by the Past & Present editorial team

Past & Present was delighted to hear that Dr. Michael Martoccio (University of Oxford) has won the 2021 Society for Italian Historical Studies Article Prize for Medieval and Early Modern Italian History. The award has been made for his article “The Art of Mercato: Buying City-States in Renaissance Tuscany” which appeared in Past & Present No. 252 (August 2021).

The prize’s Award Committee citation runs as follows:

“The committee unanimously and enthusiastically agrees to award the SIHS prize for Medieval and Early Modern History to Michael Martoccio for his article ‘The Art of the Mercato: Buying City-States in Renaissance Tuscany’ (Past & Present, 2021). Carefully positioned in the existing scholarship and supported by a meticulous and insightful analysis of a variety of primary sources, Martoccio’s essay reveals the logistics and meanings of the early modern Italian financial and political practice of buying city states. Uncovering an important aspect of Renaissance political life and exploring the links between the money-market economy and the language of empire, this article stirs us to consider the overlapping valences of Italian imperial projects that were at once commercial, territorial, and moral.”

A full news story about the prize can be read on the Society’s website.

The Society has produced a video interview with Dr. Martoccio which can be viewed below:

Our publisher Oxford University Press Academic has kindly agreed to make Dr. Matoccio’s award winning scholarship avaliable to read for free for a limited period of time. The article can be accessed here. Our congradulations once more to Dr. Martoccio on his scholarship being recognised and acclaimed by such a presitigious body.