A History of Architecture and Trade draws together essays from an international roster of distinguished and emerging scholars to critically examine the important role architecture and urbanism played in the past five hundred years of global trading, moving away from a conventional Western narrative. The book uses an alternative holistic lens through which to view the development of architecture and trade, covering diverse topics such as the coercive urbanism of the Dutch East India Company; how slavery and capitalism shaped architecture and urbanization; and the importance of Islamic trading in the history of global trade. Each chapter examines a key site in history, using architecture, landscape and urban scale as evidence to show how trade has shaped them. It will appeal to scholars and researchers interested in areas such as world history, economic and trade history and architectural history.
Acknowledgements
Author Biographies
Introduction: The architecture of trade is as old as human history
Patrick Haughey
1. Legacies of Colonialism: Towards an architectural history of capitalism
Patrick Haughey
2. Spices, spies and speculation: Trust and Control in the early Batavia-Amsterdam system
Robert Cowherd
3. Cities of incense and myrrh: Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf
Nasser Rabbat
4. Borneo, the river effect and the spirit world millionaires
Mark Jarzombek
5. House as marketplace: Swahili merchant houses and their urban context in the later Middle Ages
Thomas Gensheimer
6. An anachronism of trade: The Mercato Nuovo in Florence (1546–1551)
Lauren Jacobi
7. Merchant identity: The cartographic impulse in the architectural sculpture of the Llotja of Palma de Mallorca
Doron Bauer
8. The travels of a merchant throughout the Islamic World
Cecilia Fumagalli
9. Savannah’s Custom House: A peculiar construction of galvanized iron, apparently durable and well-adapted to a southern climate
Dennis DeWitt
10. The modernization of a port in British India: Calcutta, 1870–1880
Aniruddha Bose
11. Building the marble elephant: The creation of Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall
Glen Umberger
Index
Biography
Patrick Haughey is a Professor of Architectural History at Savannah College of Art and Design, USA, where he teaches modern, urban and global architecture history. His research uses a multidisciplinary approach to architecture history, deploying world systems, economics, history and cultural geography. His scholarship critiques the impacts of colonialism and finance on architecture and urbanism. He also teaches studio, drawing and rendering for the Interior Design and Architecture Departments.
"This collection of 11 papers from the ninth Savannah Symposium: The Architecture of Trade covers a wide variety of geographies and time periods. Haughey provides the introduction and the first chapter, which looks at colonialism and capitalism. The most effective essays—among them Nasser Rabbat's "Cities of Incense and Myrrh: Fantasy and Capitalism in the Arabian Gulf"—blend the two elements, exploring how the physical environment and Native cultures intersected to create structures uniquely suited to both their settings and their functions."
--L. M. Bliss, San Diego State University
