Early Modern Financial History series of online seminars

First two upcoming seminars

Tuesday 24 November 2020 via Zoom, 8:00-9:00 New York, 13:00-14:00 Lisbon/London, 14:00-15:00 Bern/Amsterdam, 22:00-23:00 Tokyo

Claudio Marsilio (Universidade de Lisboa): Rethinking the role of the Genoese bankers in the credit and bullion markets. New evidence from Genoese and Florentine private archives (1630-1700)

Tuesday 8 December 2020 via Zoom, 8:00-9:00 New York, 13:00-14:00 London, 14:00-15:00 Bern/Amsterdam, 22:00-23:00 Tokyo

Nadia Matringe (LSE): Commission trading and the use of the bill of exchange as a clearing instrument in 16th century Lyon

Please register here

 

We are launching a series of online seminars dedicated to early modern financial history. Early modernity (15th-18th century) represents a fascinating period in the history of finance. It was a time of intense experimentation and innovation, which led to a far-reaching transformation of the European financial system, with profound political, social, and cultural consequences not only in Europe but also worldwide.

Early modern financial historians constitute a thriving community. Yet, early modern research forms a tiny minority of the papers presented in most financial history seminars. Currently, there is no financial history seminar devoted to the early modern period. This seminar proposes to do that.

Our goal is to investigate the history of early modern finance in its many dimensions: markets, institutions, firms, private operators, techniques, ideas, crises, cycles. What was the interplay between finance and the overall economy, the state, society and social change, culture, war, and colonial enterprises? We encourage works that consider the historical actors in their historical context. What were their practices, expectations, and beliefs? How broad was the range of possibilities open to them? Which constraints did they face? We will mainly focus on Europe and its colonies, but we will also explore non-European financial history. The seminar is not aimed only at an audience of early modernists. On the contrary, we hope that the papers will interest other scholars, starting with financial historians working on different periods.

The organizers are Stefano Condorelli, associate researcher at the Center for Global Studies of Bern University, and Koji Yamamoto, associate professor at the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo, with the support of the History of Finance network and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The format of the seminar will be as follows:

• The speaker will record her/his presentation in advance and circulate it about five days before the seminar, along with the paper where That will enable participants to view the presentation at their convenience and prepare questions beforehand if they wish to do so.
• The speaker will begin the seminar with a 5-10 minutes summary of the key points. We will then move to Q&A, comments and discussion.
• The seminar will take place once a month during the academic year, on Tuesday.

We look forward to meeting you online on November 24^th for Claudio Marsilio’s seminar.

 

Please register here

 

 

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