Migration, Adaptation, Innovation 1500-1800

Today, when mass migration coincides with a high skill economy's ever-growing need for constant technological innovation, the project's central question is burning: what makes for successful immigration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer? The effective management of these three permitted Europe to first industrialise. Global knowledge transfers and the migration of skilled practitioners have been crucial for innovation and technological improvement in general and in particular for the 'Great Divergence', the process by which Europe overtook Asia as the world's manufacturing centre. This project focusses on this vital period of shifting balances.

Case studies have shown both that skilled migration can strengthen or even birth new industries (think of the Huguenots bringing silk weaving to England and Prussia, or immigrant and first-generation Jews founding and running Hollywood) and that, to establish new technologies and manufactures, entrepreneurs and governments need to involve experts, often from abroad. This could be voluntary: in the eighteenth century Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore attracted French and Ottoman experts in weapons technology and instrument making, while, as Gottmann's research has shown, French officials invited groups of Indian and Levantine cotton weavers to develop the French cotton industry. But it wasn't always a matter of choice. Many artisans came as refugees and some were expressly kidnapped: Japan's porcelain industry in and around Arita only took off after the enslaving of skilled ceramics craftsmen during the invasions of Korea in the 1590s, sometimes referred to as 'the Pottery Wars'.

Such case studies however remain local and situation specific. To come to broad conclusions about which factors influenced the success or failure both of the integration of expert migrants and of the diffusion of their skills and products, we need systematic globally-comparative and interdisciplinary studies.

This is what this project offers. Building on Gottmann's interdisciplinary work in global history, notably her internationally-recognised monograph that features the project's pilot study, it combines economic history, migration studies, science and technology studies, and material culture. It sets out to investigate the conditions for, and obstacles to, the successful application and diffusion of the knowledge and skills brought by immigrant experts in the early modern world, specifically including non-elite, non-European, and female migrants. In order to evaluate the relative importance of technical, material, institutional, economic, socio-cultural, and personal or locational factors, it will concentrate on the most inventive manufacturing industries of the time which had close ties both to formal scientific enquiry and to state-support schemes in an age when nascent industrialisation coincided with interstate rivalries: textiles, ceramics, instrument making, and weapons technology. Comparative across time and space it will contrast case-studies from Europe and its colonies (PI), the Middle East, South and East Asia (two postdocs) in the period before Western hegemony: 1500 to 1800.

Next producing co-authored papers, articles, a monograph, and an edited volume of essays based on the international project conference ('Migration and Expertise: 1500 to the present day'), the team will work with its museum and community organisation partners to foster a broader debate about the value of immigrant skills. We will run a series of outreach, policy, and knowledge exchange events with current migrants and we will work with our partner museums to run teacher training events, develop resources for visitors, families and educators, and both contribute to their galleries and curate our own virtual exhibition on the project website.

Anxieties about rapid technological change and fears about the negative impact of migration have damaged social cohesion, democratic governance and the economy not only in the UK but globally. They have also significantly worsened the psychological and social situation of immigrants exposed to a newly 'hostile environment'. This project sets out to change perceptions of immigration. Longer-term perspectives that demonstrate the historic prevalence of migration and its positive impacts can help ease anxieties and concrete case studies can bring this overall abstract narrative to life and demonstrate its relevance to individual lives. From its inception the project will thus engage with the wider public not only through media interventions and its own website, but through more concrete targeted dissemination and engagement via its ongoing collaborations with third sector organisations, all the while contributing to an active knowledge exchange with, and capacity building of, these organisations themselves.

MUSEUM AND HERITAGE SECTOR. The project relies on its close partnership with TWAM, the German Museum of Technology (DTM), the Durham Oriental Museum and the Bowes Museum which are central to our research. In regular meetings with our collaborating curators we will develop a series of 'object stories' that will feature in targeted guides for visitors, in the virtual exhibition we will develop out of our conference, and in the Oriental Museum's 'Silk Road' and TWAM's Discovery Museum 'Destination Tyneside' galleries which we will help redesign in collaboration with our community partners. Our collaboration with the DTM will engage an international public with our research and offer them new insights into our partners' collections.

COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS. We are partnering with TOP, The Other Perspective, a community interest organisation working to foster the economic inclusion of migrants. Together we will develop case studies that highlight current migrants' economic and social contributions. These stories will then feature on our website and in our partner museums' guides and exhibitions. Knowledge exchange will culminate in a workshop at the Discovery Museum, highlighting migrants' (historic) contribution to British and global society. In collaboration with TOP we will devise a policy paper and media interventions to highlight our findings about which factors have historically contributed success and failure both of the integration of the migrant and the adaptation and diffusion of his or her skills and outputs.

EDUCATORS: Young people are key to changing narratives and perceptions. Targeting families, primary and secondary teachers we aim to engage pupils with the positive role of migrants in the past through interacting with the objects they created. In collaboration with our partner museums we will run a one-day teacher training workshop at the Oriental Museum and develop guided tours and trails, family and educator packs with teaching materials and holiday activities that can be downloaded from our website or used to run activities and onsite. Our Discovery Museum workshop will bring teachers in conversation with migrant.

WIDER PUBLIC: The public interest in establishing what makes for successful immigration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer is beyond doubt. Through our engagement with teachers, museum visitors, and workshop and conference participants we will address a broad cross-section of the population. We intend to widen this by disseminating our findings, again in collaboration with our partner organisations, through the publication of a policy paper, our website, and media interventions, notably on world refugee day.