Projects by Riccardo E . Rossi
Exploring Atlantic-Italian Entanglements (15th-19th Centuries). PROJECT, NETWORK, WEBSITE
Past talks and events by Riccardo E . Rossi
Paper presented at the workshop Zurich Meets Naples: Three Research Projects in Late Medieval and... more Paper presented at the workshop Zurich Meets Naples: Three Research Projects in Late Medieval and Early Modern History, organised by Roberto Zaugg (University of Zurich), held at the Scuola Superiore Meridio-nale in Naples, 4–5 April 2024.
Paper presented in the panel Guardians of Children, Custodians of Wealth, Opponents of Widowed Pa... more Paper presented in the panel Guardians of Children, Custodians of Wealth, Opponents of Widowed Parents (16th to 18th Century), organised by Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith (both University of Vienna), at the European Social Science History Conference, University of Gothenburg, 12–15 April 2023.
Talk at the workshop Intrecci globali e retaggi coloniali in Italia: Strategie di public history ... more Talk at the workshop Intrecci globali e retaggi coloniali in Italia: Strategie di public history tra università, musei e movimenti, organised by Carlo Taviani (Università di Teramo) and Roberto Zaugg (Universität Zürich), held at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome, 20–21 October 2022.
Paper presented at the workshop Debts: The Good, the Bad, and the Hidden. Bringing Family, Kin, C... more Paper presented at the workshop Debts: The Good, the Bad, and the Hidden. Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce, and Consumption Debts Together, organised by Janine Maegraith, Margareth Lanzinger, and Matthias Donabaum (all University of Vienna), held at the University of Vienna, 15–17 September 2022.
Paper presented at the conference Atlantic Italies: Economic Entanglements between the Americas, ... more Paper presented at the conference Atlantic Italies: Economic Entanglements between the Americas, Africa, and the Mediterranean (15th–19th Centuries), organised by Silvia Marzagalli (University of Nice) and Rob-erto Zaugg (University of Zurich), held at the University of Zurich, 1–3 September 2022.
"Women’s Cloth and Men’s Beverage? Gendered Retail Networks and Consumption Practices in the Sout... more "Women’s Cloth and Men’s Beverage? Gendered Retail Networks and Consumption Practices in the Southern Alps, 1639–1798." Paper presented in the session The 'Rural Consumer': Consumer Goods, Con-sumption, and Material Culture of Rural Households in Early Modern Europe, organised by Henning Bovenkerk (University of Münster) at the Rural History Conference, Uppsala, 20 – 23 June 2022.
Panel co-organised with Fynn Holm (University of Bern) at the Swiss Congress of Historical Scienc... more Panel co-organised with Fynn Holm (University of Bern) at the Swiss Congress of Historical Sciences, Geneva, 29 June – 1 July 2022.
"Materielle Kulturen in den frühneuzeitlichen Alpen: konsumgeschichtliche Zugänge zu einer histoi... more "Materielle Kulturen in den frühneuzeitlichen Alpen: konsumgeschichtliche Zugänge zu einer histoire connectée der Drei Bünde, 1639-1798." Paper presented within the research colloquium organised by Christina Brauner, Renate Dürr, Philip Hahn and Xenia von Tippelskirch at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, 11 November 2021.
Paper presented at the 4th EURHO Conference, EHESS Paris, 10 – 13 September 2019.
Paper presented at the spring school Microhistoria e historia social: nuevos enfoques metodológic... more Paper presented at the spring school Microhistoria e historia social: nuevos enfoques metodológicos at the École des hautes études hispaniques et ibériques, Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, 27–29 March 2019.
During the early modern era, the intensified intercontinental circulation of goods catalysed by t... more During the early modern era, the intensified intercontinental circulation of goods catalysed by the development of oceanic trade routes fuelled new consumer needs and an increasing differentiation of material culture. Scholarship has investigated the use and appropriation of exogenous goods, intellectual debates and changing attitudes concerning ‘luxury’ as well as the emergence of new forms of sociability related to specific consumer practices. The eighteenth century, in particular, has been identified – by scholars dealing primarily with north-western Europe – as an era of a ‘consumer revolution’ and technological innovation that resulted in a substantially augmented access to delectable goods by ordinary people.
What commodities were consumed by which social groups? How fast did new patterns of consumption evolve? To what extent were lower social strata and rural areas involved in these processes? Which goods remained exclusive and which became popular? How did information on new commodities spread and how did changing consumer habits influence material culture and aesthetical styles? Measuring and analysing the change and persistence of consumer patterns is a challenging endeavour. Our workshop will tackle these questions, discussing empirical sources and methodological approaches we can use as historians when we deal with consumption in past societies.
Papers by Riccardo E . Rossi
History of Retailing and Consumption, 2023
Labour migrants were a widespread phenomenon in the Alps
during the early modern period and impac... more Labour migrants were a widespread phenomenon in the Alps
during the early modern period and impacted the materiality of
everyday life in the mountains. This article investigates traces of
these movements in linguistic usage by exploring the way in
which goods were described by actors from the Three Leagues, in
present-day Switzerland and Italy. Provenances of goods were
given by using toponyms that indicated the place of origin the
more precise, the closer the location was to the Alps. These
geographical terms informed about specific visual and tactile
qualities and were introduced together with other technical
vocabulary via specialized merchants and spread via shops to
customers of the upper echelons. Small-scale retailers and
occasional dealers made use of less detailed descriptions that can
also be found in the accounts of their clients which resembled
the language used in informal correspondences. These channels
could be activated to gain more detailed information and thanks
to the wide-spread networks of migrant labourers, knowledge
was exchanged with and via the Alps. This exchange of
information appears, however, to have become less intense when
migration patterns changed in the aftermath of the French
Revolutionary Wars.
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Projects by Riccardo E . Rossi
Past talks and events by Riccardo E . Rossi
What commodities were consumed by which social groups? How fast did new patterns of consumption evolve? To what extent were lower social strata and rural areas involved in these processes? Which goods remained exclusive and which became popular? How did information on new commodities spread and how did changing consumer habits influence material culture and aesthetical styles? Measuring and analysing the change and persistence of consumer patterns is a challenging endeavour. Our workshop will tackle these questions, discussing empirical sources and methodological approaches we can use as historians when we deal with consumption in past societies.
Papers by Riccardo E . Rossi
during the early modern period and impacted the materiality of
everyday life in the mountains. This article investigates traces of
these movements in linguistic usage by exploring the way in
which goods were described by actors from the Three Leagues, in
present-day Switzerland and Italy. Provenances of goods were
given by using toponyms that indicated the place of origin the
more precise, the closer the location was to the Alps. These
geographical terms informed about specific visual and tactile
qualities and were introduced together with other technical
vocabulary via specialized merchants and spread via shops to
customers of the upper echelons. Small-scale retailers and
occasional dealers made use of less detailed descriptions that can
also be found in the accounts of their clients which resembled
the language used in informal correspondences. These channels
could be activated to gain more detailed information and thanks
to the wide-spread networks of migrant labourers, knowledge
was exchanged with and via the Alps. This exchange of
information appears, however, to have become less intense when
migration patterns changed in the aftermath of the French
Revolutionary Wars.