Call for Papers Tobacco Roads Vienna to Kavala: Technology Transfer in the Early Twentieth Century
Call for Papers
Tobacco Roads
Vienna to Kavala: Technology Transfer in the Early
Twentieth Century
5-7 July 2013
Kavala, Greece
The workshop marks the centenary anniversary of Kavala’s
accession to the Greek state in July 1913. It is supported by the National
Technical University of Athens, the Municipality of Kavala, and ADVANTAGE
AUSTRIA, Athens.
Location: The venue of the conference is a wonderful
tobacco warehouse renovated to host the tobacco museum of the city of Kavala in
northern Greece.
During the early 20th century the economies of a number
of Greek cities relied almost exclusively on the cultivation, processing, and
sale of tobacco leaves. Especially in coastal cities such as Kavala, a town by
the sea in northern Greece, everyday life mirrored the incessant tobacco
production cycle—picking, drying, processing and baling tobacco. This was then
transported to the port, loaded onto barges lined up at the quays in front of
the city’s enormous tobacco warehouses and ferried out to foreign company
steamers anchored out to sea. Since 1840, Lloyd, the major Austrian steamship
company, had established a fortnightly service between Trieste and Kavala.
Tobacco exports were directed mainly at the Habsburg Empire, but also Russia,
England, Egypt, France, and even the United States. The city attracted both the
Greek bourgeoisie—retailers who traded tobacco as independent exporters in mainly
the Balkans, Russia, Egypt, and Turkey—and European corporations. These were
powerful investors who built their own tobacco warehouses and often had the
double role of foreign consul in the city and tobacco merchant. It is
indicative that by 1880 all the major European countries had established
consulates in the city of Kavala. By the
end of the nineteenth century, around 4,000 tons of tobacco were being sent
abroad annually from the city’s port mostly by the Austrian Herzog et Cie. By
1913 there were 61 tobacco trading houses in the city.
In this context of economic growth, powerful tobacco
dealers mainly from the Austro-Hungarian empire, introduced innovative
processing and packaging machinery in order to maintain a firm grip over
tobacco production. Indeed, the tobacco industry stood at the cutting edge of
business practice. The history of tobacco in Greece has been told as part of
the country’s political, economic, and labor history; fortunately it has also
evoked interest in gender and women’s history. Yet, historians, sociologists,
and anthropologists have paid less attention to the ways that the transfer of
tobacco technologies, mostly from the Hapsburg Empire, shaped local societies,
were transformed by them and also greatly influenced the national economy after
the city’s accession to the Greek state.
The conference invites historians and scholars from the
history of technology, technology studies, the humanities, architecture, museum
and cultural studies and other related disciplines to an interdisciplinary
discussion of the history of tobacco technologies. It aims to reassess the role
of technology transfer in the social construction of whole cities and urban
infrastructures and retell their history through a multidisciplinary approach.
By focusing on major dimensions of technological change in the area of tobacco
production and processing, the workshop aims to answer how and why tobacco
technologies were crucial in shaping the city.
Transferring artifacts and methods for tobacco production
and processing is but one form of technology transfer. The history of Greek
cities such as Kavala has witnessed many other forms of technology transfer
that touch on the technological know-how, the actors, the practices, and the
industrial buildings. The story of the Greek city of Kavala and its tobacco
trade relations with Vienna is as an example of technology transfer and a
starting point for a wider discussion on the use of technology in tobacco
production, processing, and distribution.
Thus, we invite contributions on, but not limited to, the
major actors in the tobacco trade in Kavala, such as the Austro-Hungarian
Jewish industrialist Pierre Herzog who monopolized trade of Balkan and Turkish
tobacco in Central Europe by the end of the nineteenth century and his
company’s representative in the city, Adolf Wix von Zsolnay; the tobacco trade
and economic relations and technology transfer between Kavala and Vienna; the
traditional tobacco processing methods and their mechanization; the work
culture and the political upheavals that were resulted from the introduction of
new technologies in tobacco warehouses; the transfer of architectural styles
and forms from Austria to the wider area of Kavala and neighboring cities.
We also encourage contributions that deal with the
seminal issue of technology transfer in the tobacco industry in general during
the early twentieth century, given that the transfer of technology affects the
practices of both the new locality and the point of origin.
Submission guidelines:
A 250-words abstract along with a short one page cv as a
word or pdf attachment are requested by February 28, 2013. Please send these to
Assoc.
Professor Maria Rentetzi mrentetz@vt.edu
Proposals will be reviewed and notification of the outcome will be made on March
30, 2013.
Conference registration fee: 50 euros