Professor Giorgio Riello

'Cotton Textiles and the Industrial Revolution in a Global Context', Past & Present, 255 (2022), 87-139.

The history of cotton textiles reveals the extent to which the worldwide integration of different spaces of commerce and consumption brought advantages to European traders and manufacturers. Taking this view, the article extends Eric Williams' "Triangular Trade" by proposing the notion of a "Diamond-shape Trade" connecting the global spaces of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

'The Material Turn in World and Global History', Journal of World History, 33/2 (2022), 193-232. Open Access

'Slavery and the New History of Capitalism', Journal of Global History, 15/2 (2020), pp. 225-244Link opens in a new window (with T. Burnard). Open Access

This article argues that capitalist transformation must rely on a global framework of analysis. The article considers three critiques in relation to the NHC: the overemphasis of coercion; the fact that sugar, not cotton, was the main plantation crop in the Americas; and finally that historians must tell a story about slavery’s place in supporting the expansion of consumption, as well as a story about production.

'The World in a Book: The Creation of the Global in Sixteenth-century Costume Books', Past & Present, 242, Supplement 14 (2019), pp. 281-316. Open Access

How did early modern Europeans conceive their expanding mental and knowledge world? Costume books representing the dress of the different peoples and empires around the world became popular in the sixteenth century. Surprising, they presented a world that was cumulative, in which the "global" relied on the strengthening of locality and its authenticity.

'The Indian Ocean in the Long Eighteenth Century'Link opens in a new window, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 48/1 (2014), pp. 1-19 (with P. Parthasarathi).

The Indian Ocean was conceptualised in the mid-nineteenth century as a unit of analysis. This paper investigates the rich research carried out over the past generation. It argues that the eighteenth century was a period characterized by profound continuities, starting with the expansion of trade in the late seventeenth century and concluding with the creation of a European colonial system in the nineteenth century.

'Strategies and Boundaries: Subcontracting and the London Trades in the Long Eighteenth Century'Link opens in a new window, Enterprise & Society, 9/2 (2008), pp. 243-280. [Winner of the Newcomen Article Prize Winner 2009]

In the eighteenth century subcontracting was an important way of organising production of clocks, coaches, footwear, furniture and scientific instruments. This article proposes a new theoretical interpretation of subcontracting linked to how commodities are produced, exchanged and consumed.

'La globalisation de l’Histoire globale: une question disputée'Link opens in a new window, Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 54/5 (2007), pp. 23-33. OPEN ACCESS

This article addresses four questions related to the shape and direction of global history: How does global history differ from history more broadly? What is its methodology, if any? Why is global history not welcomed by many historians? And finally, in what directions is global history developing?

‘The Colour of Empire: Cochineal and Indigo in the Pre-modern World’, in Maria Hayward, Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack (eds.), A Revolution in Colour: Natural Dyes and Dress in Europe, c. 1400-1800 (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 64-84. OPEN ACCESS

‘Marchandises et marchés mondiaux à l’époque moderne’, in Manuela Martini and Catherine Virlouvet (eds.), L’émergence de nouveaux marchés (Vincennes: Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique, 2024), 155-171. OPEN ACCESS

‘Failure and the Industrial Revolution: The East India Companies’ Procurement and the Rise of the British Cotton Textile Industry’, in Joseph E. Inikori, ed., British Imperialism and Globalization: Essays in Honor of Patrick K. O'Brien (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 51-71.

'Factories before the Factory: The English East India Company: Textile Procurement in India and British Industrialisation, 1650-1750', in Kristine Bruland, Anne Gerritsen, Pat Hudson and Giorgio Riello, eds., Re-inventing the Economic History of Industrialisation (Montreal: McGill UP, 2020), 262-275Link opens in a new window.

‘Fashion in the Four Parts of the World: Time, Space and Early Modern Global Change’, in Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello (eds.), Dressing Global Bodies: The Political Power of Dress in World History (London: Routledge, 2020), 41-64.

'Against the Sumptuary Regime: Sumptuary Prosecutions in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Padova'Link opens in a new window, in Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack (eds.), The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, 1200-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 210-239 (with L. Molà).

'Textile Spheres: Silk in a Global and Comparative Context', in Dagmar Schaefer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Mola', eds., Threads of Global Desire: Silk in the Pre-modern World Link opens in a new window(Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2018), 323-341.

'“With Great Pomp and Magnificence”: Royal Gifts and the Embassies between Siam and France in the Late Seventeenth Century', in Zoltan Biedermann, Anne Gerritsen, and Giorgio Riello, eds., Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia Link opens in a new window(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 235-265.

‘Luxury or Commodity? The Success of Indian Cotton Cloth in the First Global Age’, in Karin Hofmeester and Bernd-Stefan Grewe, eds., Luxury in a Global Perspective: Commodities and Practices, 1600-2000 Link opens in a new window(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 138-168.

‘Governing Innovation: The Political Economy of Textiles in the Eighteenth Century’, in Evelyn Welch, ed., Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 57-82.

'Spaces of Global Interaction: The Material Landscapes of Global History', in Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), Writing Material Culture History (London: Bloomsbury, 2014, 2nd ed. 2021), pp. 111-133 (with A. Gerritsen)

'Global Things: Europe’s Early Modern Material Transformation’, in David Gaimster, Tara Hamling, and Catherine Richardson, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe Link opens in a new window(Basingstoke: Routledge, 2016), pp. 29-45.

‘“Things Seen and Unseen: The Material Culture of Early Modern Inventories and Their Representation of Domestic Interiors’, in Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500-1800Link opens in a new window (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2013), 125-150.

‘Global Objects: Contention and Entanglement’, in Maxine Berg, ed., Writing the History of the Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press and The British Academy, 2013), 177-193. (with Glenn Adamson)

‘Fabricating the Domestic: The Material Culture of Textiles and Social Life of the Home in Early Modern Europe’, in Beverly Lemire (ed.), The Force of Fashion in Politics and Society: Global Perspectives from Early Modern to Modern Times Link opens in a new window(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 41-65.

'Things that Shape History: Material Culture and Historical Narratives', in Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material CultureLink opens in a new window (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 24-47.

'The Globalisation of Cotton Textiles:Indian Cottons, Europe and the Atlantic World, 1600-1850', in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (eds.), The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850Link opens in a new window (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 261-287.

'The Indian Apprenticeship: The Trade of Indian Textiles and the Making of European Cottons', in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850Link opens in a new window (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 309-346.