The Research Unit comprises two different sub-projects:

• Between Venice and East Africa. The production, commercialisation and distribution of glass beads: This sub-project explores the relationship between the production of glass beads in Venice and their distribution in East Africa. By reconstructing the commodity chain of glass beads from their Venetian factories to East Africa, through a network of traders and agents dispersed across Europe, North Africa, India and the East African coast, the sub-project reveals the impact that the interaction between changing African demand and global developments – such as the abolition of the slave trade – had on Venetian glass bead production;

• Caravans of beads in 19th-century East Africa: This sub-project focuses on the use of glass beads as a medium of exchange in East Africa. By examining the accounts of missionaries, traders and explorers who travelled along the main caravan routes linking the Swahili coast to Lake Tanganyika and Victoria from the 1850s to the 1890s, the study will provide the first systematic reconstruction of the use of beads as currency in East Africa. The sub-project will locate the circulation areas of specific types of beads in the region, explore their interaction with other means of exchange used in the region, and uncover how the monetary function of glass beads was influenced by ritual and aesthetic uses. The ultimate aim is to reveal the motives behind changes in the African demand for glass beads and their impact on production processes in Europe.

The multi-sited nature of the research requires the acquisition of data from archives, museum collections and libraries based in Europe (e.g. Museo del Vetro di Murano; Pitt Rivers Museum; British Museum; Österreichisches Staatsarchiv; Archives nationales d’outre-mer; Archives Chambre de Commerce, Marseille; Archivio della Camera di Commercio di Venezia; Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana) and Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar National Archives).

Image by Giorgio Tosco