Professor Maxine Berg

Maxine Berg has written in the field of economic history, history of economic and social thought, and social and cultural history during the past 35 years. She has written economic history as a historian who has fostered interdisciplinary approaches, and has led several of the subject areas which have kept the field central to research and teaching. Her core work on proto-industrialization, small producers and the factory system, on women’s history, on the history of consumption and luxury, and most recently on global history has attracted wide recognition in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia. From the later 1990s she turned the European framework of her research outward to its connections with Asia. Her Past and Present (2004) article, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global Origins of British Consumer Goods’ traced the impact of Asian luxury manufactured goods and processes, especially porcelain and cotton textiles on British and wider European consumer culture and manufacture. She led a European Research Council Advanced Researcher Fellowship (2010-2014) ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries:Trading Eurasia 1600-1830’ with a team of researchers comparing and connecting Europe’s East India Company trade and material culture. Following this she led a Strategic Network on Global Microhistory, and engaged in new research on Nootka Sound on the Northwest Pacific Coast of North America 1770-1820. She is editor of a Special Issue on Global Microhistory of the Local and the Global for the Journal of Early Modern History, 2023, and has written an article on Nootka for this, as well as one for another Special Issue of Past and Present in 2019. She is working on a book manuscript on Nootka Sound and Travel Accounts in a Global Context. She published a co-authored article on ‘Slavery, Skills and the Industrial Revolution’, and co-authored book on Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution (Polity Press, 2023). She is now also working on aspects of Early Modern Capitalism, and organized a workshop on this subject in April, 2024.

Academic Profile

Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the Acadaemia Europaea
Honorary Fellow, Balliol College Oxford
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Honoris Causa - Honorary Doctorate of the European University Institute (2019)
Guggenheim Fellow (2003-4)
Doctorate: D.Phil. Oxon (1976)

University Positions:

Appointments Held at Warwick

2022-present. Professor Emeritus, 1998-2022 Professor; 1993-8 Senior Lecturer then Reader,

Dept. of History 1978-1993: Lecturer then Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Economics

Other Appointments

1974-1978: Sir Lewis Namier Junior Research Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford

1976-1977: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Research Centres

The Warwick Global History and Culture CentreLink opens in a new window –Founding Director, 2007-Present

The Warwick Eighteenth Century Centre – Founding Director 1998-2007 – Director of the Luxury Project (1998-2002)

Visiting Fellowships

Visiting Fellowships: European University Institute, Nuffield College, Oxford; Rothermere American Institute, Oxford, University of Manchester, Max Planck Institüt für Geschichte, Göttingen, University of Uppsala, University of British Columbia.

Service on committees of professional societies and other organisations such as Research Councils

British Academy – Member of the Council 2015 –18, and 2022-2025; Member of Diversity Committee 2019-present; Member of Standing Committee for Section H10 Modern History and Grants Committee – 2006-2011; Small Grants Officer H10 – Jan. 2004 – June, 2007; Member of Editorial Board of the Journal of the British Academy.

Member of Editorial Board of the Journal of Global History

Academy for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (2002-6)

Comitato Scientifico and Giunta Esecutiva of the Istituto Datini, Prato, Italy 1999-2009

Member of the Research Priorities Board of the ESRC – 1998-2002

Assessor Radcliffe Institute Fellowships, Harvard University (2005-present).

Member of the Council of the Economic History Society (1986-91; 1994-9).

Recent PhD Supervision:

Jason Cyrus – co-supervised with Dr. Rosie Dias (History of Art) – ‘The Impact of South Asian Craft and Design on Haute Couture’ – in progress

Dr. Hannah Dennant – ‘Forgotten Foundlings: Black and Asian Children in the Foundling Hospital’ (2023)

Research Interests:

My research interests range over the fields of history of political economy, the industrial revolution, women and gender, luxury and consumer culture, global history, global microhistory, historiography, slavery and history of capitalism. For details see research link.

Major Funded Projects:

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.
Early Modern Capitalism - Economic History Society Small Grant, Oxford History Faculty Small Grant for Workshop on, Oxford 29^th April, 2024.
‘Black Foundlings in Eighteenth-Century London’ 2018-2022. AHRC M4C Collaborative PhD award with the Foundling Museum.
‘Global History and Microhistory: A Globalmicro Pathway’ with John-Paul Ghobrial, Oxford AHRC Strategic Network Grant 2017-2019.
‘Europe’s Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830’. ERC Advanced Fellowship - for salaries, conferences, research travel and publications. Project:£1.3 million. 2010-2014.
’Global Arts: East and West,’ with Ashmolean and V&A - AHRC Strategic Network – 2007-9.
‘Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising and the Trade Card’ – Leverhulme Trust Project 2004-8.
‘Cultures of Commerce and Invention’ – Leverhulme Trust Research Interchange 2002-6
‘Art and Industry’ – Leverhulme Trust Project 2000-2002
‘The Luxury Project’ – University of Warwick Strategic Research Project Award – 1998-2002

Publications:

Major Monographs

Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution (with Pat Hudson), (Polity Press), 2023.
Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005).
A Woman in History: Eileen Power 1889-1940, (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
The Age of Manufactures. Second edition, (Routledge, 1994).
The Age of Manufactures: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain 1700-1820, Fontana Paperbacks and Blackwells, 1985; American editions: Oxford University Press and Barnes and Noble. (Spanish Translation, Editorial Critica, 1987.)
The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1980) (Italian translation. Il Mulino, 1981); new edition 2008.

Edited Volumes

Special Issue edition of Journal of Early Modern History on Global Microhistory of the Local and the Global, 2023.
Goods from the East: Trading Eurasia 1600-1800 (Palgrave, 2015).
Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-first Century (OUP: British Academy Imprint, 2013), pp.214 (Publication following on the major British Academy conference, ‘Writing the History of the Global’ which I initiated in 2009).
Special issue edition of History of Science: Reflections on Joel Mokyr’s The Gifts of Athena, edited set of papers by Maxine Berg, Joel Mokyr, Larry Stewart, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Kristine Bruland; Vol. 45 (2), 2007, pp. 125-196.
Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Palgrave Press, 2002) (coedited with Elizabeth Eger)
Consumers and Luxury in Europe 1650-1850 (Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 260 (co-edited with Helen Clifford)
Technological Revolutions in Europe 1760-1860, Edward Elgar, 1997), pp.350 (co-edited with Kristine Bruland).
Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe, (Routledge, 1990; new edition 2012), pp. 332
Political Economy in the Twentieth Century, (Philip Allan and Simon and Schuster, 1990); American edition: Barnes and Noble, 1990), pp. 164
Manufacture in Town and Country before the Factory, (Cambridge University Press, 1983, new edition 2002), pp. 213 (co-edited with Pat Hudson and Michael Sonenscher).(Publication following the ESRC Network on Proto-industrial Communities which I led 1980-1982).
Technology and Toil in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Gresse Trust, 1979), pp. 246.

Major Articles:

‘Small Spaces and Multiple Contexts: Nootka Sound’s Global Locality 1774-1794’, Special Issue on Global Microhistory of the Local and the Global, Journal of Early Modern History, 27, 2023, pp. 108-131.
‘Slavery, Atlantic Trade and Skills: a Response to Joel Mokyr’s ‘Holy Land of Industrialism’ (with Pat Hudson), Journal of the British Academy, vol. 9, 2021, pp. 259-281.
‘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.
‘Skill, Craft and Histories of Industrialization in Europe and Asia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 24, 2014, pp. 127-148.
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.
‘Global History: Approaches and New Directions’, in Maxine Berg, ed., Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-first Century (British Academy imprint OUP, 2013, pp. 1-18.
‘Britain, Industry and Perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton, “Useful Knowledge” and the Macartney
Embassy to China 1792-4’, Journal of Global History, 1 (2006), pp. 269-288.
‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global Origins of British Consumer Goods’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 85-142.
‘From Imitation to Invention: Creating Commodities in the Eighteenth Century Britain’, Economic History Review, 55 (2002), pp. 1-30.

Web Resources

Europe's Asian CenturiesLink opens in a new window

An Oral History of the Crafts in Kachchh 2013Link opens in a new window

Warwick-Waddesdon Trade Cards DatabaseLink opens in a new window

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.

Department of History