Floris at the WEHC 2025 in Lund

In July 2025 Floris attended the World Economic History Conference in Lund, Sweden. Though almost foiled by numerous travel mishaps, Floris managed to eventually make it to the conference. Though he therefore arrived later than planned, this was made up for by the wonderfully organised conference itself. With more than 250 panels and a host of keynotes and other activities, the conference brought together a wide variety of scholars from diverse backgrounds. It therefore provided a wonderful opportunity for discussion and interdisciplinary debate.

Floris’s talk was part of a double panel organised by Cátia Antunes, Markus Denzel and Gijs Dreijer entitled ‘Risk and Resilience Management in the Premodern World in a Global Perspective.’ These panels therefore brought together scholars of different parts of the world in order to discuss risk and resilience management in a wide variety of areas. Ghislaine Lydon discussed the commercial challenges and legal mechanisms of the Trans-Saharan caravan trade, François Gipouloux outlined insurance practices in late imperial China and Julliette Françoise discussed public-private partnerships sought to avoid risk in early modern French Mauritius. Floris’s talk focussed on the efforts of early modern Japanese domains (in the Chūgoku and Shikoku regions) to outsource financial risk to ‘private entrepreneurs’ during reclamation and riparian works.

The conference was a wonderful opportunity to talk with a wide variety of scholars and it couldn’t have found a better and more beautiful venue than sunny Lund.