Publications

2021
Working Paper

Caccia Selvaggia: Myth, Rites, and the Right in Carlo Ginzburg's Storia notturna

By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

Carlo Ginzburg (b. 1939) is widely considered one of Europe’s leading historians. His masterpiece Storia notturna (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), widely praised for its extraordinary erudition and creativity, is now over three decades old but it continues to inspire... View Details

Keywords: Mythology; Culture; Political Doctrine; History; Government and Politics; Society

Read Now

12 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 12, 2018

forthcoming Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy By: Reinert, Sophus A.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

26 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 26, 2017

and a fast-growing market. There was a growing need to incorporate local relevance into global products and to respond to local competitors. Download working paper:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Burn the Gondolas? Venice, the Ghetto, and the Seasons of Capitalism

By: Sophus A. Reinert, Charlotte Robertson and Robert Fredona

This case uses the history of Venice—from the driving of the first pylons in the lagoon to the abdication of the city’s last doge, across the ages of Marco Polo and Vivaldi—to explore the invention and global diffusion of capitalism, as well as the cyclical rise and... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; History; Power and Influence; Prejudice and Bias; Economic Systems; Italy

Educators

01 Jun 2014
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for June 2014

strategy," and he describes how companies such as Yelp and Zynga have done it. The Political Economy of Empire in the Early Modern World edited by View Details

2016
Working Paper

Mapping the Economic Grand Tour: Travel and International Emulation in Enlightenment Europe

By: Sophus A. Reinert

As the itinerant wizard (technically one of the Maiar, if not the Istari) Gandalf wrote to the then domestically-inclined hobbit Frodo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, “Not all those who wander are lost.” Indeed, as the recent brouhaha over the... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Globalization

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01 Jun 2018
News

June 2018 Alumni and Faculty Books

Washington. With Gratitude: Barker Steel and the People Who Made It Work by Robert B. Brack (OPM 2, 1977) ArchwayPublishing When Robert Brack... View Details

01 Jun 2016
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for June 2016

Rosario Patalano and Sophus A. Reinert (Palgrave Macmillan) The contributors to this book explore the life and... View Details

01 Sep 2018
News

September 2018 Alumni and Faculty Books

Society in Enlightenment Italy by Sophus A. Reinert Harvard University Press The terms “capitalism” and... View Details

2018
Book

The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy

By: Sophus A. Reinert

The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the 18th century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the 19th, they paradoxically sought to make the... View Details

Keywords: Enlightenment; Political Economy; Italy; Commercial Society; Economic Systems; Trade; History; Markets; Society; Italy

January 2022
Supplement

Mercantilism, the Medici, and the Making of the Modern World (B)

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona

January 2022 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Mercantilism, the Medici, and the Making of the Modern World (A)

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona

Educators

Web

IFC: Italy; Tradition and Innovation - Course Catalog

HBS Course Catalog IFC: Italy; Tradition and Innovation Course Number 6052 Professor Sophus A. Reinert Professor of Management Practice Dante... View Details

December 2017 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Globalization Past, 1850–1914 (A)

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Federica Gabrieli

On the evening of 3 August 1914, British Foreign Secretary Lord Edward Grey contemplated whether to advise King and Parliament to declare war on Germany in the wake of the country’s invasion of Belgium or to stay out of what quickly was becoming a world war triggered... View Details

Keywords: The World; The Rise And Fall Of Globalization; World War; Globalization; War; Economics; Trade; Business Cycles; Economic Growth; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Society; History; Values and Beliefs; Macroeconomics

Educators

Summer 2019
Article

Breaking Even: Political Economy and Private Enterprise in the Norwegian Glass Industry, 1739-1803

By: Rolv Petter Amdam, Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

Using internal debates and surviving account books, this article traces the 18th-century history of the Norwegian glass industry, created to exploit Norway's immense natural resource wealth, and of the chartered company that would later become Norway's iconic... View Details

Keywords: Glass Industry; Natural Resources; Profitability; Political Economy; Cameralism; Liberalization; Patriotism; Profit; Natural Environment; Business History; Norway

2012
Chapter

Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, and Political Economy in the Accademia dei Pugni in Austrian Lombardy, 1760–1780

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Jani Marjanen

This essay focuses on the Accademia dei Pugni, or The Academy of Punches, a celebrated institution which flourished for a few years in 1760s Austrian Milan, and its journal Il Caffè (1764–1766). It does so to revisit one of the cardinal questions... View Details

Keywords: History; Culture; Economic Systems