Materialising the Global Economy

Abstract

Today the museums in cities of the former Habsburg Empire house thousands of objects from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania that were collected through trade relations facilitated by colonial structures. Following the Oriental trading companies, in the nineteenth century, the Austrian state funded expeditions across the world in search of resources for economic exploitation. They brought back sample collections of commodities that were displayed at the Vienna world’s fair in 1873 and then transferred to novel institutions: museums of trade and industry. Amongst them, the Oriental Museum (later reorganised as Austrian Museum of Trade) was considered an important instrument to boost the economy. This museum facilitated the establishment of new sales markets for exports overseas and its sample collections were tangible evidence of the empire’s efforts to position itself as a global economic power amongst the colonising states of Europe. This chapter discusses commodity collections as material manifestations of the Habsburg monarchy’s global ambitions and colonial entanglements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through the lens of objects, it sheds light on the role of the Habsburg monarchy in the global economy shaped by the European colonising powers. The discussion is based on learned publications, the press, and memoirs in order to analyse the interrelation of economic venture, geopolitical interest, and cultural endeavour reflected in the collections. Thus, museums of trade and industry make visible the extensive participation in colonial structures and how colonial knowledge has continued to shape the global economy until today.