Traffic history

The history of traffic researches the history of traffic and traffic and is a bridging discipline between traffic science and history .

Transport history was established as a separate discipline at the end of the 19th century, at that time as part of economic or technological history . Today it also includes elements u. a. political history, constitutional, social, local and regional history and the history of science.

tasks

For example, traffic history examines:

the development of economic and business production factors (productive forces) in the transport sector (means of transport in the broader sense, i.e. routes and facilities, vehicles and energy supply as well as other work equipment, labor, knowledge, organization, etc.)
the dependency between transport and the respective social structure ( mobility and mobility culture, social order, corporate structures, etc.)
Business and economic aspects of transport in different epochs
the political and military importance of transport
Long-term studies and demand forecasts
Technology assessment , technology assessment or traffic system assessment
Knowledge management in transport (acquisition, processing, preservation of knowledge)
Changes in traffic systems , see also traffic turnaround

Fields of work

Transport history includes in particular the history of

mobile and stationary means of transport and their drives ( traffic engineering )

Traffic routes and infrastructure ( traffic engineering )

Human resources of the transport system (e.g. users, employees, affected persons)

Organization (operational planning, management, security)

Transport economics and policy , transport planning
Historiography of theories (including the history of transport science )
Transport companies , associations, etc. Ä.

as well as applied traffic history (including traffic museology ).

Institutions

Until 2001, the discipline was institutionalized in Germany as a chair, institute or department at the University of Transport "Friedrich List" Dresden (1952–1992) or at the Faculty of Transport Sciences "Friedrich List" of the Technical University of Dresden (1992–2001). The work in the field of traffic history is currently being continued by the traffic history working group in the Young Forum of the DVWG . Other institutions in Germany include the German Society for Company History, the Transport History Working Group and various transport museums .

In the vicinity of the French Annales School , questions of traffic history were dealt with in the context of economic and regional historical research. A series of publications in the 6th department of the École pratique des hautes études founded by Fernand Braudel and Ruggiero Romano in 1951 has the programmatic title Ports, routes et trafics (ports, roads and traffic).

In Great Britain, the Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History at York University conducts research in the field of transport history.

literature

Gérard Duc, Olivier Perroux, Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, François Walter (eds.): Histoire des transports et de la mobilité / Transport and mobility history. Entre concurrence modale et coordination (de 1918 à nos jours) / Between modal competition and coordination (1918 in our days) . Editions Alphil, Neuchâtel 2014, ISBN 978-2-940489-54-1 .
Daniel Kaune: On the way to Frankfurt. Frankfurt's function as a transport hub from late antiquity to the beginning of the early modern era. In: Kurt Andermann, Nina Gallion (Ed.): Weg und Steg. Aspects of transport from late antiquity to the end of the Old Kingdom. ( Kraichtaler Kolloquien. Vol. 11), Ostfildern 2018, pp. 153–167.
Christoph Maria Merki : The winding paths of modern traffic history. A walk through current research. In: Swiss History Journal . Vol. 45/1995, pp. 444–457 ( full text )
Christoph Maria Merki: Transport history and mobility . Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3025-8 .
Marie-Claude Pfaffen, Sylvie Pfaffen: Bibliography on traffic history . University of Bern, Bern 2005 ( full text, PDF )
Benjamin Spielmann: “Besides that, you walked.” Everyday mobility in Switzerland from 1848 to 1939. Librum Publishers and Editors LLC, Basel 2020 ( full text, PDF )
Hans-Jürgen Teuteberg: Methods and tasks of traffic history . In: Yearbook for Economic History. 1994, pp. 173-194.

Individual evidence

^ Homepage of the Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History at the University of York

[1] Homepage of the Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History at the University of York