Anna-Maria Kellen Lecture

This Rumbling Age: Locomotion in Early Modern Europe

Vehicular traffic in Europe underwent a revolution between the years 1500 to 1800, affecting all aspects of social, cultural, and economic life. In this talk, historian Daniel Jütte approaches the rise of new forms of locomotion from a pan-European perspective, connecting the broader past of mobility and technology with European cultural history. He is particularly interested in the emergence of the coach in the first half of the sixteenth century and how this novel mode of transportation changed the way people traversed, experienced, and shared public space. The coming of the coach, he argues, shook up early modern Europe in profound and lasting ways.