Research Highlights

My research in recent years has focused on silk artisans and their families in the city of Barcelona in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. My objective is to study the guild-organized silk industry of a city in the infancy of modernization as the old regime was starting to collapse. Some of these include: how innovation occurred; how individuals gained entry into guilds; how labor organizations changed; how small, family-run workshops handled the succession of their business and property; and how women participated in the economic activities and how they contributed to the family business. It is generally accepted that the cotton industry, a free trade not regulated by the guilds, was the driving force behind the modernization of Barcelona. But as it was just as I was beginning overseas research in 2013 that “The Return of the Guilds” was gaining momentum as a research topic among European researchers of socioeconomic history, I was intrigued by how these industries like silk trade developed while retaining the old guild system. As I conducted my document-based research in the archives, I also worked at the museums directly with the objects created by these artisans—mould-dyed silk scarves, embroidered stockings, decorative cords, tassels, and ribbons—and became completely enamored with these objects.

It is important to note that there is no reliable population census data available for Barcelona during the period I am studying. Tax collection books can deviate significantly from actual figures, and most parish registers have been lost to fire. As such, my research relies on notarial documents left by artisans and their families, such as wills, marriage settlements, and post-mortem inventories. One fascinating aspect of the research is the process of deciphering documents that give us a sense of the lives and livelihoods of the people of the time. For example, a will stating that a master artisan would leave his property to his spouse, a contract stipulating the terms of marriage between a master’s son of the city and an immigrant farmer’s daughter who had accumulated a dowry through years of domestic service and a posthumous inventory which listed every piece of property in an artisan’s house at the time of their death, from the looms and merchandise to broken pots and kettles. My research has led me in many directions. I have read through countless documents and examined myriad objects in museums in my efforts to comprehend the meaning of the words used to refer to the threads, products, tools, and other items used by these silk artisans. How can we use these written records to generalize the lives led by each of these artisans and their families as they come into focus? And how can we incorporate and evaluate these individual historical narratives into systematic analysis? These are the questions I grapple with daily in my research.

(2023/4/1)