Michael Martoccio
UW–Madison open-topic Resident Fellow (2025–2026)
Assistant Professor, Department of History, UW–Madison
Leviathan for Sale: The Market for City-States in Renaissance Italy
Leviathan for Sale: The Market for City-States in Renaissance Italy, is a study of pre-modern European territorial expansion by means of money, and of how people across a broad range of society talked about and imagined empire as monetizable. It explores how in an intensely short period (~1350-1450), Italy’s republics and lordships bought and sold scores of cities, fundamentally reshaping Renaissance Italian political geography. Leviathan for Sale is a case study of how the act of acquiring empire by means of money changed late medieval European public finance, diplomacy, and imperial discourse.
Michael Martoccio is an economic and military historian of the early modern Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Italy. He is especially interested in how early modern economic practices—consumerism, market culture, and the commercialization of war—shaped notions of sovereignty, territoriality, and political geography.
*Events currently open only to 2025-26 fellows due to space concerns; please contact IRH at info@irh.wisc.edu to be added to a cancellation list for in-person events.*