Raw Movement: Material Circulation in the Colonial Eighteenth Century

Abstract:The mass movement of raw material in the eighteenth century determined industrial, agricultural, social, and visual environments. Using the global supply chain as an organizing principle, this essay examines how four raw materials shaped and were shaped by politics and society. Each of the four elements—silver, seeds, mother-of-pearl, and sugar—is addressed at one stage of its international circulation. Brittany Luberda begins by analyzing labor practices in the extraction of silver from the mines of Potosí during the Spanish colonization of present-day Bolivia. Sophie Tunney traces a material's journey across the sea, revealing the complexities of transporting living plants and the politics of French colonies. Cynthia Kok shows how mother-of-pearl shells, by-products of the pearl trade, were transformed by Netherlandish craftspeople into objects of value by adapting their existing expertise. Sarah Cohen then examines how two silver sugar casters made in the form of enslaved people were used to visualize the coerced labor that produced a sweet commodity for the global economy. Presented in a format that reflects the movement of a material from its excavation and transportation through to its manipulation and reception, we offer a model for investigating the life cycle of eighteenth-century material culture, which was itself multi-layered, interactive, and entangled with colonialist ambition.