Free to Fail and Coerced to Prosper

The fifth meeting of the Caltech Early Modern Group

Treasure Room, Dabney Hall

California Institute of Technology

March 16, 2012

8:30 am Coffee and pastries

9:00 am Philip Hoffman (California Institute of Technology)

“Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World?”

10:10 am Jessica Goldberg (University of Pennsylvania)

“Re-Considering Risk and the ‘Maghribī Traders’: Agency Relations, Contract Enforcement, and the Economy of the Eleventh-Century Islamic Mediterranean”

11:20 am Chris Briggs (Cambridge University)

“Mortgages and the English Peasantry, c.1250-c.1350”

12:20-1:35 pm - Lunch on Dabney Loggia

1:35 pm Steve Hindle (The Huntington Library)

“Work, Reward, and Labour Discipline in Late-Seventeenth-Century England”

2:45 pm Dan Bogart (University of California, Irvine)

“Glorious Transition? The Politics of Market Access in Britain’s Infrastructure Sector in Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution”  

4:00 pm Tracy Dennison (California Institute of Technology)

“Why and How were Russian Serfs Emancipated?”

6:00 pm Dinner at Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Restaurant