Lewis Wade

Postan Fellow 2022/23Northumbria University

Lewis Wade is an historian of early modern France, with a particular interest in global commerce, maritime activity, and state formation under Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715). Lewis conducted the research for his doctoral thesis at the University of Exeter, with full funding from the European Research Council. His thesis, entitled ‘Privilege at a Premium: Insurance, Maritime Law, and Political Economy in Early Modern France, 1664-c.1710’, was awarded the British Commission for Maritime History’s Boydell & Brewer Prize for the best doctoral thesis in maritime history. As the Economic History Society’s Postan Fellow, Lewis will finish a monograph (entitled Privilege, Economy, and State in Old Regime France: Marine Insurance, War, and the Atlantic Empire under Louis XIV) that is under contract with Boydell & Brewer. He will also start work on a new project, entitled ‘The Mediterranean as a Laboratory of Globalization: Languedocian Cloth in Global Markets, 1683-c.1700’.