularly on the Netherlands.⁶

The Southern and Northern Netherlands as knowledge economies

The highly developed, commercialized and urbanized Southern and Northern Netherlands provide a useful case study for studying the connection between knowledge and market. These were societies in flux, undergoing rapid changes to their politics, economy, and culture, which posed challenges to the existing modes of the organization of knowledge. With their decentralized political power structures and their fast-expanding global trade networks, the Southern and Northern Netherlands offered a fertile breeding ground for the development of knowledge communities. In the urban trading zones of the Netherlands, different cultures and divergent social and professional groups mixed, forming new kinds of exchanges and interactions. Changing structures, and the new products beginning to flow into these markets, demanded new forms of knowledge, as did new connections with cultures abroad.

In the historiography of the early modern Southern and Northern Netherlands, strong claims have been made about their unique nature, both in terms of their economy and their political systems, and to their knowledge culture. The Dutch Republic has been described as the ‘first modern economy’, a ‘miracle’, a ‘world power’ and a ‘financial might’ with a worldwide trading network.⁷ Antwerp and Amsterdam have been labeled as ‘world cities’, and ‘hubs’ in an emerging capitalist world economy.⁸ The development of these urban, commercial societies is considered the backbone for the development of a quite remarkable climate for knowledge in the 16th and the 17th century, with an open public sphere and a central position in the international republic of letters, producing innovative scientific and philosophic research.⁹ One of the underlying assumptions of this historiography is that in the early modern Netherlands, knowledge processes came to depend heavily on markets and commerce, with information and knowledge growing into an essential element for economic growth.¹⁰

This claim is most recently made by Jan Luiten van Zanden, who in his study The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in a Global Economy labels the Southern and Northern Netherlands as the first knowledge economy.¹¹ While the concept of ‘knowledge economy’ is generally reserved for industrial and post-industrial societies, Van Zanden states that the strong economic performance of the North Sea region, especially the Netherlands and England, should be understood in the context of the development of an advanced knowledge economy, in which human capital, knowledge, and knowledge-intensive products accumulated. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the demand for manuscripts and books shifted from clergy and the church to the lay public, mostly urban elites. This led to a spectacular growth in European book production, from around 1,000 books per million inhabitants in Western Europe, to 10,000 around 1400, and 100,000 in the 17th century.¹² The Southern and Northern Netherlands became leaders in this market in the 16th and 17th centuries, with England taking over in the 18th century.

Recent studies in the history of knowledge also describe the Dutch Republic in the Golden Age as an example of an early knowledge economy, where scholars, traders, and the creative industries helped to turn knowledge into a commodity. These studies position the Netherlands as a truly global knowledge economy, building a knowledge market within the context of expanding trade networks, inventing exoticism in print, and developing cosmopolitan ideals for the world of letters.¹³ The vast literature on the history of collecting and the exchange of goods and knowledge products also hi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: knowledge – market – affect: knowledge societies as affective economies
• Part I: Wish economies and affective communities
• Part II: Marketing and managing knowledge and affects
• Index