My name is Pablo Hernández Sau, 1st year PhD researcher at the Department of History and Civilization
of European University Institute of Florence (EUI), where I have a research project entitled Interaction between “Levants”. The Bouligny family case and Mediterranean Social Networks in the 18th Century Global System. I obtained my bachelor degree in History at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (2007-2012), with one year Erasmus grant in M.E.T.U (Ankara), and a M.A in History at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville (2012-2014).
In the present moment, I am evolving a research focus in a family, the Bouligny family, between 1700 and 1830s. The Bouligny family members were settled in Marseille, Leghorn, Alicante, Madrid, Constantinople, New Orleans, Mexico, Naples, Granada, Barcelona, Valencia, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen. A spread family whose social climbing took place between 1760 and 1800, so around the beginning of the 19th century, diverse Bouligny households inserted in local, regional and state socio-political realities on Madrid, New Orleans, Copenhagen, Paris or Corfu. However, at the same time they developed cooperative actions along time and space.
There are some readings which are being basic in my research, especially those related to families studied from a global perspective. For instance, Emma Rothschild’s The Inner Life of Empires. An eighteenth century History or Francesca Trivellato’s The familiarity of strangers. The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, a Cross-cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period are excellent monographic studies about geographical spread and cooperative families. In relation with this global perspective on family history research, I found quite important the reflections about the relation between macro- and micro- scales. This is the case of the Francesca Trivellato and Tony Andrade’s articles about ‘global microhistory’ or Bartolomé Yun Casalillas’ reflections about global history challenges.
My P.h.D projects investigate the existence or not of ‘global families’ during the Early Modern Era by using the Bouligny social and family networks. This family which started as french emigrated merchants in the Spanish Mediterranean port of Alicante changed its location, work and social strata by holding administrative appointments from 1770s onwards and inserting its members in their respectives local realities. How did this take place? Can we see families as a new approach to understand history from a global perspective? Briefly, the objective of my P.h.D project is to understand the Bouligny family in its global context along the 18th century: their internal and external social links, their personal conception of the space, and the possibilities of the family history for global and transnational history.
My investigation on ‘global family’ concept allows to engage in different debates: firstly, the methodological difficulties of this study, specially how to relate micro- and macro- scale; secondly, the organic character of the family, in which multiple social realities coincided. Thirdly, the understanding of the role of commercial Diasporas in the developing of Early Modern global history, and their combination of formal and informal institutions and links. And last but not least, the insertion of Mediterranean commercial networks in the global flows and the self-conception of the Mediterranean Sea, which investigation is scarce at the present moment.
Bibliography:
Trivellato, Francesca. The familiarity of strangers:the Sephardic diaspora, Livorno, and cross-cultural trade in the early-modern period. Yale University Press. 2009
Rothschild, Emma The Inner Life of Empires. An eighteenth century history. Princeton University Press. 2011
Andrade, Tonio “A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory” Journal of World History v.21 – 4 (2010) pp. 573 -591
Trivellato, Francesca “Is there a future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?” Californian Italian Studies v.2 – 1 (2011)
Yun-Casalilla, Bartolomé “Localism, Global History and Transnational History. A Reflection from the Historian of Early Modern Europe” HISTORISK TIDSKRIFT. 127:4 (2007)
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