Écrits et mémoires d’une famille allemande au fil des générations (1682–1936),” in “Appel à témoins. On the Oettinger family papers, see Roberto Zaugg, “Les siècles des Oettinger. Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016), 25–44. The first results of our collaboration were presented in Craig Koslofsky and Roberto Zaugg, “Ship’s Surgeon Johann Peter Oettinger: A Hinterlander in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1682–1696,” in Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850, ed.

This manuscript is the object of a joint editorial project with Craig Koslofsky to be published by the University of Virginia Press. A partial translation of the latter text is included in Adam Jones, Brandenburg Sources for West African History, 1680–1700 (Stuttgart: F. Nach dem Tagebuch des Chirurgen Johann Peter Oettinger (Berlin: Eisenschmidt, 1886). Deutsche Kolonialerfahrungen vor zweihundert Jahren. A heavily manipulated version of this account was published by the great-great-grandson of the barber-surgeon: Paul Oettinger, ed., Unter kurbrandenburgischer Flagge. HA, FA Oettinger, 12, “Reisebeschreibung und Lebenslauf von Johann Peter Oettinger,” 74. In this process, exogenous elements not only enriched the material culture of the palaces, celebrating the monarchs’ global splendor they were also charged with new meanings that inscribed foreign goods and related practices into specifically regional cultural codes.Ģ Berlin, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, VI.

The essay argues that royal palaces constituted crucial laboratories of aesthetic change and new cultures of elite consumption. In order to track recurring aspects of courtly scenography, to compare the signification of bodily practices in different parts of the world, and to identify material links engendered by global trade, it combines microhistorical investigation based on written records with archaeological findings, anthropological observations, and the analysis of visual sources and sculptural artifacts. Focusing on specific items (tobacco, porcelain) and behavioral practices (smoking, spitting), this article examines how these goods were materially and symbolically integrated into courtly culture and associated with the religious beliefs and ritual practices of Vodun. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, imported merchandise fueled practices of conspicuous consumption and ritualized largesse, the performance of which was pivotal in consolidating their rulers’ power. As key players in the transatlantic slave trade, the monarchies of Hueda and Dahomey (in modern-day southern Benin) connected themselves to global commodity flows.

Port royale 4 commodities list