From Florence to Goa and beyond : essays in early modern global history

Abstract

This volume is dedicated to Jorge Flores: scholar, supervisor, esteemed colleague, and friend. Twenty-three authors, close friends and colleagues at and outside the European University Institute, as well as his former and current doctoral students, have come together here to pay tribute to Flores’ highly productive and constantly supportive period at the EUI. The result is an anthology in which the authors present their current research in essay form while also reflecting thematically and methodologically on the fascinating field of premodern global history. The reader will come to realize that, after an exuberant but difficult youth of more than two decades, global history as a perspective on our common past is by no means at an end or at a standstill; rather, this field is in constant motion, undergoing criticism and encouragement to become an indispensable part of our common historical and academic work. As Sanjay Subrahmanyam notes in his introduction to this study, Flores is one of the “leading figures in the study of the early modern Iberian world.” And so he, too, will have a significant part to play in the development of pre-modern global history. It will be a pleasure and an honour for all of us to continue to collaborate, debate, and exchange with him, moving beyond traditional frameworks for analyzing the past in terms of national categories and methodological and institutional nationalisms.