Localizing Globality in Early Capitalist Basel

Abstract

This paper seeks to locate globality in Basel’s urban society during the emergence of capitalism (1670–1780). It seeks to globalize patrimonial historiography and local history by “inverting the telescope” as micro-historians have suggested. It analyzes how the leading actors in a Swiss city situated on the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire participated in the new capitalism and positioned their society within a new global geography increasingly shaped by an Atlantic beyond the empires. To do so, it asks how the city’s cosmopolitan elite bonded locally and acted globally in times of accelerated economic and social transformation. Exploring people who capitalized social, economic, and political borders deepens our understanding of the multi-layered process of early globalization and contributes to the new history of capitalism. The micro-global focus on Basel’s specific locality illuminates the conceptual potential for global history in the nexus between war capitalism and global capitalism.