From the Indian cottons that were traded around Asia and Africa in the Middle Ages, to the global dominance of the blue-and-white pottery of Jingdezhen, historian Maxine Berg introduces five books that transformed our understanding of the past millennium and are significant milestones in the development of the vibrant field of global history.

Recordings of the talks are now available for watching online hereLink opens in a new window. For the original programme, see hereLink opens in a new window.

Professor Maxine Berg will be awarded an honorary degree from the EUI on Friday 17 June 2022. Two events are happening to mark this occasion, and both are open (via Zoom) to the wider public. All are welcome to register for these events.

The first of these is a public lecture, entitled 'Sweet industriousness: The sugar-slave nexus in the Early Modern worldLink opens in a new window'

Abstract: Goods from Asia, such as patterned cotton textiles from India and porcelain from China are now recognized for the effect they had on British and European consumer cultures and technological innovation. Yet the trade in imported sugar produced in the Caribbean with enslaved African labour was worth more than four times the whole trade with Asia by the 1770s. Colonial groceries, especially tobacco and sugar joined coffee and tea to become the key luxury goods to shift European consumer cultures. Sugar was key, and Atlantic world slavery joined luxury to stimulate Europe’s shift to an 'industrious revolution.' Please register to either participate in presence or receive the Zoom link.

The second is a round-table discussion, entitled 'New Directions in Global HistoryLink opens in a new window'.

Encounters and Exchanges in a Global Past

The Oxford Transnational and Global History SeminarLink opens in a new window is inviting submissions for a postgraduate conference, Saturday 25 June, 2022. The conference will be held in person in the Oxford History Faculty.

We welcome submissions on the theme 'Encounters and Exchanges in a Global Past.' We will explore the ways in which encounters and exchanges were experienced in the near and distant past. Despite the recent proliferation of frameworks for understanding contact and the exchange of goods, ideas and biota that accompanied it, contact is rarely considered from a truly global perspective that spans millennia, continents and disciplines.

We welcome interdisciplinary submissions relating to exchanges across time and space. We are particularly interested in submissions on:the infrastructure that underlay encounters and exchanges, such as technology and ideology; multi-scalar interaction; the role of translation in contact; the environmental history of encounters and exchanges.

Sessions will consist of 20 minute papers with time for questions and discussion.

Interested postgraduates should send a 400-word abstract and brief biography to oxfordtghs@gmail.com

Submission deadline: 1 May 2022

For further events and information visit our website http://global.history.ox.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

Metallic Empire: Science, Energy, and Industrial Imperialism in the John Percy Collection, 1817–89

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship (fees and maintenance) to be held at the Department of History, University of Warwick and the Science Museum, London. The studentship focuses on the colonial and industrial history of the John Percy Collection, held at the Science Museum, London. The Percy Collection comprises over 3,700 mineralogical specimens, including coal from South Africa, silver from Australia, and copper from India. The collection was made by John Percy FRS (1817–1889), and then subsequently acquired by the South Kensington Museum on his death.