Biography
Francesca Trivellato is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Modern European History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. In the last two decades, she has been interested in the real and imaginary economic roles played by Jewish merchants in Western European commerce and finance, c. 1500-1800. She has addressed these topics in two monographs: The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (Yale University Press, 2009) and The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton University Press, 2019). Together with Jonathan Karp, she edited Jews in Early Modern Europe, Variorum series “Classic Essays in Jewish History” (London: Routledge, forthcoming in 2021). Her principal long-term project at the moment focuses on a macro- and micro-analysis of limited partnerships in Tuscany from 1450 to 1800, of which this article gives a short preview: “Renaissance Florence and the Origins of Capitalism: A Business History Perspective,” Business History Review, 94, no. 1 (2020): 229–251.