Massimo Bomboni
- Researcher
Massimo Bomboni is a postdoctoral researcher at the Italian-German Historical Institute. He is a member of the FIS-funded project Travellers’ Interactions in Early Modern Italy (TRAVEL), within which he focuses on the port cities of Genoa and Livorno.
Before joining ISIG in 2026, he was a research fellow at the Luigi Einaudi Foundation in Turin (2025–2026), where he investigated Italian presences in Portuguese Asia between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He received his PhD in Global History of Empires from the University of Turin in 2025, with a dissertation on the political, diplomatic, and commercial relations between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Dutch Republic at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
His research interests encompass a set of closely interconnected themes: the mobility of people, goods, and information; commercial and maritime history; and processes of connection between the Mediterranean, Europe, and colonial worlds. His research focuses in particular on Medici Tuscany, European expansion, and forms of cross-cultural interaction in the early modern period.
Related Projects
Publications
“‘Italian’ Merchants and the Slave Systems of Maritime East Asia: The Neretti Household of Macao (c. 1580–1640).” e-Journal of Portuguese History (2026), Special Issue “Reconstructing Slave Trades in Maritime Asia: Definitions, Enslavements, Coerced Mobilities, Destinations, and Outcomes”, eds. Filipa Ribeiro da Silva and Claude Chevalrey. DOI: 10.1163/16456432-bja10040.
“Sugar, Salt, and Mills for the Grand Duke. Dutch Trade and Technological Innovation in Early 17th Century Livorno.” Itinerario. Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions (2026): 1–19. DOI: 10.1017/S016511532610062X.
“Da Amsterdam a Livorno. I commerci internazionali della famiglia Lus.” In La Livornina. Alle origini di Livorno, città cosmopolita in età moderna, edited by Lucia Felici. Rome: Viella, 2024.
“Il Galeone Livorno: sogni di gloria e imprese mancate di Ferdinando I de’ Medici fra le Indie e il Mediterraneo (1606–1608).” Mediterranea. Ricerche Storiche 57 (2023).
“Dall’Egitto alle Molucche. Il confronto con l’alterità religiosa nell’Itinerario di Ludovico de Varthema (1510).” Riforma e Movimenti Religiosi 9 (2021).