Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GlobalMed (The Mediterranean as a Laboratory of Globalisation: The Franco-Ottoman Cloth Trade, 1683-c.1715)
Período documentado: 2023-09-01 hasta 2025-08-31
In the early 1700s, France overcame English and Dutch competition to become the Ottoman Empire’s main European trading partner. To date, historians have focussed on Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s (in)famous minister, and his influence on the crucial Franco-Ottoman trade in woollen cloth. Yet they have neglected the remarkable development in this trade after Colbert’s death in 1683, led by Colbert's ministerial successors. GlobalMed asks why the Languedocian cloth industry was flourishing by the turn of the eighteenth century, exploring the development of France's trade in Languedocian cloth in Ottoman and other Asian markets. In this way, the project challenges current orthodoxies on the rise of the Atlantic world by reconsidering the early modern state’s role as a motor of globalisation and industrial development.
The Languedocian cloth industry experienced a remarkable period of intense growth in the period 1683 to 1715. My goal was to understand why this intense growth occurred by studying the Franco-Ottoman/Franco-Asian cloth trade in this period. As I delved into the archival documents of the Archives nationales, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et Industrie Marseille Provence, it became clear that it was impossible to explain the developments of the 1680s strictly through discussion of cloth. The industry fared poorly throughout the decade, but I have yet to find any substantial evidence to suggest this was due to endogenous weaknesses; rather, this can be attributed in large part to structural weaknesses in French Levantine trade in the 1680s, specifically through reforms of France’s consulates, which (on paper) facilitated commercial exchange with the Ottoman Empire. These reforms have received little attention in the historiography, but a wealth of archival material from the abovementioned archives attests to the significant impact of the consular crisis on French trade (and, by extension, Languedocian cloth) throughout the 1680s. I therefore concluded that my project needed to be split into two monographs: one focussing on the consular crisis in the 1680s, and the other on the Franco-Asian cloth trade. My initial focus going forwards will be on the completion of the first monograph on the consular crisis, as this will provide the necessary foundation on which the book on Franco-Asian trade will build. The second monograph will engage not only with the Franco-Ottoman cloth trade itself, but will also explore the hitherto overlooked role of the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes orientales) in supporting the Languedocian cloth industry throughout the 1680s and 1690s, thus illustrating that the rise of this industry was a product of Franco-Asian exchange rather than strictly Franco-Ottoman exchange.
To date, four chapters in prestigious edited volumes have been delivered, due to be published in 2026/thereafter. Moreover, I am in the process of preparing a journal article that will be part of a special issue of "French History" for which I am serving as guest editor. These future outputs will be transformative to our understanding of French global commerce in the seventeenth century. Completing both proposed monographs will require further research in the Archives nationales, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Archives départementales de l'Hérault and the Archives diplomatiques, alongside close engagement with material I have photographed from the Archives nationales d'outre-mer.