LangPro · Leveraging Languages: Professional Opportunities in the Early Modern Language Sector (1550-1650)

Historians have shown that the period from 1550 to 1650 was marked by a rapid expanse of the print industry, language education, and administrative bureaucracy, especially in North-West Europe. This implies that there must have been a swift increase in occupational opportunities for men and women who possessed language skills such as reading, writing, and text editing in one or more languages. However, since language professionals have never been studied as a separate category in the early modern workforce, the opportunities that existed for linguistically skilled individuals remain a big unknown.LangPro adds a fundamental missing perspective to our understanding of the early modern labour market by introducing the new notion of the language sector: that part of early modern economies which relied primarily on language skills. The project considers language proficiency as a hard skill with real-world professional value.LangPro’s central research question is: What professional, financial, and social opportunities did the early modern language sector offer to men and women in early modern North-West Europe (1550-1650)? Five work packages will disclose the potential for personal advancement that the language industry offered: financial income; support through a guild system; enhanced social status; and job opportunities, specifically for women. Laying the groundwork for a new research domain on the history of the language sector, we will develop a conceptual framework and prosopographical database that make it possible to gain insight into the characteristics of professionals in the past whose core business was language and the nature of the sector that employed them. LangPro will evoke important shifts in the history of early modern labour, women’s history, and the history of language practices. It is the forerunner of a new research line on a long underestimated sector that provided precious opportunities to individuals from all walks of life.