History Fellow Professor Giuseppe Marcocci publishes The Globe on Paper

The age of exploration exposed the limits of available universal histories. Everyday interactions with cultures and societies across the globe brought to light a multiplicity of pasts which proved difficult to reconcile with an emerging sense of unity in the world.

In his new book, The Globe on Paper, Giuseppe Marcocci (Official Fellow and Tutor in History at Exeter College) examines histories of the world in Renaissance Europe and the Americas. He considers the unexpected and fascinating paths followed by information and communication across localities, languages, and genres in the early modern world. A study of the cross-fertilization of historical writing in the 16th and early 17th centuries, The Globe on Paper reconstructs a set of imaginative accounts worked out from Mexico to the Moluccas and Peru, and from the shops of Venetian printers to the rival courts of Spain and England. The stories in the book testify to an unprecedented broadening of horizons which briefly flourished before succumbing to the forces of imperial and religious reaction.

Published in September 2020 by OUP, The Globe on Paper is available for purchase here.