Brian Brege
Assistant Professor, History
Degree
Ph.D., Stanford University, 2014
Specialties
Medieval and early modern Europe, history of globalization, the scientific revolution, diplomatic and imperial history
Biography
Brian Brege is a historian of early modern Europe and its
engagement with the wider world. Animated by the complex and ambiguous
interactions of knowledge, money, and power in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, his research concerns the role of small powers and enterprising
individuals in the creation of global capitalism and empire. His first
book, The Empire That Wasn't: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s Global
Ambitions, traces the ventures of late Renaissance Florentines as they
sought knowledge, profit, and power throughout the Americas, the Islamic world,
maritime Asia, and beyond. In the 2019-2020 academic
year, he will be in Florence as a Harvard I Tatti Fellow researching his second
book, The Global Merchants of Florence: Florentine Patrician Families
and Early Modern Capitalism and developing a new collaborative venture
on the Florentine world traveler Francesco Carletti.