Michael O'Sullivan

Michael O'Sullivan is a Researcher in the Department of History at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. He specializes in the economic and social histories of Muslim communities across the Indian Ocean world, with particular focus on South Asia and the Middle East.

His research interests span economic history, global history, South Asian history, Middle Eastern history, Ottoman history, Islamic economic history, trade history, and maritime history. O'Sullivan's work examines the economic histories of Muslim communities living between the Balkans and Bali over the past five centuries, with a special focus on intra-Asian trade networks and the institutions that supported them.

His recent publications reveal a consistent focus on early modern trade networks, Ottoman-Portuguese relations, and the intersection of language, religion, and commerce in South Asia. His research shows how Asian economic systems contributed to global capitalism in ways that have been historically overlooked in Eurocentric narratives.

• 2025: Ottoman shipping in the Indian Ocean, circa 1650–1900
• 2025: Factories, capitulations, and the dilemmas of Ottoman-Portuguese detente in Basra, 1622–1722
• 2023: The multiple registers of Arabic in the Daudi Bohra Da'wa and South Asian public life, c. 1880–1920
• 2023: Where is Asia in global histories of early modern capitalism?

As a CAPASIA Senior Fellow, O'Sullivan is currently researching intra-Asian trade and the institutions that underpinned it. His upcoming monograph on the histories of three Gujarati Muslim commercial castes, to be published by Harvard University Press in 2024, promises to make a significant contribution to the field of economic history and South Asian studies.