Overview  |  Research

Robert Burr Litchfield (R. Burr Litchfield), Professor of History Emeritus, is specialized in Early Modern European, Italian, and Florentine history. He taught at Dartmouth College (1963-68), where he also learned basics of computer analysis, and at Brown University (1968-2002).

He has published, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 (Princeton, 1986—AHA Howard R. Marraro Prize, 1987), and articles on European and Florentine history. He has also published translations of Franco Venturi, Settecento Riformatore (3 vols., Princeton, 1989-90); Emilio Sereni, History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape (Princeton, 1997); and Sergio Bertelli, The King's Body (Penn State, 2001). He co-edited a census database for 19th century comparative urban history (Comparative Cities, Ann Arbor Michigan: ICPSR, 1985) and two Web sites of sources for Florentine History: The Online Catasto of 1427 (1995) and The Online Tratte of Office Holders 1282-1532 (2000), and another Web site, The Online Gazetteer of Sixteenth Century Florence (2006), for use with his book, Florence Ducal Capital, 1530-1630, published as a state-of–the-art online book by ACLS Humanities E-book in 2008. He is currently working on Portuguese and Spanish nobles at the Medici court in the 16th-17th centuries, and Florentine commercial relations through Livorno, Portugal, and Spain with the Atlantic World.

He travels frequently to Italy, and lives with his partner Gardner Chace in Westport, Massachusetts.

Download Robert Burr Litchfield's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format