Workshops. Migration Matters and Migration and Entrepreneurship

On September 20th and 21st the UKRI-FLF ‘Migration, Innovation, Adaptation’ project held two workshops, organised by Rémi Dewière and Floris van Swet: the ‘Migration Matters Workshop’ and ‘Migration and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Technology Transfers’ at Northumbria University. This conference brought together an international group of scholars from Europe, Africa, and Asia, with wide-ranging areas of expertise in order to develop a global approach to issues surrounding the relationship between migration and technology transfer.

All participants attended both workshops, and contributed to vivid and fruitful exchanges, creating a stimulating synergy around the questions of migration and technological dialogue. The workshop papers presented during the workshops are currently being revised to be submitted for a journal special issue.

Programme

Day 1, Wednesday 20th, 2023, 13.30-17.00

·         13.30-14.00: Welcome

·         14.00-14.10: Workshops Introduction (Floris van Swet and Rémi Dewière)

WORKSHOP 1: Migration Matters: Networks and Institutions of Technological Transfer in the Early Modern World

·         14.10-15.25: Session 1

•        Catia Brilli (University of Insubria) – Genoese Migration and Technological Transfer in the Early-Modern Spanish Monarchy.

•        Graham Kerr (University of Reading) – “Great care is taken by us, that the King’s… Artificers are instructed and brought up” Enslaved Workers in Royal Navy Yards in the Eighteenth Century.

·         15.25-15.45: Coffee break

·         15.45 -17.00: Session 2

•        Thomas Monaghan (Yale University) – The Diffusion of Sugar-making knowledge in the East China Sea: Japan, Amami, and Ryukyu, 1609-1880.

•        Nicholas McGee (Durham University) – Chinese Migrants and the Early Modern Qing Empire: Networks vs. the State or ‘All Under Heaven’?

·         19.00: Dinner

Day 2, Thursday 21st, 2023, 8.30-12.30

8.30-9.00: Welcome

WORKSHOP 2: Migration and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Technology Transfers

·         9.00-10.15: Session 1

•        Massimo Bomboni (University of Turin) – Salt, Sugar, and Mills for the Grand Duke. The Dutch Contribution to the development of Livorno in the 17th Century.

•        Cheikh Sené (I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) European Entrepreneurs in Senegambia: Between Success and Failure of Political and Commercial Techniques and Cultural Transfer (15th-19th century).

·         10.15-10.30: Coffee break

·         10.30-11.45: Session 2

•        Oliver Gunning (Northumbria University) – Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Proprietary Knowledge, and Skilled Migration: Glassmakers in Early Modern Britain.

•        Takahiro Yamamoto (Singapore University of Technology and Design) – Japanese Settlers' Introduction of Dynamite to Truk in the 1890s.

·         11.45-12.30 Round table

·         12.30 Lunch