Nodes of Early Modern Capitalism

Overview

What you will study

'World cities' and 'global cities' have received considerable attention in studies of contemporary globalisation and the twentieth-century rise of financial capitalism. More recently, work on 'special economic zones' and the concept of 'archipelago capitalism' (referring to tax havens) suggest that the early modern history of capitalism needs to go beyond land and labour control to include the links between commerce and urbanism that emerged in the early modern period.

While early modern historians have investigated merchant trading networks to address the differing ways in which connectivity transformed relationships between regions, the role of urban nodes – what used to be called 'trading ports', 'emporia' and 'commercial hubs' - in pre-modern capitalist development remains little studied.

It is precisely these Nodes of Early Modern Capitalism that this conference offered by European University Institute (EUI) will investigate, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.