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Department of History

Professor Maxine Berg

maxberg.jpg  
Contact Information

Office: Room 3.38, third floor, Faculty of Arts Building
Phone: 02476 523377
Email: Maxine.Berg@warwick.ac.uk
Term-Time Office Hours: By appointment
Academic Profile
  • Professor of History (1998-present)
  • Fellow of the British Academy
  • Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
  • Honorary Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford (2009-present)
  • Director of the Global History and Culture Centre (2007-2010)
  • Director of the Eighteenth-Century Centre (1998-2007)
  • Guggenheim Fellow (2003-2004)
 
Other Recent Fellowships and Academies
  • Associate Member, Global History Centre, University of Oxford and Academic Visitor, History Faculty
  • Fernand Braudel Fellow, European University Institute (Sept.-Dec. 2015)

  • Associate Fellow of the Centre for History & Economics, University of Cambridge. (2010- present)

  • European Research Council Fellow, 2010-2014 & Director of ERC Fellowship project 'Europe's Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830'
  • Fellow of the Academia Europaea 2011 to present
  • Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, September-December 2009
  • Visiting Senior Fellow, Dept. of Economic History, LSE, September 2009 - March 2010
  • Member of Selection Committee Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Programme, Harvard University 2004 to 2010
  • Member of Comitato Scientifico of the Datini Institute, Prato, Italy, 1999-2010
 

Postgraduate Modules Taught
  • Convenor of the MA Programme in Global and Comparative History
  • Convenor of the MA Global History Core Course: Themes and Problems in Global and Comparative History (HI997)
 
Selected Publications

 
Books: Please Click the link to see details of books.

  • Goods from the East: Trading Eurasia 1600-1800 (co-edited), ( Palgrave Publishers, 2015)

  • Ed. Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-first Century (Oxford, 2013)
  • Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (OUP, 2005)
  • Ed. with Elizabeth Eger, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Palgrave, 2002)
  • Ed. With Helen Clifford, Consumers and Luxury in Europe 1650-1850 (Manchester University Press, 1999)
  • Ed. With Kristine Bruland, Technological Revolutions in Europe 1760-1860 (Edward Elgar, 1997)
  • A Woman in History; Eileen Power 1889-1940 (Cambridge, 1996)
  • The Age of Manufactures. Second Edition (Routledge, 1994)

  • Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe, (Routledge, 1990; new edition 2012).

  • Political Economy in the Twentieth Century, (Philip Allan and Simon and Schuster, 1990); American edition: Barnes and Noble, 1990)
  • The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1980) (Italian translation. Il Mulino, 1981); new edition 2008.
  • Technology and Toil in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Edition of Historical Documents, CSE Books, Gresse Trust, 1979)

Articles:

  • ‘Sea Otters and Iron: A Global Microhistory of Value and Exchange at Nootka Sound 1774-

1792’, in Global History and Microhistory, ed. John-Paul Ghobrial, Past and Present Supplement,

14, 2019, pp. 50-82.

  •  ‘Global History and the Transformation of Early Modern Europe’, in John Arnold, Matthew Hilton and

Jan Rüger, eds., History after Hobsbawm, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 140-159.

  • 'East-West Dialogues: Economic Historians, the Cold War and Détente', Journal of Modern History, 87, (2015), pp. 36-71

  • 'Skill, Craft and Histories of Industrialization in Europe and Asia,' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 24, (2015), pp. 127-148.

  • 'British Trade with Asia: Historiography and Material Culture', Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, ( 2014)
  • Craft and Small Scale Production in the Global Economy: Gujarat and Kachchh in the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Centuries, Itinerario, Vol. 37 (2), 2013, pp. 23-45.
  • Passionate Projectors: Savants and Silk on the Coromandel Coast 1780-1798, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 14 (3), 2013, 16pp (8,259 words).
  • Useful Knowledge, Industrial Enlightenment and the Place of India, Journal of Global History, 8:1 (2013): 117-141.
  • 'Les Siècle asiatiques de l'Europe. Asie, luxe et approches nouvelles de la révolution industrielle', Jean-Claude Daumas, éd., L'Histoire économique en mouvement entre héritages e renouvellements. (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012), pp. 341-354.
  • 'Luxury, the Luxury Trades and the Roots of Industrial Growth', chap. 9, in Frank Trentmann, ed., The Oxford Handbook on the History of Consumption, OUP, 2012, pp173-212
  • ‘The British Product Revolution of the Eighteenth Century’, in Jeff Horn, Len Rosenband and Merritt Roe Smith, eds., Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution, MIT Press, 2011, pp. 47-66
  • ‘Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Laura Cruz and Joel Mokyr, eds., The Birth of Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Jan de Vries (Brill), 2010
 
Research

 
Funded Research Projects:

  • The Eighteenth Century: Cultures of Collection and Display: Waddesdon Manor Programme
  • Leverhulme Trust Research Interchange on Cultures of Commerce and Invention - Warwick & CNAM (Paris). 2002-2006
  • University of Warwick Luxury Project. Funding: £195,000 1998-2002

Research Interests:

Global history, especially Asia and Europe in the early modern period; history of knowledge and technology; history of material culture, especially textiles, porcelain and luxury manufactured goods; also history writing and historiography 1920s - 1960s.

  • 'Eurasian Trade and European Markets 1600-1830.’ This is a study of Asian export ware produced for and traded in the consumer markets of Europe and the Atlantic world. How did East India Companies, private traders and Indian and Chinese merchants design goods of wide appeal to Western markets, and organize their production and distribution systems in this long-distance trade in material goods and culture between Asia and Europe? How were these Asian-produced goods collected and displayed in European and American public and private interiors? What part did this Eurasian trade play in stimulating Europe’s consumer and industrial revolutions?
  • Wealth and Knowledge: the Transmission of Useful Knowledge 1600-1850’. A study of how craft, tacit and formal knowledge was transmitted among manufacturers, especially in luxury goods across Europe and between Europe and Asia.
  • International historical associations in the postwar era.
  • I am a member of GEHN (the Global Economic History Network). See Gehn (LSE)

 

Current Research Student Supervision:
  • Holly Winter, 'Material Culture and the Limits of British Masculine Ideals in Nineteenth Century India' (ESRC PhD studentship)
     
Recently Completed PhDs
  • Tim Davies, 'Private Merchants and Global Trade: Commercial Networking in the 18th Century Indian Ocean' (PhD Thesis)
  • Sarah Easterby-Smith, 'The commerce and culture of natural history collecting in Britain and France, c. 1750-1800' (ESRC PhD Thesis)
  • Meike Fellinger, 'Supercargoes and the English East India Company in the China Trade 1700-1760' (PhD thesis)
  • Philippa Hubbard, 'Eighteenth-Century Advertising: the Trade Card' (Leverhulme Project PhD Thesis)
  • Tim McEvoy, 'The Commercial Culture of Maritime Innovation: Britain and Venice in the Eighteenth Century' (ESRC PhD - supervised jointly with Dr. Luca Molà)
  • Anna Moran, 'The Market for Irish Glass in the Nineteenth Century' (PhD Thesis)
  • Kate Smith, 'Perceptions and Constructions of Workmanship in Eighteenth-Century British Culture: the Case of Ceramics' (PhD Thesis)

EAC Symbol

European Research Council Fellowship Project, Europe’s Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830, a major research project that ran from 2010 to 2014 led by Professor Maxine Berg with a team of three postdoctoral fellows, a museum consultant, a research assistant, a PhD student, and an administrator.

 

My Publications
Goods from the East, 1600-1800
 
Book1
 
Book2
 
book3