Glass versus Men. The global trade of Venetian beads in the modern era

Pierre Niccolò Sofia holds a PhD in the history and civilizations of the modern and contemporary worlds and is a research at the University of Padua, Department of Historical, Geographical and Ancient Sciences.

The lecture traces the Venetian pearl trade, the production techniques, and the organization of work in Venice, all the way to the routes and merchants who spread them around the world: from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, from Hudson Bay to different regions of Africa. The aim is to show how specializing in a niche product allowed a Mediterranean economic system to stay connected to the main international trade flows of the late modern period.