Dr. Jesus Bohorquez – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Dr. Jesus Bohorquez

University of Lisbon
Global Economic History

External Junior Fellow
February 2021 – July 2021

Last Update: 31.08.2021

Curriculum Vitae

J. Bohorquez gained his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at the ICS-UL, and previously, he was a Weatherhead Initiative on Global History fellow at Harvard University. He is a global historian with an interest in social sciences, particularly the evolution of economic theory and the interplays between history and social theory. His research interests encompass the interrelations between global history and political economy. His research revolves around globalization and capitalism, state-and empire building in the Global South, slave trade from a global and comparative perspective, and the Enlightenment as a global intellectual movement. Basically, his research engages three main fields: political economy and institutional diversity, international trade and globalization, and law, economics and economic thinking.

Selected Publications

Neither Absolutism nor negotiation: Spanish-empire building and the political economy in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, forthcoming.
Linking the Indian and Atlantic Oceans: Asian textiles, Spanish silver, global capital and the financing of Portuguese-Brazilian slave trade (1780-1811), Journal of Global History 15-1, 2020, pp. 19- 38.
Para além do Atlântico sul: fundamentos institucionais e financeiros do tráfico de escravos do Rio de Janeiro em finais do século XVIII, Revista de História Universidade de São Paulo 178, 2019pp. 1-43.
State contractors and global brokers: the itinerary of two Lisbon merchants and the transatlantic slave trade during the Eighteenth Century, Itinerario European Journal of Overseas History 42-3, 2018, p. 403-429.

FRIAS Project

Balzan Project in Global History: Slave trade and global capital. Comparative and global perspectives (1780-1850)

The slave trade is a very well studied topic yet one which has awaken a great interest recently. Regardless of the several studies, historians have rarely approached the theme from a comparative and global perspective. This means that the Portuguese, Spanish, British, and French slave trades have essentially been studied from a national or imperial perspective, what is the same, as a national business. According to available data, the Iberian empires stood among the largest transporters of enslaved humans and the ones in which the business lasted the most. This research precisely focuses on the Portuguese and Spanish slave trade from a comparative and global perspective. By studying the slave traffic comparatively and globally, this research seeks to examine whether or not it was a trans-imperial business that put into circulation capital at a truly global scale, mobilizing ventures that included agents in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. While focusing on the slave trade business, the research will shed light on uncoordinated investment cycles that were necessary for slave workforce to be supplied. This research look at the business of slavery not from the perspective of enslaved humans or traders but from the one of capital.