Global Lives of Things

Anne Gerritsen is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. Her previous publications include Ji'an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China (2007). Giorgio Riello is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. In addition to several edited collections, he is the author of A Foot in the Past (2006) and Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (2013).

"Gerritsen and Riello's Global Lives of Things is a truly ground-breaking collections of essays. The volume bestrides the intersection of two of the most important recent developments in the study of history - the material turn and the global turn - and is the first to apply these in so concerted a way to the early modern period . The individual contributions, which range across Europe, China, India and Australia, and which consider commodities including sharkskin, coral and tobacco, are uniformly strong; together they highlight the connections between the local and the microcosmic and the international and the macrocosmic, to give a much better sense of the way early moderns lived their lives. This volume will be required reading not only for students of the early modern period, but also for those interested in the 'things' that have been used in the past, and the global connections which often lay behind them."Kenneth Austin, University of Bristol, UK"This pathbreaking volume explores how materials, artefacts and commodities traveled across the globe in the early modern period. Its object lessons shed light on how things in circulation could acquire new meanings and values, transform social relations, shape the environment, and set in motion novel constellations of knowledge. Combining approaches from material culture, economic history, consumption studies, and the history of science, The Global Lives of Things offers a perfect example of how global history needs to be studied in context."Dániel Margócsy,, Hunter College, The City University of New York, USA

• Introduction The Global Lives of Things: Material Culture in the First Global Age Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello PART I: OBJECTS OF GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE 1. Itineraries of Matter and Knowledge in the Early Modern World Pamela Smith 2. Towards a Global History of Shagreen Christine Guth 3. The Coral Network: The Trade of Red Coral to the Qing Imperial Court in the Eighteenth Century Pippa Lacey PART II: OBJECTS OF GLOBAL CONNECTIONS 4. Beyond the Kunstkammer: Brazilian Featherwork and the Northern European Court Festivals Mariana Françozo 5. The Empire in the Duke’s Palace. Global Material Culture in Sixteenth-century Portugal Nuno Senos 6. Dishes, Coins and Pipes: The Epistemological and Emotional Power of VOC Material Culture in Australia Susan Broomhall 7. Encounters around the Material Object: French and Indian Consumers in Eighteenth-Century Pondicherry Kévin Le Doudic PART III: OBJECTS OF GLOBAL CONSUMPTION 8. Customs and Consumption: Russia’s Global Tobacco Habits in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Matthew P. Romaniello 9. Sugar Revisited: Sweetness and the Environment in the Early Modern World Urmi Engineer 10. Coffee, Mind and Body: Global Material Culture and the Eighteenth-Century Hamburg Import Trade Christine Fertig and Ulrich Pfister Afterword – Paula Findlen Afterword – Suraiya Faroqhi Afterword – Maxine Berg