📋 Tender Overview
Sustained Concerns: Administration Of Mineral Resources In Central Europe, 1550-1850
Investigating Economic, Scientific, And Sustainability Models Of Early Miningin The Past, Mining Generally Followed A Pattern: Ores Were Discovered And Extracted, The Mining Community Thrived, And Then The Mine Closed Down. However, In Central Europe From About 1550 To 1850, State-Employed Administrators Strategically Prolonged Mining Activities Over Decades. Reflecting On Why And How They Did So Opens The Possibility Of Advancing Debates In Economic And Environmental History, And History Of Science And Technology. Funded By The European Research Council, The Scarce Project Seeks To Introduce The History Of Resource Management As A Unique Field Of Study, Using Archival Mining Records From Central Europe As A Case Study. The Project Will Put Forward New Theories On The History Of Economic Development, On Innovation In Technology And Science, As Well As On The Provenance Of Resource Sustainability.
Funded Under
European Research Council (Erc)
Total Cost
€ 1 403 898,00
Eu Contribution
€ 1 403 898,00
Coordinated By
Universitat Wien
Austria
Start Date
1 November 2023
End Date
31 October 2028
Objective
Early modern mining often played out as a drama in three acts: I. Ores are Discovered, II. Communities Flourish, III. The Mines Collapse. Across Central Europe, however, this drama took an unusual turn: emerging territorial states stepped in to reorganise the sector and suspended the collapse of mining for years, decades, and centuries.
Understanding why and how state-employed administrators prolonged the lifespan of mines has great potential to advance debates in economic history, history of science and technology, and environmental history. The principal aim of this project is to open up the history of resource management as a field of study whose questions and results are equally well integrated in these three fields. It will use Central European mining as a high-stakes case to prove the viability of such a history. By doing so, it will provide
(1) a new account of capitalist development by showing how an industry in seemingly underdeveloped Central Europe shaped two important building blocks of modern economies: the rationalisation of labour, and the accumulation of capital.
(2) a new understanding of technoscientific innovation in proto-industrial settings by showing how administrative procedures (accounting, reporting) shaped scientists/technicians’ understanding of natural processes.
(3) a new genealogy for modern sustainability by focusing attention on the contradictions that shaped the extraction of non-renewable resources.
To achieve these aims, four researchers (1 PI, 1 Postdoc, 2 PhD) will analyse thousands of administrative reports from across Central Europe, using a new method, history of bureaucratic knowledge, based on recent advances in the history of science. They will work on four processes through which administrators ma
