Brian Brege

• 2024 Spring
  • HST 211 Medieval and Renaissance Europe
  • HST 355 The Italian Renaissance
• 2023 Fall
  • HST 735 Readings and Research in European History - Renaissance Italy
• 2023 Spring
  • HST 377 History of Venice
  • HST 211 Medieval and Renaissance Europe
  • HST 600 Selected Topics - History of Venice
• 2022 Fall
  • HST 735 Readings and Research in European History - Renaissance Italy
  • HST 300 Selected Topics - Renaissance to Revolution

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, "Tuscany in the Age of Empire" (Harvard University Press, 2021), which won the American Association for Italian Studies book prize in the category History, Society, and Politics, 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 was in 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. He co-hosted the conference "Carletti's World: An Early Modern Global Voyage" at I Tatti in April 2022 and is co-editing the resulting edited volume "Trading at the Edge of Empires: Francesco Carletti's World c. 1600,"  which will complement Professor Brege's new translation and critical edition of Carletti's account of his circumnavigation.

"The Global Merchants of Florence: Florentine Patrician Families and Early Modern Capitalism", Sponsored by Harvard University.

• Book
  • Brege, B. A., Tuscany in the Age of Empire. I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Harvard University Press, 2021.
• Book Chapters
  • Brege, B. A., "Making a New Prince: Tuscany, the Pasha of Aleppo, and the Dream of a New Levant." In Art, Mobility and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia. Freddolini , F., Musillo, M. (eds.) Routledge, 2020.
  • Brege, B. A., "A Florentine humanist in India: Filippo Sassetti, Medici agent by annual letter." In The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy, 1300-1600. Findlen , P., Sutherland, S. (eds.) Routledge, 2019.
  • Brege, B. A., "The Advantages of Stability: Medici Tuscany’s Ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean." In Florence in the Early Modern World. Maxson, B., Baker, N. (eds.) Routledge, 2019.
  • Brege, B. A., "Renaissance Florentines in the Tropics: Brazil, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Limits of Empire." In The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750. Horodowich , E., Markey, L. (eds.) Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Book Reviews
  • Brege, B. A., "Review of William Bulman, The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire." Renaissance Quarterly, 2024.
  • Brege, B. A., "Review of Forged in the Shadow of Mars: Chivalry and Violence in Late Medieval Florence, History." History: Review of New Books, 2023.
  • Brege, B. A., "The Field of Cloth of Gold." Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2020.

American Historical Association Annual Meeting, American Historical Association, "Prospering in the First Global Age: Florentine Patrician Merchants and Grand Ducal Tuscany" (January 6, 2024)

A Companion to Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1549-1609) (volume to be edited by Carla d’Arista & Oscar Schiavone for Brill, which has accepted the project) , Medici Archive Project, "Ferdinando I’s Global Ambitions" (November 17, 2023)

History Department Workshop, Syracuse University History Department, "The Roots of Global Trade: Florentine Family Business Networks and the First Global Age" (October 12, 2023 - October 12, 2023)

Florence: Global?, European University Institute, "Participant in the Workshop - Florence Global?" (February 24, 2023)

World History Seminar, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, "From the Arno to the Pearl River Delta: Renaissance Florentine Merchants and Global Trade" (January 19, 2023 - January 19, 2023)

The Medici and the Perception of Sub-Saharan Africa, The Medici Archive Project, "Africa’s Indian Ocean Shore: Ivory, Gold, and Late Renaissance Tuscany’s Imagination of East Africa" (June 3, 2022)

"From theories of conspiracy to conspiracy theories" (May 19, 2022)

Renaissance Walks, Stanford University in Florence, "The Medici and the Making of Grand Ducal Florence" (May 16, 2022)

"The Making and Unmaking of Identities in the Early Modern Mediterranean," (May 13, 2022)

Carletti Internal I Tatti Workshop, "Carletti’s World: An Early Modern Global Voyage" (April 27, 2022 - April 29, 2022)

Villa I Tatti, "Carletti’s World: An Early Modern Global Voyage" (April 27, 2022 - April 28, 2022)

Carletti’s World: An Early Modern Global Voyage, Villa I Tatti, "Navigating Transimperial Trade: The Medici, Overseas Florentines, and the Interstices of Global Commerce" (April 27, 2022)

The Medici Beyond Florence: Art and Politics, 1530-1648, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, , "Becoming Brazilian by Staying Florentine: Florentine Patricians in Early Colonial Brazil" (March 17, 2022)

Medici Florence Today: A Roundtable in Honor of Eric Cochrane, "Florence’s Forgotten Global Ambitions: Deprovincializing Early Modern Tuscany" (February 25, 2022)

Renaissance Walks, Stanford University in Florence, "More than the Medici: Making an Urban Nobility through Florentine Palazzi" (February 7, 2022)

Renaissance Walks, Stanford University in Florence, "The Medici and the Making of Grand Ducal Florence" (January 10, 2022)

Mediating Scripture: Judeo Persian Tobit as Global Crossroads, , New York University Abu Dhabi in partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, "Books, Guns, and Diplomacy: The Vecchietti Brothers between Iran, India, and the Mediterranean" (December 9, 2021)

,” Splendid Encounters IX: Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period, "Small Power Aggression and the Moral Hazard of Alliances: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s Mediterranean Adventurism, 1599-1612" (September 25, 2021)

"Carletti’s World: An Early Modern Global Voyage" (February 12, 2021 - June 11, 2021)

Medici Archive Project’s Tuesday Ten Talks, "Tuscany in the Age of Empire" (June 8, 2021)

Renaissance Society of America, "Ambassadors and Merchants at the Tuscan Embassy in Madrid" (April 22, 2021)

,” introduction given to “Carletti’s World: An Early Modern Global Voyage,” Online Workshop Series, "Carletti’s World: The Manuscripts" (February 12, 2021)

Professor Lucio Biasori’s class on Mobility and Society in the Early Modern World and guests, University of Padua , "The Ties That Bind: Florentines in the First Global Age" (May 8, 2020)

I Tatti Fellows’ Presentations, "The Global Merchants of Florence: Florentine Patrician Families and Early Modern Capitalism" (September, 2019)

seminario del gruppo di ricerca DEaMoNS, Digital Early Modern Networks, "L’impero che non fu: storia globale della Firenze Medicea nella prima età moderna" (March, 2019)

Renaissance Society of America, "Roundtable: The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy" (March, 2019)

American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize in the Category of 2021 History, Society and Politics, American Association for Italian Studies (2021)

Ezio Cappadocia Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript, The Society for Italian Historical Studies (2016)

Award for Excellence in First-time Teaching (2008 - 2009)