The Global Lives of Things considers the ways in which ‘things’, ranging from commodities to works of art and precious materials, participated in the shaping of global connections in the period 1400-1800. By focusing on the material exchange between Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia, this volume traces the movements of objects through human networks of commerce, colonialism and consumption. It argues that material objects mediated between the forces of global economic exchange and the constantly changing identities of individuals, as they were drawn into global circuits. It proposes a reconceptualization of early modern global history in the light of its material culture by asking the question: what can we learn about the early modern world by studying its objects?

This exciting new collection draws together the latest scholarship in the study of material culture and offers students a critique and explanation of the notion of commodity and a reinterpretation of the meaning of exchange. It engages with the concepts of ‘proto-globalization’, ‘the first global age’ and ‘commodities/consumption’. Divided into three parts, the volume considers in Part One, Objects of Global Knowledge, in Part Two, Objects of Global Connections, and finally, in Part Three, Objects of Global Consumption. The collection concludes with afterwords from three of the leading historians in the field, Maxine Berg, Suraiya Faroqhi and Paula Findlen, who offer their critical view of the methodologies and themes considered in the book and place its arguments within the wider field of scholarship.

Extensively illustrated, and with chapters examining case studies from Northern Europe to China and Australia, this book will be essential reading for students of global history.

Anne Gerritsen is Reader of Chinese history in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. She has published on material culture in general and on porcelain specifically. Her work sits on the nexus of global and local history, and explores the ways in which material culture facilitates the integration of local manufactures into global contexts.

Giorgio Riello is Professor in Global History and Culture at the Department of History of the University of Warwick. He is the author of A Foot in the Past (OUP 2006) and Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (CUP 2013). He has co-edited several volumes among which The Spinning World: (OUP, 2009); and How India Clothed the World (Brill, 2009); The Fashion History Reader (Routledge, 2010) and Global Design History (Routledge, 2011).