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 Mon 23 August 9:00 
 
A-1 - The Fall of Empires
Aula
Session: Major themes
Organizations: Joint Session with the Associaiton Internationale d'Histoire contemporaine de l'Europe
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The one-day session on the major theme of the fall of empires will reassess the European empires in ancient and modern times. It will not only discuss the events surrounding the demise of empires but will also compare the end with the rise of the empires, and will ask the critical question whether some empires revived before they fell. >From the Greek and Roman to the Russian, British, French, and other modern empires, there were circumstances that made each empire unique, but were there common characteristics? Is there such a thing as institutional violence that existed in each of them? Other questions to be addressed are: to what extent did nationalism play a part in the end of empire in comparison to other major considerations such as the decline of will? What of changing economic and technological circumstances? How can the balance be struck between the vantage point of the colonized and the colonizers? In short, this session will engage in fundamental and controversial questions and the assessments will be far-reaching and comprehensive.
Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Hiroaki Adachi - End of the Roman Empire   Show
Contributor: Prof. Hiroaki Adachi - End of the Roman Empire   Hide
End of the Roman Empire

The end of the Roman Empire had long been considered to be the end of Classical Civilization. In the European world, civilization was not a mere accumulation of public monuments but, as the word “Civil”ization itself shows, it was defined as a combination of voluntary acts by citizens contributing to their community. It was the Late Roman period that saw the death throes of this brilliant model of the civic life.
Recently, however, this kind of negative image has been changing. The word “Transformation” is now more preferred than to the traditional “Decline and Fall.” Then, the same age is called “Late Antiquity” that had it own flavor. It seems to be apparent that the Later Roman Empire had a resilient state system absorbing the able local talents. On this fertile foundation with many possibilities, we witnessed the Rise of the Christianity, the Advent of Islam, and the great immigration of many peoples. Although there must have been much destruction, we should not ignore the long transactions among the peoples and the regions. When we can get a good insight into the age, we will also have a key insight into the current issues of religions and ethnicities
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Ion Bulei - La chute des empires à la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale,   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Ion Bulei - La chute des empires à la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale,   Hide
La chute des empires à la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale,

La chute des empires habsbourgeois, russe, ottoman et allemand est une conséquence de la conjonction de trois facteurs: la pression exercée par les peuples inclus dans ces empires, augmentée de manière exponentielle pendant la guerre par les défaites sur les champs de bataille, la pression de la situation interne progressivement détériorée par la guerre et qui provoque de grands conflits sociaux dans ces empires ainsi que les positions des grandes puissances les unes envers les autres, toujours influencées par les premiers deux facteurs. De ces trois facteurs, le rôle essentiel revient au troisième, surtout par les changements d’attitude de la part des États-Unis à l'égard des empires centraux, notamment de l’Autriche–Hongrie. La chute des empires modifie les données géopolitiques et, à moyen et long terme, augmente l'insécurité, surtout sur le continent européen. Elle traduit aussi la faiblesse du principe des nationalités, capable de créer ou réunifier de nouveaux ou plus anciens États nationaux, mais incapable de leur procurer la sécurité.

Contributor: John Darwin - End of the British Empire   Show
Contributor: John Darwin - End of the British Empire   Hide
End of the British Empire

Historians have been - and remain – divided over what caused the end of the British Empire. Usually they adopt one of three positions: that it was forced by the revolt of its colonial subjects; that it was outmoded by the change of scale in global politics which produced two superpowers and squeezed out smaller, weaker would-be world powers; or that it occurred because British leaders wisely accepted at some point after 1945 that Britain’s imperial day was over. This paper argues that none of these is correct, and that British leaders were extremely reluctant to acknowledge that the era of empire had ended as late as 1960. What is suggested instead is that the British Empire should be seen as a world system that depended critically on a set of global conditions, and on its capacity to function as a system. The decisive moment of change occurred not after World War Two, and certainly not in the 1960s, but when a geostrategic catastrophe overtook British world power between 1938 and 1942. In that critical period, all the basic elements that sustained a British world-system were destroyed from without or consumed from within. Although a semblance of empire survived the war, its sources of power had shifted fundamentally and become both more vulnerable and much more unstable.
Contributor: Dr. Matteo Dominioni - The falling of Mussolini's empire   Show
Contributor: Dr. Matteo Dominioni - The falling of Mussolini's empire   Hide
The falling of Mussolini's empire

In the 1936 Mussolini, after a war of seven months against Ethiopia, announced the birth of a new empire. Italy started a big colonial campaign at the end of colonial age.
For several reasons the fascist empire did not grow. For Italy it represented an enormous cost.
First of all, the local resistance and the opposition created big problems to the Italians. For all the years of the military occupation, territory was not peaceful: partisans sabotaged communication ways and attacked the military garrisons.
Secondary, political, civil and military administration were managed directly from Rome. All the principal affairs were always decided by the Minister of Africa Italiana and often by Mussolini. Administration was highly inefficient (expensive and slow) because it was completely centralized.
Since the first days of the military occupation, Mussolini ordered to marginalize and not recognize the local chiefs, bishops and priests; situation became unmanageable.
Under every point of view, the fascist empire was completely dependent from the motherland. In 1938, the regime reduced the investments and a big crisis caught colonies. Infrastructure construction was interrupted and the number of unemployed grew a lot.
In a few months, in 1940-41, Italy lost all the colonies in the Horn of Africa. It’s army was completely unprepared to face the British. In 5 years infrastructures and equipments were consumed in a continuous war against patriots. Even ammunitions were insufficient. The army in the empire had not been modernized, because since 1937 the regime forgot it, and moved all its interests to other countries like Spain.
Contributor: Dr. Arthur M. Eckstein - Rome and the End of the Macedonian World (220-146 B.C.)   Show
Contributor: Dr. Arthur M. Eckstein - Rome and the End of the Macedonian World (220-146 B.C.)   Hide
Rome and the End of the Macedonian World (220-146 B.C.)

In 220 B.C., the ancient Mediterranean contained five great powers: Rome, Carthage, the Antigonid realm based in Macedon, the Seleucid realm based in Syria and Mesopotamia, and the Ptolemaic realm based in Egypt. The latter three great powers were all Macedonian-ruled states. There were also a multitude of second-tier powers. 75 years later, there was only one great power, Rome. This paper will ask the question: How did this transformation come about? Was it sheer Roman aggressiveness and imperialism? How much did the aggressiveness and imperialism of the Macedonian great states contribute to the transformation? Why weren't they able to withstand Rome and its multitude of Greek allies? And why were the Greek allies fighting on the side of Rome?
Contributor: Prof. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto - The Fall of the Spanish Empire   Show
Contributor: Prof. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto - The Fall of the Spanish Empire   Hide
The Fall of the Spanish Empire

My object is to explore the problem of what, if anything, was distinctive about the Spanish empire, compared with other agglomerations that are commonly called empires. I attempt to show, in comparative perspective, how the Spanish empire worked - how and why, that is, subject communities deferred to Spaniards - and how changes initiated from Spain and from within the colonies transformed most of the empire into what we now think of as independent republics.
Contributor: Prof. Antoine Fleury - Le démembrement de l'Empire ottoman   Show
Contributor: Prof. Antoine Fleury - Le démembrement de l'Empire ottoman   Hide
Le démembrement de l'Empire ottoman

Analyser les causes structurelles et conjoncturelles du démembrement de l'Empire ottoman, tel est le propos. Autrement dit, l'Empire ottoman avait-il engagé un processus de réformes susceptibles d'affronter la modernité? Sa disparition résulte-t-il au contraire du choc des guerres et des impérialismes européens qui s'affrontent dans l'espace ottoman avant, pendant et après le premier conflit mondial, où les puissances victorieuses se disputent ce qu'elles considèrent comme une part d'héritage ou de butin de guerre? Pour quelles raisons,les idées promues par l'idéal wilsonien, celles du droit des peuples à s'autodéterminer qui s'imposent sous la forme des légitimités nationales dans le partage de l'Empire des Habsbourg n'ont pas été mises en oeuvre par les Puissances victorieuses? Celles-ci ne les ont-elles pas plutôt contrariées par le découpage des provinces ottomanes, par l'imposition des mandats à leur profit, à part le cas inattendu de la résistance kémaliste qui instaura une nation turque et une République dont l'inspiration rejoint l'idéal européen d'Etat-Nation. Les conséquences de la disparition de l'Empire ottoman seront aussi esquissées.
Contributor: Prof. Dušan Kováč - Nationalism, idea of the nation-state and the Habsburg Monarchy   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dušan Kováč - Nationalism, idea of the nation-state and the Habsburg Monarchy   Hide
Nationalism, idea of the nation-state and the Habsburg Monarchy

The paper will bring the synthesis of new research on the controversial impact of the nation-state idea in Central Europe. The European nationalism gradually changed the principle of state-organization in Europe with the “nation” as a new sovereign of the statehood. It was a big challenge for the Habsburg Monarchy too. Searching for the international balance and preservation of the dynasty in many controversial lines of power inside and outside the Monarchy – that is very dramatic story with the milestones like Vienna congress, revolution 1848, neo-absolutism, lost wars against the national-revolutionary forces, dualism, double alliance and finally First world war. This process was historically unique one, but whit many elements and patterns which could be compared with the decline of some other empires and even with the afterwards development in Central Europe.
Contributor: Prof. Henry Laurens - Les rapports entre les métropoles et les empires coloniaux   Show
Contributor: Prof. Henry Laurens - Les rapports entre les métropoles et les empires coloniaux   Hide
Les rapports entre les métropoles et les empires coloniaux

Le système colonial européen est fondé sur la projection coloniale des réalités culturelles des métropoles. La fin de l'empire colonial est accompagnée de l'idée d'abolition de la différence entre métropole et dépendances ultramarines. Ce projet d'égalité se heurte à l'impossibilité d'établir une telle égalité tout aussi bien du point de vue des métropoles que de celui des mouvements nationalistes des dépendances. Pourtant l'immigration des anciens colonisés dans les métropoles reposera l'ensemble de ces problématiques.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Chantal Metzger - La mémoire d'un Empire perdu: le cas allemand 1919-1945   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Chantal Metzger - La mémoire d'un Empire perdu: le cas allemand 1919-1945   Hide
La mémoire d'un Empire perdu: le cas allemand 1919-1945

A l'issue de la Première Guerre mondiale, l'Allemagne devient "un pays sans colonies". Cet empire était de création récente et la population allemande n'avait pas eu le temps de s'y attacher. Mais le"rapt" de ses colonies est mal perçu et est considéré comme une humiliation. La mémoire de cet Empire va perdurer durant tout l'entre-deux-guerres. Les ligues coloniales, les associations d'anciens coloniaux, les milieux d'affaires qui commerçaient avec cet Empire avant 1914 vont chercher à maintenir dans la population allemande le souvenir de cet Empire et à attiser les revendications coloniales en exerçant des pressions sur les dirigeants de la République de Weimar et du Troisième Reich.
Contributor: Prof. Tomasz Schramm - Confrontation Etats-Nations et Empires en Europ au xxe siecle   Show
Contributor: Prof. Tomasz Schramm - Confrontation Etats-Nations et Empires en Europ au xxe siecle   Hide
Confrontation Etats-Nations et Empires en Europ au xxe siecle

The rivalry of the national states and empires in Europe in the 20th century

The break down of the old European political order as a consequence of World War I meant the triumph of the idea of a national state, created and promoted in the 19th century. The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and Tsarist Russia, followed by the unsuccessful expansion of newly-born Russian political groups after 1918, created a new map of Europe. Several new states appeared, trying to fulfill the idea of nationhood in one form or another. It was, exactly, the concept of a national state which influenced the political principles proclaimed during the conference in Versailles and formed the new European order. It did not last, however, for a long time. Its gradual disintegration and decomposition resulted in the outbreak of World War II, preceded by the suppression of three states (Austria, Czechoslovakia and Albania).
World War II was closely combined with fulfillment of two imperial projects of a new type, which eo ipso eliminated the idea of a national state. On one hand it is quite clear that these two projects marked greatly the history of Europe in the 20th century; however it is not the intention of the author to discuss in this paper the significant similarities and obvious dissimilarities. On the other hand it is impossible to avoid the discussion on the essence of the totalitarian political system. Both of these systems developed in the 1930s and 1940s in parallel, and even sometimes closely cooperating. So that by the summer 1941, this process resulted in as many a fifteen European states to cease to exist, or to exist as a transformed, less nationalistic polity, thanks to the efforts of oppressive powers. At least ten states were suppressed by the Third Reich and three by the Soviet Union. In addition, both of these states destroyed Poland; Albania was annexed by Italy.
The map of Europe in 1945 came back to the map of 1919 which manifested the fall of the Nazi totalitarian system. However, one cannot describe the Soviet totalitarian system in this same way, because three Baltic states remained under Soviet power and four other states had to change their borders. Moreover, although several states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and later G.D.R.) preserved, at first glance, some features of a national state, they were in fact subordinate to Soviet power. Their political status could be approximately described as a protectorate.
The success of the Soviet political system ended between 1989 and 1991, which can be also considered conventionally as the end of the “short 20th century”. Besides economical inefficiency and ideological weakness, the fall of the Soviet empire was also affected by the desire to reestablish independent and sovereign national states in the above-mentioned protectorates as well as within the Soviet Union itself. Therefore, one can say that in the 20th century Europe, the rivalry between national states and empires was lost by the latter ones. It does not mean, however, that this situation will mark also the 21st century in Europe
Contributor: Crawford Young - Unhappy Endings: Belgian, Portuguese and Dutch Decolonization   Show
Contributor: Crawford Young - Unhappy Endings: Belgian, Portuguese and Dutch Decolonization   Hide
Unhappy Endings: Belgian, Portuguese and Dutch Decolonization

The three smallest European imperial powers experienced particularly painful withdrawals from their overseas possessions. These difficult decolonizations left in their wake protracted instability in the successor states, and in the Belgian and Portuguese cases major mutations in the metropolitan polity.
Discussant: Prof. Aldo Schiavone
 
B-1 - History and Ethics
Agnietenkapel
Session: Round tables
Organizations: This session is co-sponsored by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven & Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche
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The History of Ethics has mostly been written by philosophers, who are well equipped to trace influences and uncover coherence, but less strong on the historical setting in life of the classics of moral philosophy.
Even those few philosophers who try seriously to integrate text and context - Alistair MacIntyre is an impressive example - tend to be amateurish on the historical side of the equation. The methodology of the 'Cambridge School' of the History of Political Thought offers a corrective, but its emphasis on the patterns of intention behind key texts is only one way to put philosophy back into their times. Again, studies of influence, such as Jonathan Israel's remarkable demonstration of the impact of Spinoza's works, do justice to philosophical works without tearing them away from the fabric of the past. There are however other ways also in which the history of classic philosophical texts can become part of mainstream History; this /table ronde /aims to explore them. It retains a focus on classic philosophical texts or problems, but integrates them History in new ways - e.g. by bringing them into conjunction with diplomatic history or African customary norms, or by employing sociological methodology. The type of social history envisaged is also comparative, so the table ronde has a broad chronological and geographical spread. There will be papers or discussants expert in the ethics of the twelfth century Renaissance, early modern European casuistry, ethical aspects of African law, and ethical dilemmas in twentieth century politics. The convenor's paper will attempt to provide a methodological framework for a history of ethics transcending specific
periods.

Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Dr. David d'Avray - History of Ethics as a Weberian Problem   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Dr. David d'Avray - History of Ethics as a Weberian Problem   Hide   Download
History of Ethics as a Weberian Problem

The paper will consider the History of Ethics in the light of Weberian social theory, and specifically of his central distinction between value rationality and instrumental rationality. The aim is to trace the history of the borderline between values treated as certainties, integral to the world view of ethical thinkers or whole societies or subcultures, and consequentialist reasoning within those parameters. At one extreme one has for instance Kantian imperatives or Quaker Pacifism; at the other Utilitarianism and /Raison d'Etat. /In fact, however, even the most apparently thoroughgoing 'consequentialist' systems take some values to be certainties. Thus Benthamite Utilitarianism assumes that the individual is the unit and that pain is always bad, and /Raison d'Etat/ assumes the overriding value of the State. Conversely, even systems such as Catholic moral theology and possibly also even Kantian Ethics, which involve absolute prohibitions, allow a place of instrumental calculation, say about when to tolerate evil or how to weigh up two evils. To give focus to the analysis, the starting point will be the delineation of an ideal-type of 'intercept values', that is to say, core-values that regulate the interface between value rationality and instrumental rationality. Thus for example 'the end doesn't justify the means', or, for that matter, 'the end justifies the means' are interface values in their respective systems. This ideal-type will be used as a tool for 'interrogating' key texts for the history of ethics in their contexts. The historical contexts are crucial just as they are in 'Cambridge School' intellectual history, but for somewhat different reasons. 'Values' as defined here often derive their immunity to merely verbal refutation from their embeddedness in social practices and experiences, so the latter must be reconstructed to understand most
values.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Emilia Hrabovec - Ethical Aspects of Political Decision-Making in the 20th century   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Emilia Hrabovec - Ethical Aspects of Political Decision-Making in the 20th century   Hide
Ethical Aspects of Political Decision-Making in the 20th century

The Paper will deal with ethical aspects of political decision-making and of individual obedience in the 20th century and comment on the paper of the organizer of the round table "History and Ethics", Prof. David D´Avray
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmrath
Discussant: Dr. Effa Okupa
 
C-1 - Is There a Global Approach to History?
UB, Doelenzaal
Session: Round tables
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Is global history possible? That is the question the members of the international Committee of historical sciences decided to choose for this round table. At first sight, the question is surprising. Global history is in fashion, books and papers related to it are increasingly numerous, so the answer seems evident: yes, global history is possible. One could be not only surprised but also offended by such a question. After all are we asking if cultural, economic or social history is possible? No, and why? The question is nevertheless useful, since it gives us the opportunity to think about a movement - global history - that still remains unclear for many historians, even for scholars involved in it.

As a matter of fact, the answer to the initial question is depending on how we define global history. The chairman’s paper - an appeal to debate and not ready-made answers - will be divided into three parts: 1 – What is global history? 2 – How is it (and can it be) implemented? 3 – For what advantages and dangers?

As indicated in the Congress’ rules, the panellists will discuss the chairman’s paper. Each of them will tackle various themes, while focusing on a more specific one: writing the global history of a specific item (Sven Beckert); global history as (or not) new wine in old barrels (Thomas David); global history and the “commonwealthization” of history (Poul Duedhal); global history in a borderless age (Michihiro Okamoto).
Contributor: Prof. Thomas David - Global History: a new concept or old wine in new bottles   Show
Contributor: Prof. Thomas David - Global History: a new concept or old wine in new bottles   Hide
Global History: a new concept or old wine in new bottles

I will first draw on historiography, so as to contextualize and understand how global history progressively emerged as an autonomous research field distinct from other approaches. Then I will focus on some methods used by global historians and finally I will present some new avenues and controversies opened up by global history.
Contributor: Poul Duedahl - History of Mankind: UNESCO and the Invention of Global History   Show
Contributor: Poul Duedahl - History of Mankind: UNESCO and the Invention of Global History   Hide
History of Mankind: UNESCO and the Invention of Global History

In wake of World War II a new approach to the writing of world history appeared. The idea was to produce history books without particular geographical orientations and to emphasize the history of globalization, with the purpose of constructing a sense of international unity, promoting mutual understanding and ultimately shaping the foundations for permanent peace among nations.

A noteworthy practical attempt was initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The preparatory commission for the organization acknowledged already that "peace in the minds of men" - which was the organization's overall goal - could easier be obtained if a collective memory of mankind was constructed. The task was therefore to launch an authoritative piece of world history providing a profound understanding of the interdependence of various cultures and accentuating their contributions to the common cultural heritage.

After years of preparation - which included scholars like Joseph Needham and Lucien Febvre - the six volumes, "History of Mankind: Scientific and Cultural Development", were published in 1963-76. The publication received massive critique, including objections towards the political implications of the content deriving from the Cold War, and towards the focus on science as the main thread in globalization, and the paper show how difficult it was to reach a world-wide consensus on how to write history at the time.

Nevertheless the volumes were ground-breaking in historiography due to the genuine attempt to be truly global in its objectives and in the composition of authors, and it would be reasonable to characterize the work an important forerunner of a new genre that has in recent years been labeled "global history" to distinguish it from the Eurocentric world histories of the past.

The paper highlights the long and troublesome process prior to the publication. It also draws attention to UNESCO's involvement in the internationalization of history and in the management of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, not to mention the creation of the Journal of World History - efforts that can be seen as major attempts to support the United Nation's practical decolonization and acts of peace-keeping through a kind of mental decolonization and peace-making.

The research is based on transnational archival sources such as the papers of the International Commission for a History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind at the UNESCO Archives in Paris, the Julian Huxley Papers at Rice University Library, Houston (Texas) and the Joseph Needham Papers at Cambridge University Library.
Discussant: Prof. Sven Beckert
Discussant: Prof. Michihiro Okamoto
 
F-1 - Mass Migration: A Global Perspective on Continuities and Discontinuities in the 19th and 20th Centuries I
OMHP, C0.17
Session: International Social History Association
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The triple panel will attempt to connect the 19th- with the 20th-century
migrations/ migration systems in global and gendered perspective and as
regards interactions between them. (1) Research has often separated male
and female migrations; migrations concerning the productive,
reproductive, and service sectors; agricultural from industrial ones;
rural-urban or inter-urban ones from migrations across state borders; as
well as regimes of "free" (in the frame of economic constraints),
bound, and forced migrations. Especially the free-bound continuum
overlaps with race/ ethnicity and class. (2) It is necessary to study
the (forced) mass migrations in the plantation belt of the world
(capitalized from the core) as well as the free migrations (southern
China and South Asia) in the World of the Indian Ocean and Southeast
Asia in relation to the proletarian mass migrations across the Atlantic,
the continental migrations within West Central and Western Europe, as
well as in relation to those in Russia-Soviet Union-Siberia, intra-North
American, intra-Latin American, and northern China (and perhaps Japan
separately). (3) Over time shifting geographies of migration, both as
regards regions involved and directions selected, have emerged. The
1930s have been viewed as a break between the (late) 19th/early
20th-century migrations and those of the second half of the 20th
century. However, fundamental shifts in economic regimes and power
relations notwithstanding, potential migrants' departure plans,
life-course projects, dowry and inheritance patterns, and social norms
shift more gradually and, often, only over an intergenerational
timeframe. The 19th-to-20th-century perspective permits a reassessment
of the assumed break in the 1930s, between men's and women's moves, and
of interdependencies between the major system.
Contactperson:
Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Dirk Hoerder - Transcultural Approaches to Labor Migration: From the 19th-Century Proletarian Mass Migrations to the 20th-Century Global Caregiver Migrations   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dirk Hoerder - Transcultural Approaches to Labor Migration: From the 19th-Century Proletarian Mass Migrations to the 20th-Century Global Caregiver Migrations   Hide
Transcultural Approaches to Labor Migration: From the 19th-Century Proletarian Mass Migrations to the 20th-Century Global Caregiver Migrations

I will discuss the transatlantic proletarian migrations in comparison to intra-continental and regional migrations women, mainly as domestic servants. I will then place both in the context of the Indian Ocean and China-Manchuria migrations (Adam McKeown) and critically evaluate concepts of "transnational" and "globalization." Finally I will relate the migration of the turn 19th/20th century to those since the 1960s and in the present. I will ask why no integrated gendered approaches have been developed to (mass) labor migrations.
Contributor: Prof. Elizabeth A. Kuznesof - I. Domestic Service and Urbanization in 19th Century Latin America   Show
Contributor: Prof. Elizabeth A. Kuznesof - I. Domestic Service and Urbanization in 19th Century Latin America   Hide
I. Domestic Service and Urbanization in 19th Century Latin America

Gender ideology and the philosophy of work had changed with independence in 19th century Latin America. The end of the guilds, the focus on women’s education, and the ideals of progress and modernization all conspired to put women to work, though what was seen as acceptable work for women was still in question . More than that changes in international trade and technology engendered an expansion in production geared toward exports and migrations of men to participate in these new areas of commercial agriculture and eventually in industry. The new prosperity related to exports and expansion of production also led to the development of urban areas and the expansion of educational institutions and leisure. All of those changes also spurred women to migrate as a means toward survival. Domestic service was the immediate solution to survival needs. International migration to Latin America also fed the stream of women to the cities in the 19th century. This paper will look at nineteenth century domestic and international migration to Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Santiago and Lima, with emphasis on women and work. I will examine the origins and destinations of migration, the labor market and the work experience, especially related to domestic service.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Jose Moya - The European Diaspora, 1830-1930: Exceptionalism Revisited   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Jose Moya - The European Diaspora, 1830-1930: Exceptionalism Revisited   Hide
The European Diaspora, 1830-1930: Exceptionalism Revisited

The paper examines what is unprecedented in the European exodus in the century after 1830 in comparison to European emigration before the nineteenth century and to non-European emigration after 1830.
 
I-1 - Imago Mundi : Mapping the World
OMHP, C2.17
Session: Round tables
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During last decades historical geography has transformed from simple technical skill of scholars to assimilate rather scant cartographical sources to the texts of ethno-geographical treaties of ancient and medieval epochs into complex research task to investigate in their interrelations the problems of natural history, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, historical hydrology, limnology and horology, historical anthropology and psychology, religion, taxonometrics, arts history, graphics and so on. The reconstruction of the Imago mundi of the pre-Columbian world includes as mapping proper, so analysis of mental historical characteristics reflected as in cartography so in textual space descriptions.
Primordial in this respect seems to be the problem of human orientation in constructions and locations , in surveying, in own environment in the physical and sacred space, finally in the world and universe. Such approach to the topic under discussion includes the results in such fields of sciences humanities as child perception of space, human geography, cognitive knowledge of the universe, the theory of mental maps, space epistemology etc.
The study of the historical cartography has become the search of the human mental way from mythological perception of the environment with its symbolical pictographic cosmograms towards attempts to the textual and visual realization and reproduction in form of geographical description or map.
The everlasting discussion of scholars, whether the way was from “Imago mundi” towards “mappa mundi”, or vice verse, or their ways were parallel, has adepts on both sides. As far as the problem of orientation is concerned, it is clear, that the modern northward orientation of the maps was not initial, but became the dominate form of cartography (first of all in European) only during last several centuries. Claudius Ptolemaic, who has introduced the northwards principle in orientation , was unknown even in medieval Europe until the 15th C.
The kiblah principal of orientation was another important for the Middle ages structural form of mapping the world, spread as in Moslem tradition (e.c. al-Idrisi map of 1154) so even in Ancient Russian. The kiblah-principle coexisted with the main (but not always most ancient) solar orientation supplemented with the astral one (according to stars movement).
Bur the mostly spread type of geographical literature was not a picture, a map, but description in form of Itinerary (periplous, periegesis, periodos, chorographia). In the debate between geographical description and cartographical drawing the priority in the pre-Columbian tradition had the text.
Nearly one quarter of the century has passed since the publication of the summarizing and generalizing volumes of “The History of Cartography” and some editions of the type “instrumentum studiorum” (e.c. “Lexikon”) of the history of cartography). Since that time new results of the concrete studies of ancient and medieval maps have been received, on one side, new approaches in humanities, such as historical anthology, microhistory, eco-history, have been established and developed. Thus the topic of the talks at the session of our “Table ronde” should be the influence of modern achievements in various fields of historical geo-cartography and the perspectives of subsequent research
Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Iskra Gencheva-Mikami - Mapping the Imaginary: Territory as a Religious Metaphor in Late Antiquity   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Iskra Gencheva-Mikami - Mapping the Imaginary: Territory as a Religious Metaphor in Late Antiquity   Hide   Download
Mapping the Imaginary: Territory as a Religious Metaphor in Late Antiquity

This presentation deals with the problem of abstract territories, as created, mapped and used by the religions in Late Antiquity.
Based on examining of some textual ways of "mapping", along with territory-related images in illustrated manuscripts from the 4th century on, this paper will focus on two main symbols: place, as a static, and road, as a dynamic representation of territory. In addition, the simulative territorial reality will be analyzed, as a way of sacralizing the non-existence of place and/or movement, thus creating a man-made virtual world of Late Antiquity, widely used and frequently modified by the religions of that dynamic epoch. In conclusion, the metaphoric use of abstract territories will be discussed in religious disputes of Late Antiquity, and especially in relation to the contested sacred lands of those times and their contradictory mapping in available historical sources.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Harald Kleinschmidt - Emperor Maximilian I and the Transformation of the European World Picture   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Harald Kleinschmidt - Emperor Maximilian I and the Transformation of the European World Picture   Hide   Download
Emperor Maximilian I and the Transformation of the European World Picture

Contributor: Prof. Richard Talbert - Rome's World in Minds and Maps: 21st Century Advances   Show
Contributor: Prof. Richard Talbert - Rome's World in Minds and Maps: 21st Century Advances   Hide
Rome's World in Minds and Maps: 21st Century Advances

The paper surveys and evaluates the marked advances made during the past decade in the quest to understand how the world and its parts were visualized and recorded in Roman culture. Identified among formative stimuli are: fresh discoveries of testimony; digital technology; and shifts in scholarly perspective which have acted to supersede established conceptual and methodological frameworks. A keener appreciation of the inter-relationship between mapping and worldview has emerged. Ongoing efforts to probe its range, variety and complexity show remarkable potential for the next decade.
Discussant: Dr. Irina Konovalova
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Francesco Prontera
 
L-1 - Biography and Microhistory
OMHP, D0.08
Session: Specialised themes
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The theme of Biography and Microhistory poses a fundamental problem: how to talk in general terms without losing sight of the individual?
Or vice versa: how to describe individual situations and persons without falling into generalisations/stereotypes and without losing sight of the wider issues?

It is perhaps because they start with this unresolved problem that historians often speak of their dissatisfaction, sometimes imagining that it is possible to resolve it with the discovery of new facts and new subjects,.

The outcome risks becoming empathetic but not methodologically innovative: history has partially cancelled the marginal classes, woman, oral cultures, daily life, societies different from our own. But it is not enough merely to talk about someone to include them in world history, to show their existence and relevance. What is crucial, is the way in which they are talked about.

Microhistory needs, therefore, to be above all, an attempt: to narrate openly, without concealing the rules of the game followed by the historian. This, certainly, cannot be simply with reference to new sources – this is part of normal professional ethics. But with an open declaration of the the process through which history has been constructed: the right ways and the wrong ones, the way in which questions have been formulated and answers sought. This way, detailed laboratory work is not hidden and the recipe does not remain the cook’s secret. Because perhaps those truly excluded from the attention of historians are not only the protagonists, neglected by events, but the readers, caught between heavy, generalising interpretations, authoritative opinions, simplified causal mechanisms and facile judgement. Those really excluded the reader from these investigations made as a detective story in wich the name of the killer is already known.

Microhistory is not, therefore, necessarily the history of the excluded, the powerless and the far away. It needs to be the reconstruction of moments, situations and people who, studied with an analytical eye, in a defined context, regain both weight and colour: not as examples, in the absence of better explanations, but as points of reference within the complex contexts in which human beings move.

The scale is a smaller one than usual and this immediately places in discussion the conceptual instruments of our craft: trivialized by long use, lying somewhere between allusion and metaphor, they are covered with the rust of ambiguity. Take, for example, the convenient definitions which are now given to explain political organisations and behaviours, or social stratifications and power structures: popular culture, middle classes, working classes, the modern state, peasants. Not withstanding their usefulness, we need today, more than ever, to specify and verify the concrete situations in which concreteindividuals belong; in a social reality, the concrete circumstances of which, help us to understand the successes and failures of efforts to change.

Studies focus on situations and people within their context, that is, in the complex relationship between free choice and necessity/constraints that individuals and groups create in the interstices of the contradictory plurality of the normative systems that direct them. These choices and these contradictions are the internal motors of social change, which are not seen only in one way, with an unmovable and unmodifiable power if not in the extraordinary moments of open revolt, but as the fruit of a continuous conflict the effects of which are for the historian to measure.
The normal, the every day, thus become protagonists of history and individual situations acquire an intensity of point of view from which we can explain the complex social functions.

Biography is, therefore, the meeting point for many questions posed by the historian today. In responding to this statement, we would therefore suggest that our session of the congress avoid reducing biography to the typical or, vice versa, to the specific, and at the same time avoid using microhistory as the study of minor realities, unable to ask general questions. History must be the science of generalised questions and localised answers.

Giovanni Levi
Organizer:
Contributors: Drs. Binne de Haan & Prof. Dr. Hans Renders - Individuals in History: Questioning Representativity in Microhistory and Biography   Show   Download
Contributors: Drs. Binne de Haan & Prof. Dr. Hans Renders - Individuals in History: Questioning Representativity in Microhistory and Biography   Hide   Download
Individuals in History: Questioning Representativity in Microhistory and Biography

For a long time in the twentieth century, historiography in which the past was considered at the level of social groups and societal structures was dominant in the landscape of history. This omnipresence was even more reinforced by the significant developments in social sciences during this century, that inspired among others the socio-economic historians of the Annales. With the rise of microhistory around 1980 however, the so called participant perspective came to the fore, or, to put it otherwise, history based on agents. Microhistorians tried to translate the useful insights of the sociologically inspired historiography into the scale of individual lives.

Writing history from the perspective of the participant is exactly what microhistory and biography share with each other: both the microhistorian and the biographer try to relate the meaning of large-scale history to concrete individual lives, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, the theory of biography of the twentieth century has not given systematic attention to the significance of microhistoriography for biography.

The philosophy of history on the other hand paid much attention to problematical concepts like ‘historical context’ and ‘representativity’, but at the same time largely ignored the status and problems of biography. We would like to catch up with this debate: we think that the importance of microhistory is especially expressed in the different approach that it entails to the concept of 'representativity'. No longer the more or less anonymous individual who is representative for a large social group, is a main character, like in traditional and socio-economic historiography, and also no longer the man or woman who represented the political and cultural elite of a society, who was generally
subject of biography, attracts all the attention. Microhistory focuses on the lives of marginal individuals in societies of the past, demanding a new kind of historical research and narrative, as shown especially by Carlo Ginzburg in numerous studies, his most famous article presumably being ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’. In this paper we will plead for research into uniqueness and representativity related with biographical research.

Traditional historiography and biography mainly searched for an affirmation of the representativity of studied lives for larger social constructions and concepts applied
to the past. Microhistorians and also biographers that convincingly meet historiographical standards in fact are committed in their research to problematize every assigned aspect of representativity of the studied life: both the anonymous representativity of an individual
(traditional history) and the uniqueness of a life (traditional biography) are eventually questioned.
Contributor: Prof. Eleanor Gordon - The Private in the Public   Show
Contributor: Prof. Eleanor Gordon - The Private in the Public   Hide
The Private in the Public

Madeleine Smith was a young middle-class woman who was accused of murdering her secret lover in 1857. The voluminous legal documentation of the case, including the criminal precognition, the trial evidence and the extensive press coverage, provide insights not only into the relationship between Madeleine and her lover, but also the social background against which it was played out. Extraordinary events and the documents which they generate freeze in time the day-to-day life which frames them and have often been used as a means of illuminating the humdrum and the ordinary. As Richard Altick argued ‘Murder trials, if held to the light at the proper angle, are an almost unexcelled mirror of an epoch’s mores’ The case provides a rich source for the social and cultural historian whose interests lie beyond the question of Madeleine’s culpability. The Madeleine Smith affair offers us a window into the day-to-day life of a young middle-class woman who, despite her involvement in an extraordinary event, was in most other ways unexceptional and typical. Although Madeleine’s affair and trial were extraordinary, they could also be viewed as ‘out of the ordinary’ in the sense that they were enacted in the context of a typical middle-class Glaswegian life of the mid-Victorian period. The extensive press coverage of the trial also offers insights into how contemporaries viewed the case and what this tells us about Victorian life, morality and gender relations.
Contributor: Dr. Maarit Leskelä-Kärki - Women biographers and the uses of source material in life-writing   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Maarit Leskelä-Kärki - Women biographers and the uses of source material in life-writing   Hide   Download
Women biographers and the uses of source material in life-writing

In my paper I will discuss the practises of writing a biography and the role of biography in national history. I’m particularly interested in women’s role as biographers. Discussing these matters, I will use a microhistorical view point as I will take a closer look at one particular woman writer, Tyyni Tuulio, who was an acclaimed biographer from the mid 1900s until 1980’s.

In my paper, I will analyse the methodological and ethical strategies Tuulio used in writing her biographiers. One particular concern will be the different textual materials used in order to write a life-story. What kind of material did Tuulio use, and in what terms? I am especially interested in the uses of letter-material in biographical writing. What kind of approaches do letters offer for a biographer, and what are the limitations they produce? Is it possible to give a ”voice” for the past people by using their authentic material, or what kind of ”interruptions” do biographers make when using the material?

This paper is related to my ongoing research dealing with the history of historiography and biographical practises from a special gender perspective. The aim is to analyse the biographical genre and its historical development in Finland by asking what was women’s role in developing this genre. In focus are biographies written by women about other women.
Contributor: Dr. Rachel Sarah O'Toole - Working Towards Freedom: A Yoruba Woman’s Commercial and Religious Networks in Colonial Peru   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Rachel Sarah O'Toole - Working Towards Freedom: A Yoruba Woman’s Commercial and Religious Networks in Colonial Peru   Hide   Download
Working Towards Freedom: A Yoruba Woman’s Commercial and Religious Networks in Colonial Peru

In 1719, Ana de la Calle composed her will in the northern Peruvian provincial town of Trujillo. She identified herself as a free woman of color from the Yoruba-speaking interior of West Africa’s “Slave Coast.” By excavating her extraordinary life from notary and judicial records, this paper posits that enslaved and free women of color were central in the coastal commercial trade in alcohol along the Pacific corridor between Panama and Lima. If women of color rather than African-descent men overwhelmingly could pay for their freedom and those of their relatives (as argued by Christine Hünefeldt and Kimberly Hanger), this paper suggests that they did so based on their extensive—and profitable—networks. In addition, Yoruba-speaking women and others played a particularly powerful spiritual role among African and African-descent communities who composed over half of the Pacific coastal populations. Women of color, indeed African women, constructed their own spiritual economy (as coined by Kathryn Burns) that accompanied their rise in commercial power. Known as “Mama Anica” to her household, Ana de la Calle’s example suggests that kinships and credit among people of color rather than patronage to slaveholders powered the growth of freed populations in the coastal Andes.
Contributor: Dr. Preston Perluss - Micro history of a Parisian neighborhood master craftsmen and merchants   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Preston Perluss - Micro history of a Parisian neighborhood master craftsmen and merchants   Hide   Download
Micro history of a Parisian neighborhood master craftsmen and merchants

The rue Dauphine in Paris provides the setting for a detailled analysis of neighborhood social relations. Drawing on a building by building study of some 32 continguous houses, we shall provides sequential biographies of a number of the neighborhood's denizen during the course of the 18th century and trace their interrelationships to the fullest extent possible. Our approach uses topographic detail and concentrates on the exact location of individuals and their activities.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Christina Vanja - Coping with sickness and disability in early modern rural society   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Christina Vanja - Coping with sickness and disability in early modern rural society   Hide
Coping with sickness and disability in early modern rural society

Discussant: Prof. Matti Peltonen
 
M-1 - Higher Learning in Islam, Judaism and Christianity
OMHP, D0.09
Session: Specialised themes
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Description and Some Proposed Issues for Specialized Section 18 “Higher Education in Moslem, Jewish and Christian Societies”

The purpose of this session is to examine in a comparative perspective the nature of Higher Learning in Islamic, Jewish and Christian societies, in the pre-modern and modern periods. Hence, papers, while they can be based on specific case studies, should aim at broader issues which can be discussed comparatively. Synthetic surveys will also be welcome. Among key questions which it is worthwhile to address are:
1) The role of the religious tradition and/or religious authorities in forming the content of higher learning.
2) The “image of knowledge” informing higher learning: traditional and closed or more open-ended and oriented towards innovation, discovery and the advancement of knowledge. Are such dichotomies applicable at all?
3) The relations between higher learning and political authority.
4) Teaching techniques and skills (like the European “disputatio” in medieval and the early modern period, or the “Pilpul” in Jewish traditional Rabbinical schools).
5) The relations between teachers and students, whether “authoritarian” or more “egalitarian”.
6) The social matrix of higher learning. Which groups in society are participating and to which strata of the population higher learning is aimed at.
7) Attitudes towards the “other” – towards alien traditions, religions, cultures, minority groups.
Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Israel Bartal - From Religious Academies to Secular Universities: the Emergence of Modern Jewish Academe   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Israel Bartal - From Religious Academies to Secular Universities: the Emergence of Modern Jewish Academe   Hide   Download
From Religious Academies to Secular Universities: the Emergence of Modern Jewish Academe

Jews were excluded from the European university world up until the 19th century. Except for a few faculties of medicine in Italy (and later in Germany and England ) no Jew could enroll in any institution of higher learning across the continent. In the early modern period a network of Jewish religious communal academies (Yeshivot) catered for the intellectual aspirations and scholarly needs of the learned elite. The curriculum, order of study and methods of learning were centered on one textual core: the Talmud and its multi-layered commentaries. From late 18th century on, Jewish students graduated from French, German and Russian universities, which gave birth to a professional and occupational upheaval in certain Jewries. In my presentation I aim to follow the social and cultural changes that lead to the emergence of a new type of academic elite that moved from traditional Jewish education to the modern universities in Central and Eastern Europe . I will focus on that new intellectual and professional elite, whose university education served for its memebrs as a major channel of acculturation. While being members of a scholarly international community that had extened to universities all over the world, those acculturated individuals also contributed to the emergence of new types of Jewish institutions of higher learning in Russia, Germany, Britain, USA and Palestine. Some of the new academic institutions that were established by immigrants to the New World and/or to Palestine have continued to follow the European models.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens - The History of European Universities on the verge of Modernity   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens - The History of European Universities on the verge of Modernity   Hide   Download
The History of European Universities on the verge of Modernity

Contributor: Prof. Ephraim Kanarfogel - Tosafist Academies in Franco-Germany and the Cathedral Schools: Points of Similarity and Possible Influences   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Ephraim Kanarfogel - Tosafist Academies in Franco-Germany and the Cathedral Schools: Points of Similarity and Possible Influences   Hide   Download
Tosafist Academies in Franco-Germany and the Cathedral Schools: Points of Similarity and Possible Influences

The study halls or academies of the leading talmudists in Ashkenaz during the high Middle Ages (who were known as the Tosafists) pursued close readings of the Talmud (following the path-breaking interpretational work of their predecessor Rashi), which also yielded a plethora of dialectical resolutuons of apparent contradictions within the talmudic corpus. Scholars have long recognized the similarity between this type of method and the parallels paths being pursued in the study of both Roman and Canon law (at a slightly earlier point in time). The problem, however, is that several leading Christian scholars in this endeavor such as Gratian flourished in Italy, while cathedral masters in northern France such as Abelard and his students were involved primarily in theological dialectic. By virtue of both language and content, this theological material would appear to have been inaccesible to the Tosafists. In this paper, I will develop some further parallels between the Tosafist academies and the cathedral schools (and the scholars who taught within them), and suggest a number of factors which support the possibility of influence from the Christian milieu to the Jewish one.
Contributor: Mr. Julius Nabende - The Growth of Higher Islamic Education on Coastal Region of East Africa 1850-1963   Show   Download
Contributor: Mr. Julius Nabende - The Growth of Higher Islamic Education on Coastal Region of East Africa 1850-1963   Hide   Download
The Growth of Higher Islamic Education on Coastal Region of East Africa 1850-1963

This paper highlights the various trends of Islamic higher education in the coastal region of East Africa. The major issues to be discussed are;
1.What Socio-cultural,economic,political and global factors influenced the development of Islamic Education in Eastern African coastal region.
2.What was the curriculum of this education.
3.How did European imperialism affect the growth of this education.
4.How can the values,philosophy and curriculum of Islamic Higher education facilitate our understanding of contemporary Islamic revivalism/fundamentalist movements.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Alkmene Stavridou-Zafraka - Hihger Learning in Byzantium   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Alkmene Stavridou-Zafraka - Hihger Learning in Byzantium   Hide   Download
Hihger Learning in Byzantium

The foundation by Constantine the Great of the new capital of the Roman Empire on the site of the ancient Greek colony Byzantium in 330 was a turning point in the history of the Roman Empire. The New Rome, Constantinople, was founded in the wealthy and densely populated Greek-speaking East with the Hellenistic cultural tradition, where Christianity was spread and the vulgar Greek had been the language of the New Testament and the Septuagint, the language of communication.
Since its foundation by Alexander the Great, Alexandria had been the most important Greek cultural center in the Eastern Mediterranean; it was the capital of the Hellenistic world. In the Christian era, pagan Greeks, Hellenized Jews and Christians taught or studied alike in the Ptolemaic Museum at Alexandria. Pagan and Christians authors used the Atticizing Greek language and style, which presupposed a very good knowledge of the ancient Greek language, its grammar and syntax. It was a matter of education.
Education in Byzantium remained secular There were three stages of education.The third stage included higher education. It consisted of a deeper study of rhetoric and philosophy, mathematics and physics, astronomy and music, logic and dialectic. Law and Theology were separate branches of learning and discipline. Classical pagan culture in combination with the Christian one was required for those who claimed high court and ecclesiastical offices. It was during the reign of Constantius II (337-361) that Constantinople became the cultural center of the Empire. Higher education was provided by philosophers and rhetoricians who came to the new capital from Athens and other centers of Syria and Africa. A university of Constantinople was recognized or expanded by Theodosius II in 425. There were to be ten Chairs of Greek and ten of Latin Grammar, five for Greek and three for Latin Rhetoric, one for Philosophy and two for Law.
A revival in higher education was promoted in the mid-ninth century. In 1045 two more Schools were created. The School of Philosophy and the School of Law. They offered special knowledge and training to those who claimed high posts in Church, Administration and Justice.
After the sack of Constantinople by the Crusades in 1204 many noblemen and intellectuals found refuge in unoccupied areas, e.g. at Nicaea in Asia Minor. Higher education enjoyed the patronage of the Emperor. Teachers and students received salaries from the imperial treasury. It is reported that sometimes the emperor himself was present at the oral examination of students. However, higher education depended on the existence of libraries and the circulation of books. There were rich libraries in Constantinople, Nicaea, Trebizond and in Thessalonike.
Intellectual gatherings usually in the imperial palace facilitated the creation of the scholarly groups. Scholars exchanged letters, books, points of view or listened to rhetorical or other works. Even the emperor or the empress participated in discussions and put forward their own point of view. In the final years of the thirteen and in the fourteenth century there were polymath intellectuals interested in all branches of knowledge, including grammar, poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, geography, music and harmonics, medicine and the Holy Scriptures. They were the forerunners of Humanism. Many intellectuals who fled from Byzantium to the West before or after the sack of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, brought with them their books and taught the Greek language in many cities in Italy. They exerted an influence in the West and contributed in the revival of Hellenic studies in the Renaissance.
Discussant: Prof. Michael Heyd
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Jacques Verger
 
 
 Mon 23 August 14:00 
 
A-2 - The Fall of Empires (continued)
Aula
Session: Major themes
Organizations: Joint Session with the Associaiton Internationale d'Histoire contemporaine de l'Europe
Organizer:
Discussant: Prof. Aldo Schiavone
 
B-2 - The History of UNESCO Project
Agnietenkapel
Session: Special sessions
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Cette session se propose deux objectifs. D’une part, il s’agit de rendre compte à la communauté internationale des historiens d’un projet qui est lui aussi, par essence, international : mobiliser des chercheurs de différents continents sur l’étude d’une institution supranationale contemporaine. D’autre part, pour mener à bien un tel projet, trois grands colloques se seront tenus entre avril 2009 et mars 2010 à Cambridge, Dakar et Heidelberg et il s’agira donc aussi de tirer les premiers enseignements, méthodologiques et épistémologiques, de cette grande recherche collective en cours.
Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Mohieddine Hadhri - L'Unesco et la Traversee du Siècle 1945-2010   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Mohieddine Hadhri - L'Unesco et la Traversee du Siècle 1945-2010   Hide   Download
L'Unesco et la Traversee du Siècle 1945-2010

L’objet de cette communication destinée a être présentée dans le cadre du panel de l’Unesco au congres d’Amsterdam en aout 2010 est de procéder a l’examen de la place et du rôle de l’Unesco en tant qu’organisation spécialisée de l’ONU dans l’histoire des relations internationales d’après guerre, c’est-a-dire depuis sa fondation en novembre 1945. Il s’agit d’éclairer cette période particulièrement dense et riche qui a vu se produire des mutations considérables du système des relations internationales et au cours de la quelle l’Unesco fut a la fois un acteur actif et le miroir reflétant de telles mutations politiques et culturelles. Les trois conférences organisées sous l’égide du Comite scientifique internationale du projet d’Histoire de l’Unesco , a savoir celle de Cambridge, celle de Dakar et celle de Heidelberg auront constitue d’ailleurs une plateforme d’investigation privilégiée pour la connaissance de cette période en dégageant les enjeux, les facteurs et les dynamiques ayant présidé a ces mutations de l’ordre international contemporain. Ce serait en quelque sorte présenter un aperçu synthétique de l’Unesco et la traversée du siècle .
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Glenda Sluga - The Transnational History of International Organizations   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Glenda Sluga - The Transnational History of International Organizations   Hide
The Transnational History of International Organizations

This paper will reflect on and discuss the historiographical and methodological issues at stake in the Transnational History of International Organizations, drawing on the conference held in Cambridge, UK, as part of the UNESCO History Project.
Contributor: Prof. Ibrahima Thioub - L'UNESCO et les questions de la colonisation et de la décolonisation   Show
Contributor: Prof. Ibrahima Thioub - L'UNESCO et les questions de la colonisation et de la décolonisation   Hide
L'UNESCO et les questions de la colonisation et de la décolonisation

On ne saurait écrire l'histoire de l'UNESCO sans réfléchir à sa relation avec l'émancipation massive des peuples et des nations qui s'est produite après 1946. Comment ces phénomènes ont-ils interagi avec l'évolution propre de l'UNESCO, à savoir son orientation, ses thèmes, ses structures et ses fonctions, son financement, son leadership et les conflits internes de l'institution et ses réseaux en concurrence ? Cette histoire comporte de multiples facettes. Même si l'on considère les acteurs en jeu, des questions se posent concernant non seulement les relations entre les colonisateurs et les colonisés mais aussi le rôle que l'UNESCO elle-même a joué dans la décolonisation.
Quel a été le rôle de l'UNESCO dans les débats explosifs concernant l'avenir de ces empires coloniaux dont les (anciens) maîtres figuraient parmi les puissances exerçant l'influence majeure sur les programmes et le financement de l'UNESCO, et dont la légitimité historique était encore renforcée par leur statut de membres fondateurs de l'Organisation ? Comment cette institution, qui était censée consacrer son action et ses ressources à la promotion de l'éducation et de la culture pour la paix, s'est-elle positionnée par rapport à des mouvements de libération nationale qui s'exprimaient parfois par la violence ?
Il est certain que l'UNESCO a apporté de nombreuses contributions, sous diverses formes, à la construction et à la consolidation des nouveaux États-nations issus du processus de décolonisation. L'action de l'UNESCO a ainsi contribué à la concrétisation et à la consolidation des indépendances nationales. Dans un cadre bilatéral comme dans un cadre multilatéral, l'UNESCO a lancé de nombreux programmes et projets ou approuvé des initiatives visant à aider ces nouveaux États, en particulier dans le domaine de l'éducation et de la formation. En même temps, la décolonisation a profondément influencé les idées et les développements dans les métropoles. De quelles manières l'UNESCO a-t-elle contribué à la pensée postcoloniale, non seulement dans les anciennes colonies mais aussi dans les sphères métropolitaines?
Ce type d'enjeux transnationaux de l'histoire des rapports de l'UNESCO avec la décolonisation demeurent dans une large mesure inexplorés. C'est pourquoi les manifestations d'intérêt sont particulièrement encouragées de la part des chercheurs qui s'intéressent aux approches transnationales de l'UNESCO et de la décolonisation.
La conférence internationale organisée à Dakar par l’UNESCO et l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop, du 5 au 6 octobre 2009 a tenté de répondre à ces questions en examinant les thèmes suivants :
• L'UNESCO et les concepts de race ;
• La série d'Histoires publiées par l'UNESCO ;
• L'UNESCO face aux questions coloniales et aux luttes de libération nationale
• La décolonisation en Afrique et en Asie et son impact sur l'UNESCO ;
• La " décolonisation des esprits " - le rôle de la culture et de l'éducation ;
• La décolonisation et l'avenir des dialogues culturels.
Ma communication rend compte des résultats des conclusions de la conférence et des perspectives ouvertes à la recherche académique par la rencontre de Dakar.
Discussant: Mr. Jens Boel
 
C-2 - Female Iconic Representations of Collective Identity
UB, Doelenzaal
Session: Round tables
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At various times in history, when crises have threatened the power structures and social order of communities throughout the world, symbolic representations of women have been produced as a means to reshape and strengthen these communities. Among the more important threats we can count wars and revolutions, natural disasters, pandemics, and economic recessions. This is still the case today. This past March, the French government’s decision to portray Marianne, the symbol of the Republic, as a pregnant woman, in order to promote the sale of large amounts of government bonds, made headlines throughout the world. As a background to this decision, there are France’s decreasing birthrate, a deep economic crisis, and an uncertain future. The image of woman as a symbol of the republic was used here to mobilize the hopes of the population. In the face of criticism by feminists, the officials responsible for this government campaign responded that motherhood was something beautiful and that hence it was “natural” for them to use it to create an image of the future.
Indeed, images of beautiful and young women carrying the attributes of motherhood have been used in many historical moments and in many different geographic areas. Yet when we observe this phenomenon closely, it becomes clear that in times of crisis these were not the only types of images produced. There are various symbolic representations of women that were in a beginning related to women in legends and myths, in stories, or that had a role in religious leadership, and had been given divine status and had later become objects of devotion.
On the other hand, there were other periods and societies where images of women associated to death and destruction, or to decadent or transient desires, circulated widely. Such representations of women do not exist in a vacuum. They emerged within particular societies and historical moments, and were intimately related to the circumstances of the women that lived in them. However, often these images of famous or anonymous women and their lives and experiences, were concocted into symbolic images of womanhood, circulated and exploited by the male elite in control of the hegemony.
In this panel, we will examine the production and circulation of images of women, relating them to the individual and concrete historical contexts where they emerged. We will pay special attention to the meaning and function of these images as they emerge in contexts throughout the world. By comparing these cases, we will frame the way in which gender operated as a mechanism for the perpetuation of social and political order and examine the process through which gender was transformed, concurrent with the dissolution or reformation of power structures. We will focus on polemics and schisms concerning representations of women, along images of women produced by counter-hegemonic forces, or even women themselves. We will stress the fact that gender could be transformed within particular historical contexts. Ultimately, the aim of this panel is discussing these images not as mere relics from the past, but as they relate to representations of women that are still being globally produced and debated today, and examine their place in the communities we imagine and seek to create for the future.
Organizer:
Contributor: Dr. Gabriela Dudekova - Transformation of the stereotypes of man and woman: political ideology versus everyday life (19th and 20th century, Central Europe)   Show
Contributor: Dr. Gabriela Dudekova - Transformation of the stereotypes of man and woman: political ideology versus everyday life (19th and 20th century, Central Europe)   Hide
Transformation of the stereotypes of man and woman: political ideology versus everyday life (19th and 20th century, Central Europe)

The aim of the presentation is to characterise the changes in hegemonic definition of the gender roles during the wide span of 19th and 20th centuries in Habsburg monarchy and its successor states. Ideal images of femininity and masculinity constitute part of behavior rules in the contemporary society. The transformation of gender stereotypes was influenced by women's emancipation, but also by changing political regimes.
The goal of the paper is to interpret basic typology of masculinity, femininity and various gender relationships, ideologically enforced by each particular regime (christian family model, gender roles in World War I., democracy after 1918 up to the communist regimes). The research and visual presentation of iconic types (paintings, posters, illustrations, photographs, etc.) is supplemented by that of contemporary public discourse. Based on most recent gender history research, the presentation will track the differences between ideologically enforced stereotypes of femininity and masculinity and everyday reality.
Contributor: Dr. Chigusa Kimura-Steven - National Crises and Construction/Reconstruction of the Myth of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu   Show
Contributor: Dr. Chigusa Kimura-Steven - National Crises and Construction/Reconstruction of the Myth of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu   Hide
National Crises and Construction/Reconstruction of the Myth of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu

In Japan from the antiquity to the end of the Second World War, the most powerful and revered female figure was the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, who was considered as the supreme ruler of the heaven and the ancestor of the imperial family.

The Amaterasu myth first appeared in Japan’s oldest book Kojiki completed in 712 under the direction of the female emperor Genmei, and it states that the Sun Goddess Amaterasu sent her grandson to govern Japan, and the imperial family was the direct descendent of the Sun Goddess and her grandson. Many historians believe that Emperor Tenmu and his descendants (including Genmei) created this myth in order to claim their divine right to rule Japan when their seizing power through a bitter civil war was unpopular and divided the country. Judging from some tenth century documents, their strategy was successful in appeasing people.

This paper examines possible reasons for the revival of the ancient Amaterasu myth in the 19th century as the political leaders who restored the emperor as the political head of the state in 1868 revived and reconstructed the Amaterasu myth in order to claim the emperor as the living god and his will as the embodiment of the will of Amaterasu. I argue that the Amaterasu myth helped nurture nationalism and even convinced women to believe that they must die defending the divine nation during the Second World War. If time allows I will also discuss possible reasons why the ancestor of the imperial family was a female since Amaterasu’s gender has until recently received very little scholarly attention.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Laura Malosetti Costa - Civilization as a suffering woman in XIX century Latin America   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Laura Malosetti Costa - Civilization as a suffering woman in XIX century Latin America   Hide
Civilization as a suffering woman in XIX century Latin America

The paper addresses a particular form of representation of the conflict civilization/barbarism in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay during the nineteenth century, in relation with literary traditions and the resignification of European republican iconographies after the French Revolution.
The ideal of a "civilized" nation threatened by civil wars or the conflict with aboriginal peoples appears in such representations as a weeping woman, a captive of the indians or even a crucified female Christ in political caricatures.
In this iconographic tradicion, weakness, defenseless and pain appear as positive values for a new, "civilized" sensibility, opposed to the local cultural traditions of "bravura" and "coraje" of gauchos and rural landlords.

 
F-2 - Global Inequality in the Long Run – New Evidence and New Measurement Concepts
OMHP, C0.17
Session: International Economic History Association
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How did inequality around the globe develop in the long run? How can we measure various aspects of inequality? This session firstly draws together new evidence on income inequality, especially in today’s developing and emerging market countries and world regions, such as Latin America, Asia, and Africa. It secondly aims at comparing classical income inequality concepts with other approaches of measuring inequality, such as height inequality, human capital inequality, and the systematic comparison of real wage per GDP/p with gini coefficients of income inequality. Third, and on the basis of these new evidence and concepts, the session aims to promote the analysis of global inequality trends. Doing this, a fascinating new picture of global divergence and convergence movements is drawn.
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Contributors: Joerg Baten, Peter Földvári, Bas van Leeuwen & Jan Luiten van Zanden - World Income Inequality   Show
Contributors: Joerg Baten, Peter Földvári, Bas van Leeuwen & Jan Luiten van Zanden - World Income Inequality   Hide
World Income Inequality

Contributor: Dr. Ewout Frankema - Closing the gender gap in education: growth, political change or cultural revolution?   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Ewout Frankema - Closing the gender gap in education: growth, political change or cultural revolution?   Hide   Download
Closing the gender gap in education: growth, political change or cultural revolution?

no abstract available yet
Contributor: Prof. Jonas Ljungberg - A European Equality Index, 1850-1988   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Jonas Ljungberg - A European Equality Index, 1850-1988   Hide   Download
A European Equality Index, 1850-1988

Historical estimates of income distribution across countries are rare. This article draws on a methodology used by Williamson for analysing the impact of open-economy forces on equality but not systematically applied on long-term income distribution. Equality indexes are construed for European countries as well as for “Europe”. A general pattern can be discerned: rising equality in the late nineteenth century but a turn-around about 1890, a low level 1914-45, and then a recovery. This is in contrast to previous notions about the historical income distribution but the pattern is not implausible in a broader historical context. Thus three different forces can be distinguished as broad determinants of the income distribution. The first is structural change between sectors with different levels of income, as predicted by the Kuznets curve. The second is technological change in its interaction with education. The third is the impact of open economy forces, or globalisation.
Contributors: Dr. Bas van Leeuwen & Peter Földvári - Human capital inequality in Europe, 1850-2000   Show   Download
Contributors: Dr. Bas van Leeuwen & Peter Földvári - Human capital inequality in Europe, 1850-2000   Hide   Download
Human capital inequality in Europe, 1850-2000

Theoretically, since human capital affects economic growth, a higher educational equality should lead to a more equal income distribution. Yet, very rarely this result is found in the empirical literature. Foldvari and Van Leeuwen (2008) argue that this depends on the construction of the human capital stock and the way human capital inequality is calculated. Theoretically and empirically, they show that inequality in the most widely used human capital proxies, average years of education and Mincerian human capital, lead to a non-existent relation between educational and income inequality.

In this paper we estimate human capital inequality datasets for Europe ca. 1850-2000 using the average years of education-, Mincerian, -and income based approaches. We test both empirically and theoretically their mutual relation as well as their relation with income inequality from a newly established dataset by Baten et al. (2009).
 
I-2 - Emigrants and Immigrants: networks and identities in a global perspective
OMHP, C2.17
Session: Specialised themes
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This session focuses on the phenomenon of cross-cultural migration and its effect on both migrants and receiving societies, especially with respect to identity and network formation. On the one hand papers deal with migrants who are so powerful that they can to some extent determine the terms of interaction (Spanish in Mexico and Peru in the early modern period and Americans in Mexico more recently). On the other hand papers discuss more conventional settlement models in which newcomers have to adapt to the institutional settings, rules and values of the receiving society, and who sometimes are confronted with hostility (Jews in Shanghai, Germans in Australia, Berbers in Europe, migrants in Italy and Ireland). How these processes evolve in the long run not only depends on power relations. It is also determined by the mix of human capital and the form of the migration project when it comes to the migrants, and pertaining to the countries of settlement the official and popular reactions to specific groups as part of the wider opportunity structure. In the session a principal distinction will be made between the settlement process in the short and long (intergenerational ) run, with as key question to what extent over time identities and networks (ascribed and self constructed) emerge, change and disappear. This question will be linked to more general historical integration models.
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Contributor: Mr. Irial Glynn - Past emigrants and present immigrants at the crossroads. Ireland and Italy compared.   Show
Contributor: Mr. Irial Glynn - Past emigrants and present immigrants at the crossroads. Ireland and Italy compared.   Hide
Past emigrants and present immigrants at the crossroads. Ireland and Italy compared.

A mixture of poverty and the general desire ‘to better themselves in material respects’ (Ravenstein 1889) caused millions of Irish and Italians to emigrate throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More recently, the same two countries experienced largescale in-migration. Public, political and media opposition to certain groups of immigrants, based on perceived cultural, physical and economic threats these people were felt to bring, quickly became apparent in both Ireland and Italy. To offset such resistance, pro-migrant actors used a mixture of moral, communitarian and humanitarian rationales to evoke empathy amongst natives for these newcomers. In Ireland, pro-migrants actors repeatedly compared new immigrants to old Irish emigrants. By implying that they shared a common experience, Irish people were made to feel that they had a moral debt or responsibility to help these people. Contrastingly, no such comparisons were made between immigrants and former emigrants in Italy, even though they shared much in common.
This paper discusses how the memory of a country’s emigration past can be transmitted through the prism of its immigration present, using Ireland and Italy as examples. Explaining why past emigration histories were evoked in one country and not the other in more recent immigration debates is the primarily goal of this article. History, memory, and national identity are central to any attempts to understand such an anomaly. For that reason, the presentation will be split into three parts. First, it will briefly recount Ireland and Italy’s emigration histories; second it will consider how this past has been remembered (or forgotten) at a national level; and third it will recount what part, if any, this memory has played in more recent immigration debates.
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Leo Lucassen - How mobile were Europeans in the period 1500-1900? Fresh evidence and new approaches   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Leo Lucassen - How mobile were Europeans in the period 1500-1900? Fresh evidence and new approaches   Hide
How mobile were Europeans in the period 1500-1900? Fresh evidence and new approaches

This paper fundamentally questions the idea of a mobility transition, which assumes that pre-modern societies were more or less stable and self sufficient which severely hindered geographical mobility. Only with the modernisation in the 19th century were the chains loosened and people started to move in unprecedented ways, dramatically increasing migration rates. In the ‘pre-modern traditional society’ the overwhelming majority would have stayed put. Although we have ample indications that people in Early Modern Europe were highly mobile, evidence is largely restricted to Western Europe and not based on a rigorous evaluation of the available empirical data. Moreover, scholars use different definitions of migration, which makes it even more difficult to obtain a clear picture. In this paper, which builds on a previous publication together with Jan Lucassen in the Journal of Global History (Fall 2009) and a recently published extensive IISH research paper, I will show that, by limiting myself to cross-cultural migrations, it is possible to gather systematic data on all six different forms of cross cultural migration for Europe as a whole in the period 1500-1900, which opens up a entirely new research area and a wealth of comparative possibilities, between countries, between periods, and between different kinds of migration. And not in the least, our model can also be used to compare migrations on a global scale.
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Leo Lucassen
 
M-2 - "We are what we eat and what we wear." Food and Clothing in History
OMHP, D0.09
Session: Specialised themes
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In the course of the 20th century social theorists suggested that food and clothing are crucial for the way people see (and judge) people (including themselves). By the year 2000 most psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and historians would not question the relevance of clothing and food in the formation of identity and the forging of communities (whether small, as the family, medium, as the community, or large, as the nation). This significance appears through notorious present-day examples such as the wearing of a shawl, the use of very stylish dress, the refusal of eating meat, and the consumption of snails (or horsemeat, insects, frogs…). Crucial is the knowledge that both food and clothing go beyond “simple” distinctions of class, region, gender, ethnicity or age. Within a group, food and clothing do indeed permit to mark and observe subtle differences, often hidden in details and behind self-evident conduct. Without doubt, subtle and crude differences with regard to food and clothing appear in all times and places. These differences have been a means to express wealth, status, relationships, and attachments, as well as they were (are) a possibility to emphasize political, social and cultural rivalry and distinctiveness. “We” and “they” are constructed via food and clothes.
Yet, the actual role of food and clothing in expressing meaning is far from straightforward and simple. People may change clothes easily, or they may eat occasionally very unfamiliar foodstuffs. Also and crucial, food and clothes may be used to trespass boundaries. Moreover, other characteristics, such as religion, origin or language, may also be part of identity formation.
Questions that come to mind are manifold. Food and clothing come about in unconscious ways that are part of everyday life: when and how did these appear? Do they change, and how and why? What is the precise role of food and clothing in identity construction? Are these central, rather stable elements, or would they be flexible? Who sets the rules? And what about conscious forging of identity via food and clothing: when and why does this occur? Feasts contribute highly to identity construction, and in most communities, feasts come along with special clothing (or at least festive garments) and special food and drink, but which kind of clothing and food? Theories and hypotheses may come to mind. Elites are often seen as innovators, adopting new ways of clothing and eating. These initiate (social and cultural) borders with codes, rules and behaviour. Often, the elite’s ways are copied or, at least, interpreted and adapted. Is this trickling down the only way of diffusion of (new) food and clothing, or would influence of “the street” play a role?
Six historians tackle these issues by considering elements of the food and the clothing chain, which implies attention to production, trade, retailing, consumption and significance of food and clothing in very diverse times and places. They do not do so hoping to achieve an overall conclusion, but mainly to explore a relatively new topic in historical research.
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Contributor: Prof. Alpha Gado Boureima - Se Nourrir en periode de famine   Show
Contributor: Prof. Alpha Gado Boureima - Se Nourrir en periode de famine   Hide
Se Nourrir en periode de famine

alimentaition de substitution et les comportements alimentaires extrêmes

En période de crise alimentaire majeure, lorsque tous les greniers de réserve sont vides, le grain complètement disparu, la seule alimentation qui reste à portée des populations est celle que procure la brousse : les plantes sauvages comestibles servant d'alimentation de substitution deviennent une alimentation de base. A ce stade on observe des comportments alimentaires extrêmes contraires au normes socialels et nuisibles à l’organisme humain. Le texte qui s’appuie sur des documents d’archives et des témoignages oraux recuillis dans l’espace nigérien, procède à une nalyse exhaustive de l’alimentation en période de famine et les comportments alimentaires extrêmes observés au cours des grandes crises du 20è siècle.


Contributor: Prof. Nicolas Drocourt - “Food and Clothing as a way of marking their difference in Medieval Diplomacy. The case of diplomatic contacts between Byzantium and its neighbours (VIIIth-XIIth centuries)”.   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Nicolas Drocourt - “Food and Clothing as a way of marking their difference in Medieval Diplomacy. The case of diplomatic contacts between Byzantium and its neighbours (VIIIth-XIIth centuries)”.   Hide   Download
“Food and Clothing as a way of marking their difference in Medieval Diplomacy. The case of diplomatic contacts between Byzantium and its neighbours (VIIIth-XIIth centuries)”.


Historians usually consider modern diplomacy as world of appearance and representation. Real or not, one should not dismiss this kind of view when he studies medieval diplomacy, and especially the Byzantine’s one. Recent studies have shown how this activity was, indeed, marked by its representations, i.e. the representation the Byzantine power wanted to demonstrate to the foreign states and their representatives. This seems to be essentially true during what historiography names the middle Byzantine period, which will be under scope here. As Jonathan Shepard shows, as well as other historians, the decorum in the imperial Great Palace of Constantinople, was an important part of the running of imperial diplomacy, and it ensured a part of its success.
Food and clothing have to be considered as two significant aspects of this diplomacy, and, more largely, of a few diplomatic contacts between Byzantium and its neighbours – especially its Muslim neighbours, the Bulgars and the Christian Westerners. Indeed, things linked to food or clothes appear regularly when these kinds of contact are detailed in our sources. The importance of food, with organisation of banquets for instance in the Great Palace, as well as the clothing court organisation reflecting the hierarchy of dignitaries, are topics which have been studied for long by medievalists and Byzantinists . What we propose to present here during the Congress is how far these cultural aspects have really been a tool of Byzantine diplomacy, and if it could have been criticised by non-Byzantinist powers and authors. In this perspective, we should pay a careful attention to every mention of foreign embassies, ambassadors or emissaries and to the way these envoys reacted to Byzantium’s decorum.
Every Medievalists know, for example, the reaction of one of the most famous envoy of the Xth century, Liudprand of Cremona, during his two missions in Constantinople (949 and 968). Fortunately he made a written account of both of them. The second one led him to deeply criticize all the things encountered in the imperial court during his long stay, especially the food he ate, and the imperial processions in the city with dignitaries who “wore oversized tunics much tattered by age”. A kind of mention that also reflects the failure of his mission in the name of an other emperor, Otto I of Germany. It shows us how such a mention linked to food and clothing is never insignificant, particularly in a diplomatic context. The case of Liudprand is not isolated, as we should demonstrate it. Overlooking five centuries and taking into account different kinds of foreign envoys in Byzantium – as well as different sources talking about it (Greek, Latin, Arabic or Syriac texts) – we will try to demonstrate that food and, particularly, clothing references are frequent. It usually had a cultural dimension since it was a way of marking its difference. But it is also emphasized within diplomatic contacts and by the way narrative texts and authors describe it. Depicting a diplomatic contact is often a manner of illustrating its superiority on its neighbours. The place of food and clothing in these descriptions proves it at its best.
Contributor: Dr. Carol Gold - Potatoes and Danish National Identity   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Carol Gold - Potatoes and Danish National Identity   Hide   Download
Potatoes and Danish National Identity

We may be what we eat, but is the reverse also true? Does the food that we eat become us? In other words, if Danes eat enough potatoes, do potatoes then become Danish, that is, representative or reflective of Denmark? This paper attempts to answer this question. I would suggest that over the course of the 19th century, the potatoes that became an integral part of the Danish diet, also became an integral part of how Danes saw themselves—in the eyes of Danes, potatoes became Danish, despite their “new world” origins. This process, I argue, is inextricably intertwined with the struggle of Danish farmers in the 19th century for political power and for the introduction of a responsible parliamentary democracy. As farmers organized in political parties and through the folkehøjskole and cooperative movements, they brought their eating habits with them. This paper will discuss the interaction between these different cultural and political elements.

The Danish Potato Council was founded in 1996. Their website claims that ”the serious background for this initiative is that the potato, Denmark’s national food, has recently been hard pressed by new eating habits. Especially the young have been turning their backs on potatoes. The purpose of this council is to put potatoes back on the national menu.” (http://www.kartoffelraad.landbrug.dk/, accessed Jan. 8, 2009; emphasis added.) The Danish government website also contains several references to boiled potatoes in its section on “Traditions and Food” (http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/About-Denmark/The-Danes/Traditions-Food/Traditions-Food.htm, accessed Jan. 8, 2009). I would suggest that this is indicative of the degree to which potatoes are believed to be Danish.

This paper is not so much about consumption (“we are what we eat”), but rather about the perception of what we eat and thus who we are.
Contributor: Dr. Hannele Klemettilä - Meanings and Uses of Furs in Late Medieval Culture and Society (France, England, and Italy)   Show
Contributor: Dr. Hannele Klemettilä - Meanings and Uses of Furs in Late Medieval Culture and Society (France, England, and Italy)   Hide
Meanings and Uses of Furs in Late Medieval Culture and Society (France, England, and Italy)

The goal of this paper is to explore ways of using and viewing furs in Western Europe during the later Middle Ages. Lavish extravagance was regularly displayed in furs among the ruling circles of late medieval society. Documentary sources reveal that 670 martens’ skins were used to decorate two complete suits for John of France (1319–1364). A robe made for the king’s grandson, the Duke of Orléans, required 2790 ermines’ skins. Sumptuary laws dictated in France and elsewhere what types of furs were allowed to persons of various ranks or incomes. The English sumptuary law of 1363 confined the use of furs to the ladies of knights with a rental above 200 marks a year. The wife or daughter of an esquire or gentleman was not allowed to wear ermine.

Notions, beliefs, attitudes, and opinions concerning furs were varied and sometimes controversial. Certain expensive and rare furs were employed and understood as signs of high social status, authority, and power. Some lesser furs could be used and interpreted as signs of extreme otherness, wilderness and marginality, for example, in depictions of wild-men, pagans, and possessed in late medieval art. Positive valour given to a fur did not necessarily correspond to the animal’s place in the inner hierarchy of animal kingdom (for example: the red deer versus the fox). Furs could have similar functions as the living, exotic beasts in royal menageries; the purpose was to signal man’s dominance over the natural world. One should not overstress the practical functions of furs (i.e., as warm, protective garments) in a past reality – symbolic and social purposes were often most essential.
Contributors: Dr. Mina Roces & Prof. Robert DuPlessis - Cloth, Status and Identity in the Philippines   Show   Download
Contributors: Dr. Mina Roces & Prof. Robert DuPlessis - Cloth, Status and Identity in the Philippines   Hide   Download
Cloth, Status and Identity in the Philippines

This paper will explore the links between cloth, status and identity in the social history of elites by using a case study of the Philippines from the Spanish colonial period to the present. Using sources that include travellers’ writings, paintings, photography, accounts of the World Fairs and Expositions, and interviews with fashion designers, it will discuss the significance of cloth in the emergence of a Europeanized indigenous elite urban class in the nineteenth century, and its importance as symbolic and economic capital in the late twentieth century. The manufacture of piña or the soft diaphanous fabric made from pineapple fibre was highly labour intensive since it took a weaver in the 19th century one day to weave half an inch (and today one meter a day) making the cloth extremely expensive. A textile that is unique became semiotics for national identity and worn in national dress. In addition, it connected local elites with international elites as the embroidered pieces of cloth became appropriate gifts for the royalty of Europe and showcased in international exhibitions. Held up as the epitome of luxury and as an example of the refinement of a colonial elite, it became crucial to the self-representation of that particular class who first began to identify themselves as “Filipino”. By the twentieth century, a new colonizer (America) fashioned a new elite class that used other types of dress and consumption practices and the piña lost its popularity and its decline was such that the weaving had to be revived by the end of the twentieth century.

Scholarship in dress history has stressed the role cloth has played in nationalist movements and in political self-representations. This research builds on this literature by looking at the changing ways way cloth has been intrinsic to the identities of elites over several centuries. Since pineapple fiber is unique to the Philippines, it also introduces a new textile to the cultural and social histories of dress.

Contributor: Mr. Nail Usmanov - The American food and clothing in the early history of Soviet Russia   Show
Contributor: Mr. Nail Usmanov - The American food and clothing in the early history of Soviet Russia   Hide
The American food and clothing in the early history of Soviet Russia

After seven years of war, revolution, civil war and blocade Russia's population was in the dire strait. In 1921, one of the worst famine in history threatened the lives of millions peasons and citizens. Some foreign charity organisations came to rescue of the Russian people in trouble. The most aid was provided by American Relief Administration (ARA) headed by Herbert Hoover. The food delivered by ARA from autumn 1921 till summer 1923 saved ten million people or more. Many sick and hungry people also received clothes and footwear rom America.
Discussant: Prof. Eileen Boris
 
O-2 - History and Human Rights
OMHP, D1.09
Session: Specialised themes
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The work of the United Nations (UN) in the area of human rights can influence both the topics on which historians work and the concepts they use. As human rights encompass virtually all spheres of life, large parts of the historical production inevitably deal with aspects of human rights or their abuses. This Specialized Theme, however, intends to focus strictly on human rights concepts, as developed within the UN, which are of particular importance for historians. Three areas in particular need further clarification. First, the international human rights regime creates obligations as well as opportunities for our profession. Second, there is a tension between legal and historical-analytical uses of human rights concepts. Third, human rights campaigns have traditionally focused on contemporary issues, whereas historians typically view human rights in a longer perspective. It is proposed to study these areas along the following lines.
Ethics. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, privacy and reputation and freedom of expression and information merit high protection levels. This has important bearings on historians’ ethics: What duties for historians follow from the privacy and reputation of their subjects of study? How can considerations of privacy and reputation be balanced against the principle that those engaged in public life should be accountable for their actions? Are there limits to historians’ rights to free expression and information?
Impunity and reparation. In the wake of discussions about how societies emerging from periods marked by major conflict and crimes implement justice, two concepts have received major attention: the impunity of perpetrators of human rights abuses and the reparation for the harm done to their victims. The debate centers on the duties of states to investigate, prosecute, and commemorate major crimes. As a complement to these duties, the UN have advocated a so-called “right to the truth” (formerly labeled a “right to know”) for victims. Further aspects are reparations for victims, legal forms of forgetting, the value of archives of former repressive regimes, and the function of truth commissions acting as protohistorians.
Historical injustice. This brings us to another class of concepts—those with longer-term time dimensions. The question is whether the 1985 UN definition of victim extends beyond “the immediate family or dependants” to include victims of historical injustices of longer ago. Are slavery, colonization, apartheid, and the pillage of the world’s cultural heritage problems for which accountability can be determined?
Dead persons. In 2002, the International Criminal Court, not a part of the UN but very close to it, developed a new concept: outrages upon the dignity of dead persons. How should historians deal with this concept?
Retroactive moral judgments. The UN General Assembly and other venues have retroactively given labels to some historical phenomena which may influence the historians’ moral judgments about them. For example, the Holocaust was called a genocide from 1948, and apartheid a crime against humanity from 1973. Obviously, giving those events such labels changes their moral status and increases the pressure on the historians’ efforts at interpretation. What effects upon historical writing, then, had (and will have) these labels?
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Contributor: Dr. Floribert Baudet - Ranke and Files. Academic freedom in the military   Show
Contributor: Dr. Floribert Baudet - Ranke and Files. Academic freedom in the military   Hide
Ranke and Files. Academic freedom in the military

Generally speaking, military organizations have a threefold interest in the past. They use the past as a means to foment cohesion within units by distilling `traditions’ from their historical development and composition. Upholding those traditions would, it is believed, help ensure the quality and effectiveness of military units. Secondly, the past is treated as a mirror of the present, a pool to draw lessons from. These lessons are condensed into military doctrines that are taught in military academies and schools. Lastly, in a variant of the second way the past is used, past battles and campaigns are studied because they would offer an armchair version of military exercises and actual experience in war.
In a varying degree these approaches are compatible with those of the historians the military employs to teach officer-cadets about the past. The first approach – inventing traditions - differs considerable from the accepted approaches of academic historians. While the third approach seems to fit historians best it is the second approach that is problematic from a methodological point of view, not least because professional historians tend to question the past’s magisterial potential (or altogether reject the notion). The hierarchical nature of military organizations often ensures outward unity of opinion, which implies that it is held that one can indeed learn from other people’s past experiences and copy them. The question however is whether such an approach, focusing on ‘lessons learned’, actually produces the benefits the military hopes to draw from the past. What do military historians believe is the added value of studying it? Should Clio heed Mars’ call or should the Muse prevail? Is there a way to meet, in a sense, halfway? And could a code of ethics be instrumental in reconciling the two?
Contributor: Dr. Antoon de Baets - Historical Imprescriptibility   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Antoon de Baets - Historical Imprescriptibility   Hide   Download
Historical Imprescriptibility

In recent decades, imprescriptibility has become a core principle of human rights thought: it is applied to fight the impunity of perpetrators of gross crimes (by canceling the legality principle) and to promote the interests of their victims and society at large (by granting them a right to the truth). In this essay, I develop an argument to stretch imprescriptibility beyond the legal realm to situations of recent and remote historical injustice. I call this historical imprescriptibility and look for the merits of the concept. I first discuss the controversial problem of labeling and judging historical crimes which are comparable to contemporary genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Then, I examine the promises and dangers of historical imprescriptibility. In its support, I present the arguments from humanity (the Martens clause), from continuity of obligations, from deficient legal procedure, from scholarship, and from remembrance. I also review the objections from the passage of time, from identity, from medical condition, from pars pro toto, from evidential unreliability, and from anachronism. The latter objection in particular strikes the idea of historical imprescriptibility at the heart. On its turn, however, it is counterbalanced by the arguments from retrospection, from comparability, and from consequentialism. I conclude that historical imprescriptibility is a category in its own right, albeit a difficult one. Knowledge of historical injustice has a major reparatory effect in itself. Given that the right to the truth held by the society is imprescriptible, the corresponding core duty of historians to help prudently search for the historical truth is not only a professional duty, but also a moral one.
Contributor: Ms. Hara Kouki - Human rights, Cold War and Social Movements: the Story of an Encounter in the 1970s   Show   Download
Contributor: Ms. Hara Kouki - Human rights, Cold War and Social Movements: the Story of an Encounter in the 1970s   Hide   Download
Human rights, Cold War and Social Movements: the Story of an Encounter in the 1970s

The so called ‘human rights movement’ that emerged in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s became immediately the focus of publicity abroad generating an international campaign on behalf of the harassed dissidents. In this way, it acquired a central role in public imagination and official discourse in the West at the time, while its story is well known up to nowadays.
This group of human rights activists, however, was very small and had a tiny, if any, impact on public opinion in the Soviet Union back then. The importance it acquired, thus, has little to do with its appeal and role inside the country. Departing from this assumption, the present paper shifts the focus of attention from the dissident movement towards the broad campaign mounted by non state actors in the West during Cold War years in its support. In this way, it provides an alternative narrative of the story and also sheds some light on the path through which contemporary human rights culture from a marginal idea in the 1950s managed to gain its momentum in the 1970s.

Human rights mobilization, as reflected in the cause of the Soviet dissent, expressed the post war need to deal with injustice, but also merged with the cold war anxieties and fears of the Western world that considered itself free and morally superior to the rest of the world. At the same time, the 1970s widespread culture of dissent started to fuse with the human rights idea by radicalizing the latter’s critique of power and granting legitimacy to rights activism. What this dissertation suggests is that this specific campaign reflects how the emergent culture of human rights unfolded in interaction with cold war politics, as well as with the anti authoritarian culture of the time. It was exactly due to this contingent dialogue that human rights culture managed to make local concerns global and take off in the 1970s acquiring its contemporary shape.
Contributor: Mr. Toby Mendel - Illegal or Just Wrong?: Reflections on Legal and Self-Regulatory Rules   Show   Download
Contributor: Mr. Toby Mendel - Illegal or Just Wrong?: Reflections on Legal and Self-Regulatory Rules   Hide   Download
Illegal or Just Wrong?: Reflections on Legal and Self-Regulatory Rules

International human rights law places obligations on States both to refrain from interfering in the exercise of rights, including the right to freedom of expression, and to put in place a legal framework to secure rights, including rights to freedom of expression, equality, privacy and reputation. Thus States are required to ban hate speech, to provide for effective remedies for invasions of privacy and to ensure protection for reputation.

In the media sector, these legal remedies are often supplemented by self-regulatory complaints systems, based on codes of conduct, whereby members of the public may submit complaints to oversight self-regulatory bodies where they feel the rules in the codes have been breached. This paper assesses the legal and media self-regulatory approaches in the area of hate speech, privacy and protection of reputation. It also draws some lessons from the media sector for possible self-regulation by historians.
Contributor: Dr. Bo Zhao - Public Figures and Their Posthumous Reputation   Show   Download
Contributor: Dr. Bo Zhao - Public Figures and Their Posthumous Reputation   Hide   Download
Public Figures and Their Posthumous Reputation

It is obvious that public figures have the opportunity to leave more traces in human history than common people do and thus they become the focus of historians and journalists. And it is also well recognized in modern society that public figures enjoy less protection of reputation because of their engagement in public life and their social status so acquired. Thus, in the case of public figures, free speech rights of others enjoy broad legal priority. But does the situation change after the death of public figures? How do different jurisdictions deal with posthumous reputation of public figures and for which reasons?
This article tries to answer these questions. First it will clarify who are public figures and for which reasons the protection for their reputation is restricted by means of analyzing the public figure doctrine in U.S. law and a short sketch of similar practices in other laws. Then it interprets Post’s three concepts of reputation and their related social images in order to prepare a theoretical framework for further discussion. Based on Post’s insights, this article analyzes how different jurisdictions approach posthumous reputation of public figures in light with three categories of society: market society, communitarian society and deference society. Last, it proposes that we should accept the dignitarian concept of reputation and introduce a legal instrument similar to public figure doctrine, so that when free speech is well protected and secured, there will be no unnecessary harm done to the dead and their beloved who are still alive.
Discussant: Dr. Elizabeth Jelin
 
P-2 - Urban Violence, Casual and Extraordinary
OMHP, F0.01
Session: Round tables
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Are cities during the 20th century only the arena of violent conflicts engendered elsewhere in societies or are violent encounters a consequence of urban development towards the global mega-cities and their spatial segregations? Beside this central question the Round Table is also interested in the effects violent acts may have on the urban development and in the importance urban spaces may have inside the strategies and goals of violent acting groups. The conveners will discuss questions of social and ethnic division and segregration, gender discrimination and criminalization in different parts of the world and ask whether they provoke violent reactions. But they will not neglect the dynamics of violence, the relation between repression and violent responses and the specificity of different forms of violence
Organizer:
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Heinz Gerhard Haupt - Urban Violence, casual and extraordinary   Show   Download
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Heinz Gerhard Haupt - Urban Violence, casual and extraordinary   Hide   Download
Urban Violence, casual and extraordinary

Contributor: Prof. Dr. Friedrich Lenger - Urban violence in the interwar years: Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna   Show
Contributor: Prof. Dr. Friedrich Lenger - Urban violence in the interwar years: Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna   Hide
Urban violence in the interwar years: Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna

The paper analyses and compares different forms of innerurban violence in Barcelona, Berlin and Vienna between World War I and World War II. Special interest will be paid to the possible convergence of criminal and political (anarchosyndicalist, socialist, communist and fascist) forms, to the location of communities of violence within urban space and to the composition of these groups with regard to age, gender, class and ethnicity.
 
R-2 - Religion and Society in Premodern South and South East Asia
OMHP, F2.01C
Session: Specialised themes
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Ranging over the subject of sometimes intersecting Sanskritic to Islamic cosmopolitanisms, this panel takes a somewhat elastic definition of the premodern and offers five different historical perspectives on the religio-cultural continuities linking South and Southeast Asia. In the process we shall question the directionalities and varieties of mobilities engendered by the transmission and reception of religious practices. The first paper, by Arlo Griffiths, offers a survey of the array of the pre-Islamic inscriptions in Northern Sumatra in Old Malay, Sanskrit, Tamil and Old Javanese, though all may be connected to the primacy of Buddhism in the pre-modern arena. Helen Creese will then present an examination of the transmission and reception of Sanskritic religious culture in insular Southeast Asia with special reference to Java and Bali; asking whether the vernacularization of this culture parallelled the processes in India described by Pollock. Rila Mukherjee then offers perspectives on trade in the eastern basin of the Indian Ocean as a continuum leading into the South China Sea, focussing on the use of the Godess cum saint as a symbol of maritime expansion throughout what Bin Yang termed the Southern Silk Route. The last two papers will then turn to Islamic trends in the Indian Ocean arena. The first, by Elizabeth Lambourn, will examine the question of Muslin autonomy and minority status in that arena, seeking evidence for what she calls “the processes of translation” that they underwent on the Oceanic fringes of the Dar al-Islam. Lastly, Ronit Ricci will examine the notion of the Arabicized cosmopolis from the sixteenth century, focusing on the literary production of Muslims of Southeast Asian descent living in Sri Lanka, which brings our panel back in upon itself in many ways, with European interventions effectively transplanting the Islam of Southeast Asia back on but one of the routes that brought it to the archipelago. Bhavani Raman will then offer comments.
Organizer:
Contributor: Mr. Andrea Acri - The social dimension of Shaiva religion in the light of Old Javanese sources.   Show
Contributor: Mr. Andrea Acri - The social dimension of Shaiva religion in the light of Old Javanese sources.   Hide
The social dimension of Shaiva religion in the light of Old Javanese sources.

The paper will present the latest discoveries in the field of Shaivism in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the light of published and unpublished Old Javanese sources. It will argue that different varieties of Shaivism were followed by urban elites and rural communities (including villages as well as ascetic retreats), and that tensions among the followers of different streams might have occurred throughout pre-Majapahit Javanese history.
Contributor: Prof. Helen Creese - An Old Javanese Ecumene? From India to Bali via Java.   Show
Contributor: Prof. Helen Creese - An Old Javanese Ecumene? From India to Bali via Java.   Hide
An Old Javanese Ecumene? From India to Bali via Java.

The expansion of Sanskrit imperial culture into South India and Southeast Asia in the first millennium of the Common Era brought Sanskrit literary culture and religion to the Indonesian archipelago, and the courts of Central Java into its sphere of influence. In Hindu Bali, this influence continues to the present. For a brief period, as elsewhere throughout the Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit became the language in which royal power was expressed in Javanese inscriptions. By the ninth century, however, several hundred years earlier than in other parts of the Sanskrit ecumene, Sanskrit ceded this place to Old Javanese. And just as in India, where the political transformations that had triggered the spread of Sanskrit culture had coincided with the development of the kavya, in Java too, at the end of the ninth century as Old Javanese became the language of inscriptions, it was accompanied by the development of the Old Javanese counterpart of the kavya, the kakawin. In a striking series of parallels, Old Javanese culture spread throughout East Java to Bali and Lombok where it became an enduring influence precisely because of its links to the same politics of aesthetics that had defined royal power in the Sanskrit zone of influence, built upon its relationship to the literary, to a tradition of literary texts written in a language that had become a source of personal charisma for rulers, providing them with a status that was in large measure created by the poets they patronized. This paper will examine the development of the Old Javanese ecumene until the advent of Islam in the fourteenth century, its ongoing links to India and its lasting affect on Bali where Old Javanese traditions and the composition of kakawin continue until the present.
Contributor: Dr. Elizabeth Lambourn - Life “Outside the Limits of Islam” - Muslims as Autonomous Minorities in the Indian Ocean   Show
Contributor: Dr. Elizabeth Lambourn - Life “Outside the Limits of Islam” - Muslims as Autonomous Minorities in the Indian Ocean   Hide
Life “Outside the Limits of Islam” - Muslims as Autonomous Minorities in the Indian Ocean

Whilst there is a very significant body of research literature on religious minorities and community autonomy in the Islamic world, the question of Muslims themselves becoming minorities has only been studied in a relatively restricted number of cases for the pre-Modern period, most notably for the Mudejar communities of al-Andalus. This paper turns the tables and explores the question of Muslim community autonomy and minority status in the Indian Ocean - a status born, at this period, not of reconquest, but through natural movement beyond the Dar al-Islam. This paper builds evidence for the migration of a variety of organisational structures and cultural practices to these new host contexts, and explores the processes of translation that they inevitably underwent in these new environments.
Contributor: Dr. Ronit Ricci - The Sri Lankan Malays: Bridging Islam in South and Southeast Asia   Show
Contributor: Dr. Ronit Ricci - The Sri Lankan Malays: Bridging Islam in South and Southeast Asia   Hide
The Sri Lankan Malays: Bridging Islam in South and Southeast Asia

This research stems from, and expands on, my earlier work on the literature produced by Muslim communities in South India and the Indonesian-Malay world. In particular, it grows out of my interest in how such literature, and the Arabic-inspired forms of language in which it was written, contributed to the rise of what I have termed an ‘Arabicized Cosmopolis’ in South and Southeast Asia since the sixteenth century onwards. The Malays of Sri Lanka - Muslims of Southeast Asian descent living in South Asia – constituted an important component of this globalized, inter-connected Islamic sphere which has to date received insufficient scholarly attention.
The history of the ‘Malay’ community in Sri Lanka goes back to the middle of the seventeenth century, following the foundation of Dutch rule in the island in 1640. The designation ‘Malay’ has been commonly used to refer to people from the Indonesian Archipelago who were exiled to Sri Lanka by the Dutch as political exiles and convicts, sent there in various capacities to serve the Dutch, or recruited as soldiers to colonial armies, both Dutch and, at a later stage, British.Many of those designated as Malay were of Javanese or east Indonesian ancestry. For example, the Javanese prince Amangkurat III of Surakarta was exiled along with his retinue in 1708 while the king of Gowa was exiled in 1767. Another important figure exiled by the Dutch was Sheikh Yusuf of Makassar, a leader and saint from Sulawesi still venerated at present. Such prominent figures had followers who joined them in exile as well as a local following in Sri Lanka. The latter signaled an acceptance of their authority by a broad, trans-local community.
The Sri Lankan Malay community can be thought of as a bridge connecting the Muslims of South Asia and those of Southeast Asia: Southeast Asian in origin and living in South Asia, their traditions met and combined with local Muslim ones to produce new cultural possibilities, their language a mix of both regions’ tongues and the site of their community situated on the pilgrimage route from the Indonesian-Malay world to Mecca.
This paper will focus on the history of Sri Lanka's Malays via a study of their literature as well as their mention in Javanese sources.
Discussant: Dr. Bhavani Raman