Agenda
Conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia, 1400 – 1800’
The organisers of the international conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia, 1400–1800’ call for papers. This conference is organised under the auspices of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant Project, CAPASIA ‘The Asian Origins of Global Capitalism’, and will be hosted at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy on 13-15 November 2024. The conference explores the relationship between environments and commodities in early modern Global Asia between 1400 and 1800. It investigates the environmental consequences in these regions of the extraction, production and trade in commodities.
This conference aims to integrate multiple historiographies which have sometimes operated in mutual isolation: (i) the literature on material culture and commodities in global history; (ii) the growing field of environmental history; and (iii) studies in the history of science which have examined how the natural sciences and ethnography served Europe’s quest for trade, profit, and colonial domination.
Keynotes will be given by Professor Jakobina Arch (Whitman College) and Professor Sujit Sivasundaram (Cambridge University).
Proposals from scholars at all career stages, including early career, are welcome. Papers will be selected on the basis of proposals submitted, and with the aim of ensuring a broad spread of topics for the conference. Abstracts should be submitted ultimately 20 February 2024.
