Agents of Logistics and Infrastructure in Eighteenth Century Alpine Transit Traffic

ALPINNKONNECT centres on operating trans-European commercial traffic as engine and manifestation of eighteenth-century prosperity.

The project focuses on the interplay of agents, material prerequisites and natural impacts along main Alpine transit routes, applying an approach of socio-material-natural interconnectedness.

It advances the hypothesis that transportation required a broad participation to cope with the enormous efforts and provided an important source of income. Hence, seen through the lens of transit traffic, new light will be shed on local social fabrics.

Among the key figures, ALPine INNKeepers acted as cONNECTing agents and inns operated as multipurpose hubs of transit traffic. Considering the fundamental importance of transit traffic, the fragmented and dated state of research is striking.

ALPINNKONNECT breaks new ground by adopting approaches of New Materialism and a relational concept of logistics and infrastructure, focusing on innkeepers, hauliers, carters, raftsmen, muleteers and rod cooperatives as protagonists and integrating households, marriage, kinship, property and gender as factors in this economic key sector.

The main goal is to arrive at a comprehensive and empirically verified understanding of the preconditions, processes, implications and dynamics of transit traffic and its changes.

ALPINKONNECT argues that transit routes remained vital during the eighteenth century, not despite, but complementary to, the economic rise of north-western Europe and its maritime traffic.

The principal research question is: how did the interplay between the different agents, the built materiality and Alpine nature work?

How did the flows of goods, which accounted for a significant share of the early modern European economy, cross the continent on Alpine routes? How was their transit maintained, facilitated or hindered?

ALPINNKONNECT proposes to reconceptualise social history by symmetrically linking historical anthropology with New Materialisms.