Nuala Zahedieh retired as Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh in 2021 where she taught from 1990. She served as Director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies from 2014-2019 and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Global History from 2019-2020. She held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 1997-8 and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society (1994); Caird Senior Reseach Fellow at the National Maritime Museum (2008-2009); InterAmericas Fellow at John Carter Brown Library, Brown University (2010-2011); Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (2017-2018). She serves on various committees including the Academic Panel of the Museum of London and is Chair of the Publications Committee of the Economic History Society. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; and Fellow of Academia Europaea.

Research  

Nuala Zahedieh’s research focuses on the economic history of the Atlantic world in the age of slavery. She has combined quantitative and qualitative research to provide a detailed insight into the workings of London’s colonial commerce in the late seventeenth century and an assessment of the impact of overseas expansion on the development of the British economy resulting in a number of articles and a monograph, The Capital and the Colonies. London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660-1700 (CUP, 2010). She has also published on imperial regulation, mercantilism, piracy, smuggling, merchant diasporas, the slave trade, legacies of slavery, the copper industry, industrial technology, and the Williams thesis. Current projects include a book on the political economy of Jamaica, Britain’s most valuable colonial possession in the eighteenth century, Silver and Sugar: Jamaica and the Atlantic Economy, 1655-1730 which highlights the island’s dual development as both emporium for inter-imperial trade and sugar plantation. Other research will expand earlier work on the intersection between empire, the pursuit of new natural knowledge, and industrial revolution: the success of the drive for profit and power which fuelled Europe’s overseas expansion is shown to have rested on a massive investment in knowledge and skills which made empire possible and also underpinned greater efficiency in the home economy. Linked research includes 'The Royal Society, Slavery, and Jamaica, 1660-1713' (in collaboration with the Royal Society and funded by the AHRC from 2021-2025).

Selected Publications

Books: 

The Capital and the Colonies. London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660-1700, (Cambridge, 2010)

Articles in Refereed Journals:

'The Rise of King Sugar and Enslaved Labour in Early English Jamaica', Early American Studies, 20 (2022) pp. 576-596.

 ‘A Copper Still and the Making of Rum in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World’, Historical Journal, 65 (2022), pp. 149-166.

‘Britain’s Atlantic Slave Economy, the Market for Knowledge and Skills, and Early Industrialization: A Response to Joel Mokyr’s “Holy Land of Industrialism”, Journal of the British Academy,  9 (2021), pp. 283-293.

 ‘Eric Williams and William Forbes: Copper, Colonial Markets, and Commercial Capitalism’, Economic History Review, 74 (2021), pp. 784-808.

‘Defying Mercantilism. Illicit Trade, Trust and the Jamaican Sephardim, 1660-1730’, Historical Journal, 61 (2018), pp. 77-102.

Monopoly and Free Trade. Changes in the Organization of the British Slave Trade, 1660-1720’, Proceedings of the Instituto di Storia Economica, 44 (2014), pp. 651-662.

‘Copper, Colonies and the Market for Inventive Activity, 1680-1730’, Economic History Review, 66 (2013), pp. 805-825.

Regulation, Rent-Seeking and the Glorious Revolution in the English Atlantic Economy’, Economic History Review 63 (2010), pp. 865-890.

‘New World Resources and the Expansion of England’s Merchant Marine’, Proceedings of the Instituto di Storia Economica, 37 (2006), pp. 511-534.

‘Making Mercantilism Work: London Merchants and Atlantic Trade in the Late Seventeenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 9 (1999), pp. 143-158.

‘London and the Colonial Consumer in the Late Seventeenth Century’ Economic History Review, 47 (1994), pp. 239-261.

‘A Frugal, Prudential, and Hopeful Trade. Privateering in Jamaica, 1655-1689’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 18 (1990), pp. 145-168.

‘The Merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and Spanish Contraband Trade, 1655-1689’ William and Mary Quarterly, 43 (1986), pp. 570-593.

‘Trade, Plunder and Economic Development in Early English Jamaica’, Economic History Review, 39 (1986), pp. 205-222.

Book Chapters (Refereed):

'Trade, Plunder and Irishmen in Early English Jamaica', in Finola O'Kane and Ciaran O'Neill, eds., Ireland, Slavery and the Caribbean: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Manchester, 2023), pp. 74-86.

‘The Second Anglo-Dutch War in the Caribbean’ in David Ormrod and Gijs Rommelse, eds, War, Trade and the State. Anglo-Dutch Conflict 1652-89 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2020), pp. 185-202.

‘”The Pegs and Nails in a Great Building”. The Sephardim in Jamaica’s Illicit Trade, 1655-1730’, in Jose Ignatio Martinez Ruiz, ed., A Global Trading Network. The Spanish Empire in the World Economy (1580-1820) (Seville, 2018), pp. 27-44.
           
‘Jamaica, Jewish Merchants and Spanish American Markets’ in S. Middleton and J. Shaw eds, Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300-1850 (London, 2017), pp. 150-65

‘Commerce and Conflict: Jamaica and the War of Spanish Succession’, in A. B. Leonard and David Pretel, eds., The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy: Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge (London, 2015), pp. 68-86.

‘Overseas Trade and Empire, 1700-1870’ in R. Floud, J. Humphries, and P. Johnson eds., Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 391-419.

‘Colonial Merchants and the Country House c. 1680-1730: Sir Gilbert Heathcote of Normanton Hall and Others’, Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann, eds., Slavery and the British Country House (English Heritage Publications, 2013), pp. 69-77, 163-65.

‘Technique or Demand? The Revival of the English Copper Industry, 1680-1730’, in Philipp R.  Roessner, ed., Cities-Coins-Commerce. Essays Presented to Ian Blanchard (Stuttgart, 2012), pp. 167-174.

‘Productivity in English Atlantic Shipping: Evidence from the Navigation Acts’, in Richard Unger, ed., Shipping Efficiency and Economic Growth, 1350-1800 (Leiden, 2011), pp. 117-34.

‘Economy’ in David Armitage and Michael Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (London, 2002), pp. 51-68. 2nd edition 2009, pp. 53-70.

‘The Wickedest City in the World. Port Royal, Commercial Hub of the Seventeenth Century Caribbean’, in Verene Shepherd, ed., Working Out Slavery, Pricing Freedom. Essays in Honour of Barry W. Higman (Kingston, Jamaica, 2002), pp. 3-20.

‘Credit, Risk, and Reputation in Late Seventeenth Century Colonial Trade’ in Olaf U. Janzen, ed., Merchant Organization and Maritime Trade in the North Atlantic, 1660-1815 (St John’s, Newfoundland, 1998), pp. 53-74.
 
‘Overseas Expansion and Trade in the Seventeenth Century’ in Nicholas Canny, ed., Oxford History of the British Empire, vol.1 (Oxford,1998), pp. 398-422.

‘The Capture of the Blue Dove, 1664: Policy, Profits and Protection in Early English Jamaica’, in R. McDonald, ed., West India Accounts: Essays on the History of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy in Honour of Richard Sheridan (Kingston, Jamaica, 1996), pp. 29-47.