Robert Fletcher's latest publication: 'Decolonization and the Arid World', in The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire, edited by Martin Thomas and Andrew Thompson.

Abstract:
Decolonization transformed political geographies; in many ways, it made the world in which we live. But the constraints and possibilities of physical geography were not as readily disregarded. This chapter considers the comparable and connected histories of the world’s desert environments in the era of decolonization. It explains how decolonization and the Cold War took a distinct path in the arid world, asks whether we’ve given enough weight to the place of arid regions in these wider histories and reflects on how, in many ways, these regions still resist being folded into the national stories of imperialism’s successor states.

Global Gifts, edited by Zoltán Biedermann, University College London , Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick , Giorgio Riello, University of Warwick, is now out.

Micro-Spatial Histories of Global Labour, edited by Christian de Vito and Anne Gerritsen and published by Palgrave, is now out.

Journal of Early Modern History, Volume 20, Twentieth Anniversary Issue, 2016

From Long-Distance Trade to the Global Lives of Things: Writing the History of Early Modern Trade and Material Culture

by Prof Anne Gerritsen

Until quite recently, the field of early modern history largely focused on Europe. The overarching narrative of the early modern world began with the European “discoveries,” proceeded to European expansion overseas, and ended with an exploration of the factors that led to the “triumph of Europe.” When the Journal of Early Modern History was established in 1997, the centrality of Europe in the emergence of early modern forms of capitalism continued to be a widely held assumption. Much has changed in the last twenty years, including the recognition of the significance of consumption in different parts of the early modern world, the spatial turn, the emergence of global history, and the shift from the study of trade to the commodities themselves.

 
Many congratulations to Professor Giorgio Riello, winner of the 2014 World History Association Bentley Book Prize for Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (CUP 2013).

Please also see the other publications of the Centre members.