Dr Carl Wennerlind

Professor of History, Barnard, Columbia Climate School

BIOGRAPHY:

Professor Wennerlind specializes in the history of early modern Europe, with a focus on intellectual history and political economy. He is particularly interested in the historical development of ideas about money and credit; ideas on the relationship between economy and nature; and ideas about "improvement" and "modernization." He is the author of three monographs: Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720 (Harvard University Press, 2011), A Philosopher's Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism, together with Margaret Schabas (University of Chicago Press, 2020), and Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis, together with Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (Harvard University Press, 2023). Currently, he is working on a book on early modern Swedish political economy (tentatively titled, Atlantis Restored: Empire, Wealth, and Knowledge in Early Modern Sweden). In addition to his co-edited volumes David Hume’s Political Economy (with Margaret Schabas) and Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and its Empire (with Phil Stern), Wennerlind’s work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, American Historical Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, History of Political Economy, and Hume Studies.