Università Roma Tre

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to methods, theories, and critiques of writing early modern Global/World history. It seeks to familiarize students
with the main historiographical debates and define narratives about the first phase of intensifying global connectivity that commenced in the fifteenth century. The course tracks the different ways in which various scholars have analyzed the dramatic expansion of cross-cultural interactions and economic exchanges during the centuries leading up to the formalization of the modern nation-state.
By the early 17th century, European merchants established maritime trade networks across the Atlantic Ocean and eastward to India and China. These networks allowed them to acquire furs, tea, sugar, spices, and other luxury commodities that were in great demand throughout Europe. In the Americas, European settlers began using large numbers of enslaved Africans to grow labor-intensive crops such as sugarcane and tobacco for export to Europe. Portuguese, and later Dutch, merchants acquired many of these slaves from trade posts on the West African coast. Once the slaves had been sold in the Americas, merchants used the proceeds to acquire local commodities to sell in Europe. This circular trade pattern dominated the Atlantic economy until the 1800s. European nations closely guarded their trade networks against rival states. The Dutch East India Company, for example, possessed its own private army and navy, which was used to defend its trade links with India and Southeast Asia.
Global trade altered production and consumption patterns throughout the world and led to the rapid growth and development of England and the Netherlands at the expense of older colonial powers such as Spain and Portugal. In this course, we will examine the growth of global trade networks in the 1600s and evaluate the political, social, and cultural impact of these networks on the peoples of Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Particular attention will be devoted to the global circulation of objects and books through the early modern world.

This course is taught in English.

The basic reference will be Charles H. Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
At the beginning of the course, a syllabus will be circulated with the weekly readings assigned.