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 current book
manuscript, The Empire That Wasn't: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and
the Making of Global Capitalism, traces the ventures of late Renaissance Florentines
as they sought knowledge, profit, and power throughout the Americas, the
Islamic world, maritime Asia, and beyond. Tuscany’s experience in creating a
shadow empire challenges existing paradigms that seek to explain the shift from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic World. The
Empire That Wasn’t instead posits a framework that foregrounds individual
initiative, contingency, and political choices.