Trading at the Edge of Empires

Brian Brege is Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University. His book Tuscany in the Age of Empire won the American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize in History, Society, and Politics. Paula Findlen is Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Possessing Nature and co-editor of Merchants and Marvels. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she was awarded the 2016 Premio Galileo Galilei. Luca Molà is Associate Professor of History at the University of Warwick, the Director of Warwick in Venice, and was Chair in the Early Modern History of Europe at the European University Institute, Fiesole. Giorgio Riello is Chair of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute, Fiesole, and Professor of Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick.

It seems inexplicable that Trading at the Edge of Empires—a project of Harvard’s Villa I Tatti—is (apparently) the first volume in English (other than translations of the work itself) on this fascinating story. This book… is a reminder of how many different nationalities were in Asia just three decades into the start of the annual voyages between Acapulco and Manila and how knitted together the world already was.