Luxury in Global Perspective

Karin Hofmeester is senior researcher at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam and Professor of Jewish Culture at Antwerp University. Bernd-Stefan Grewe is Professor of Modern History and Didactics of History at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany.

'By identifying 'luxuries' with the shopping habits of rich people, historians may miss noticing how important these goods were in shaping world trade and mass consumption. This collection of impressively researched studies restores to luxuries their real significance in global history.' Tirthankar Roy, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Luxury and global history Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester; 1. Precious things in motion: luxury and the circulation of jewels in Mughal India Kim Siebenhüner; 2. Diamonds as a global luxury commodity Karin Hofmeester; 3. Gold in twentieth-century India - a luxury? Bernd-Stefan Grewe; 4. Chinese porcelain local and global context: the imperial connection Anne Gerritsen; 5. Luxury or commodity? The success of Indian cotton cloth in the first global age Giorgio Riello; 6. The gendered luxury of wax prints in South Ghana: a local luxury good with global roots Silvia Ruschak; 7. From Venice to East Africa: history, uses and meanings of glass beads Karin Pallaver; 8. Imports and autarky: tortoiseshell in early modern Japan Martha Chaiklin; 9. Tickling and klicking the ivories - the metamorphosis of a global commodity in the nineteenth century Jonas Kranzer; 10. The conservation of luxury: safari hunting and the consumption of wildlife in twentieth-century East Africa Bernhard Gissibl; 11. Luxury as a global phenomenon: concluding remarks Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester.