30 November 2026, 10am- 6pm
Maison Française d'Oxford

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Over the last thirty years, scholarship on early modern Europe has broadened its exploration of political ideas, moving beyond the analysis of political theorists to examine the wide range of sources that informed political actors’ understanding and interpretation of contemporary politics. This historiography, however, has tended to neglect the role that economic ideas and considerations played in early modern political culture before the rise of political economy as a distinct discipline. This workshop will try to fill, at least partly, this void, with a series of papers on bankruptcy, despotism, trade, state power, and sociability and commerce in Italy, France, and England.

Scholars interested in attending the workshop should write to roberto.ganau@nyu.edu.

PROGRAMME
 

10am – Introduction to the workshop (Roberto Ganau)
 

I session – A Renaissance economic language?

10.20am - Antonio Pattori (British School at Rome)

Beyond Avarice: Economic Despotism and the Language of Tyranny in Sixteenth-Century Italy

11am – 11.40am – Oana Avram (Central European University)

Money, Men, and Arms: State Power and Political Knowledge in Scipione Ammirato

11.40am – noon - Coffee break

Noon – 12.40pm – Roberto Ganau (NYU and EHESS)

Credit, Political Economy, and the Commonwealth in late Elizabethan England. Philemon Holland’s translation of Livy (1600)
 

12.40pm – 2.40pm – Lunch
 

II session – Trade and political culture

2.40pm – Shir Ventura (EHESS)

The Fabric of Political Culture: Visions of Society, Textiles, and the French-Levant Trade in the Eighteenth Century

3.20pm – Iacovos Iacovides (Queen Mary and University College London)

A web of connections: John Wheeler and Louis Turquet on human nature, sociability and commerce

4pm – coffee break

4.20pm TBC

5pm – 6pm Final Roundtable