Giorgio Riello is a global historian of the early modern period. Giorgio's research primarily focuses on the intersections of material culture, trade, and consumption in early modern Europe and Asia, making significant contributions to our understanding of how objects shape global historical narratives. He currently holds a European Research Council Advanced Grant for a project entitled ‘The Asian Origins of Global Capitalism’.
Giorgio is Professor of Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick and Chair of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute in Florence. His academic journey began with a Ph.D. in History from University College London, leading to a distinguished career that includes roles such as Director of the Warwick Institute of Advanced Study and Chair of the Pasold Research Fund. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2011.
He is the author of several influential books, including Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (2013) which won the World History Association Bentley Prize). In a recent article published in Past & Present (2022) he proposes the notion of a "Diamond-shaped Trade" connecting the global spaces of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. He has recently completed a book-length project in comparative global history entitled Making Things Work in Time (with sinologist Dagmar Schäfer).His creative and innovative publication record highlights his commitment to advancing scholarship in global history and material culture studies.
Academic Profile
- Chair of Early Modern Global History, European University Institute, Florence, 2019-present
- Head of Department of History, European University Institute, 2021-22
- Director of Warwick in Venice, 2018-19
- Director of the Warwick Institute of Advanced Study, 2014-17
- Professor (2011- ), Associate Professor (2009-11), Assistant Professor (2007-9), University of Warwick
- Postdoc Research Fellow, London School of Economics, 2004-6
- Lecturer, V&A/Royal College of Art, 2003-4
- Ph.D in History, University College London, 2002
- Laurea in Economia Aziendale (Business Economics), Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, 1998
Major Research Awards
For his research, Giorgio was awarded several large-scale international research grants among which a European Research Council Advanced Grant; a large-scale Marie Curie COFUND, and funding from the AHRC and Leverhulme. In 2011 he received the Philip Leverhulme Prize.
Major Prizes and Fellowships
- 2024. Krater Visiting Professor, Stanford University.
- 2019. Visiting scholar, EHESS, Paris.
- 2017-18. Professorial Visiting Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
- 2016. Iris Foundation Award for contribution to the Decorative Arts and Material Culture
- 2014. World History Association Bentley Book Prize for Cotton (CUP 2013).
- 2012. Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship , European University Institute, Florence.
- 2010-11. Stanford Humanities Center Fellow
- 2010. ISL-HCA Australian Academy of the Humanities Fellowship, 2010
- 2009. Newcomen Article Prize Winner 2009 for the article 'Strategies and Boundaries'
Collaborations and Public History
Giorgio's commitment to Public Engagement in history has led to both radio (BBC World Service, Newstalk Ireland, BBC national and regional; Radio Talk Europe), and television (BBC 1, ITV) appearances. He collaborates extensively with major international museums and collections among which: the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Peabody Essex Museum – Salem; the MUDEC Museum – Milan; and the London Museum. Between 2019 and 2022 he participated to the redisplay of the MUDEC’s permanent collection. In 2024, within the activities of my the ERC Project CAPASIA, he organised the exhibition “Commodities and Environments: Florence and the Indo-Atlantic World, 1500-1800” at the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence.
His scholarship has been reviewed in international newspapers such as The Financial Times; The Wall Street Journal; The Telegraph; and The Pittsburgh Tribune and magazines such as BBC History Magazine and Vogue UK, and in Italy La Repubblica; Il Corriere della Sera; and Il Sole 24 Ore.
Professional Membership
Giorgio is a member of the boards of several major historical journals among which Past & Present (2017- ), the Journal of World History (2016- ), Ricerche Storiche (2014- ), and the Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine (2013-). He also is:
PhD Supervision and PostDoctoral Mentoring
Ten of Giorgio's students completed their PhD (six completed at Warwick and four completed at the European University Institute). He currently supervises 10 PhD students at the EUI and acts as Second Reader for another 8 PhD students.
He welcomes MA and PhD students and PostDocs working in the field of global, comparative, transnational and imperial histories.
Publications
Books
- Making Things Work in Time: Silk in China and Europe Compared (with Dagmar Schäfer) (mss under consideration, October 2024).
- Tutte le perle del mondo: storia di viaggi, di scambi e di magnifici ornamenti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2023), 344pp. (with Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Luca Molà). Reviewed by La Repubblica; Il Corriere della Sera; Il Sole 24 Ore; Il Manifesto; Il Resto del Carlino; Il Gazzettino.
- Back in Fashion: Western Fashion from the Middle Ages to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).
- Luxury: A Rich History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 351pp. (with Peter McNeil). Reviewed in The Wall Street Journal. Translated into Polish (2017) and Chinese (2021).
- Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World Link opens in a new window(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 407pp. Reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Pittsburgh Tribune. Translated into Chinese (2018) and Japanese (forthcoming 2025).
- La Moda: una storia dal medioevo a oggi Link opens in a new window(Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2012; rev. ed. 2021), pb 182pp. Translated into Portuguese (2013), Portuguese Brazilian (2014), and Spanish (2016).
- A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 302pp.
Selected Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals (Total: 26)
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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.
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The recent “material turn” in global history also raises a series of methodological and theoretical questions. The article provides a series of methodological and theoretical tools for historians to play with established narratives and to revise the conceptualization of connectivity—a key concept in global history. It proposes a series of reflections on how a material approach might relate to recent forays into global microhistory. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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This article consider the knowledge transfer of textile-printing techniques from Asia to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It argues that the limited knowledge of colouring agents and the general absence of textile printing and dyeing were major impediments to the development of a cotton textile-printing and -dyeing industry in Europe.
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This paper argues that in order to understand the genesis of fashion, we must recognize the significance of India in the culture and economy of early modern Europe. It explores the articulations of fashion through one of the most revolutionary commodities to appear in western markets, painted and printed Indian cotton textiles, a product widely consumed and ultimately a source of inspiration for European manufacturers.
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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.
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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?
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Selected Edited Books and Special Issues of Journals (total: 23)
- Nodes of Early Modern Capitalism (mss. under consideration) (with M. O’Sullivan and T. Roy).
- Trading at the Edge of Empires: Francesco Carletti’s World, ca. 1600 (Harvard UP, forthcoming July 2025) (with B. Brege, P. Findlen, and L. Molà).
- Global Economic History (Bloomsbury, 2024; 1st ed 2018), 494pp. (with T. Roy).
- The Cambridge Global History of Fashion (Cambridge UP, 2023), 2 vols, 1530pp. (with C. Breward and B. Lemire).
- The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, 1200-1800 (Cambridge UP, 2019), 505pp. (with U. Rublack).
- Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge UP, 2018), pp. 302 (with A. Gerritsen and Z. Biedermann).
- The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the First Global Age (Routledge, 2016), 258pp, 40 B&W illustrations (with A. Gerritsen).
- The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850 (Oxford UP, 2009), 489pp. (with P. Parthasarathi).
- How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850 (Brill, 2009), 490pp. (with T. Roy).
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Selected Chapters in Books
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‘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
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‘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.
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‘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.
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'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.
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‘“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)
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Recent Public Engagement Publications
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(magazine) ‘Aux origines du capitalisme global ?’, L’Histoire, 524 (Oct. 2024), 60-64.
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(exhibition catalogue) ‘Des textiles pour la traite des esclaves et pour les marchés coloniaux’, in Éric Saunier (ed.), Esclavage mémoires normandes Les ports normands dans la traite atlantique (XV-XXIe siècles) (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2023), 127-137.
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(museum project) ‘The Holker Album in a Global Context’, in Ariane Fennetaux and John Styles (eds.), The Holker Album: Textile Samples and Industrial Espionage in the 18th century (Paris: Editions Les Arts Décoratifs, 2022), 81-90.
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(museum catalogue) ‘L’inizio di una nuova era: l’Asia come baricentro mondiale di merci e commerci’, in Milano Globale: Il mondo visto da Qui (Milan: MUDEC, 2021), pp. 112-121.
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(magazine) ‘Le capitalism est né en Asie’, L’Histoire - Feuilleton/Les nouveaux chantiers de l’histoire économique (2021), pp. 64-65.
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(debate) ‘For a Fair(er) Global History’, Cromohs (2021) (with Friedrich Ammermann, Paul Barrett, Lucile Boucher, Olga Byrska, Elisa Chazal, Vigdis Andrea Baugstø Evang, Eoghan Christopher Hussey, Roberto Larrañaga Domínguez, Carlos Jorge Martins, Fartun Mohamed, Sven Mörsdorf, Bastiaan Nugteren, Anna Orinsky, Rebecca Orr, Cosimo Pantaleoni, Lucy Riall, Asensio Robles Lopez, Alejandro Salamanca Rodríguez, Liu Shi, Takuya Shimada and Halit Simen): https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/12559
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(exhibition catalogue) 'How Chintz Changed the World', in Sarah Fee, ed., Cloth that Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum and Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 193-201.
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