Events

Opening Lecture

Fabrizio Borchi

Mar 27, 2023 — 1 min read

27 April 2023, Florence:

Speaker: Tirthankar Roy (London School of Economics)

Time and place: 27 April 2023, 17.00 CEST, Hybrid (Villa Salviati, Sala del Consiglio, and via Zoom)

The talk confronts an anomaly in the history of European colonialism in Asia and Africa, namely that prior to the eighteenth century, European power was negligible compared to interior states. Typically, historians of colonialism stress either the pursuit of political opportunism or the combatting of political threats to explain how European seaborne power became terrestrial. Drawing on examples from South and Southeast Asia, this talk instead asks whether the control of the sea sustained campaigns inland. Evidence suggests three locational advantages were prerequisites: a stable supply of food and water, relatively easy transportation access into the interior, and agglomeration prospects.

Conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia'

On 13-15 November 2024, CAPASIA organised the conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia, 1400–1800’ in Florence. The conference examined the relationship between environments and commodities, focusing on the environmental impacts of commodity extraction, production, and trade during this period. Click here for a link to the

Opening exhibition 'Commodities and Environments'

On 19 November 2024, the President of the European University Institute, Patrizia Nanz, inaugurated the exhibition 'Commodities and Environments: Florence and the Indo-Atlantic Worlds, 1500-1800' at the Biblioteca Riccardiana, in Florence together with the director of the library Roberta Masini and the CAPASIA PI Giorgio Riello. The exhibition

ComEnv24 programme released

The finalised programme for the CAPASIA conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia, 1400–1800’ taking place from 13-15 November 2024 has been released. You can view and download the programme on the updated conference page: Conference: “Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia, 1400–1800”13-15

Situating the European Factory in the Early Modern Bazaar

One of the most influential theorizations of the relationship between Asian and European merchant capital in the Indian Ocean is Rajat Kanta Ray’s model of the “bazaar economy” (Ray, “Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800-1914,” Modern Asian Studies 29/3 (1995)

27 April 2023, Florence:

Read more

Conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia'

Opening exhibition 'Commodities and Environments'

ComEnv24 programme released

Situating the European Factory in the Early Modern Bazaar