Rate My Professor Edmond Smith

Professor Edmond Smith is Professor in Economic Cultures in the Department of History at the University of Manchester. After completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2016 and post-doctoral work at the University of Kent, he joined the University of Manchester in 2018 as a Presidential Fellow in Economic Cultures. He advanced to Senior Lecturer in 2022, Professor in 2024, and was appointed Director of the Centre for Economic Cultures in 2025. His research examines the histories of globalisation and capitalism, particularly international trade and its impacts on societies between 1450 and 1750. Smith investigates everyday economic behaviours driving systemic changes, institutional transformations in regions like the Gulf of Guinea, Gulf of Khambhat, and Straits of Malacca, and the movement of goods, people, and ideas across Eurasia. As Principal Investigator, he leads major projects including the ERC- and UKRI-funded INTRECCI (2024-2029) on entangled commercial cultures of international commerce, ESRC-funded Risky Business on investment in innovation and Britain’s economic development (2021-2024), and initiatives on the legacies of the British slave trade (2021-2024) and Australian legacies of British slavery (2024-2026).

Key publications include his monograph Merchants: The Community That Shaped England’s Trade and Empire, 1550-1650 (Yale University Press, 2021), selected as a Book of the Year by Aspects of History, and the forthcoming Ruthless: A New History of Britain's Rise to Wealth and Power (2025). Other significant works are 'The Social Networks of Investment in Early Modern England' (Historical Journal, 2020), 'The Global Interests of London’s Commercial Community, 1599-1625' (Economic History Review, 2018), and 'Borders before Nations: Encounters in the Akan and Dzungar Borderlands, 1450–1750' (Journal of Early Modern History, 2022). Smith has received the Faculty of Humanities Distinguished Achievement Award for Researcher of the Year (2022), the Ralph Gomory Prize (2023), and election as Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2021). He served as Council Member for the Hakluyt Society (2017-2021) and the Economic History Society (2021-2024).