Category Archives: News

European History Across Boundaries from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century

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PhD Workshop starts today at Mainz

The Leibniz Institute of European History has convened international PhD students to a workshop on European history across boundaries from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including Europe’s relations with the world. The Graduate Workshop 2017/18 starting today takes place in cooperation with Lyndal Roper, Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford. Early career researches working in this field present their dissertation projects and discuss the transcultural and transnational scope of their findings.

Leibniz Institute of European History: Fellowship Programme http://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/fellowships

The programm covers a range of topics that aim to cross and reflect boundaries and borders from early modern to contemporary history. Participants are:

Desiree E. Krikken (Groningen), My plot, your plat, our inhabited landscape: Early modern land surveyors and the record of European physical space
Alberto Rodríguez Martínez (Seville), Local politics and cross-border negotiations in the Low Countries (1598–1621)

Valerio Zanetti (Cambridge), Embodied Feminity in Renaissance Europe
Julia Maclachlan (Manchester),Male Homosexuality 1945–70: Transnational Scientific and Social Knowledge in British and West European contexts

Betto van Waarden (Leuven), Political Visibility: Celebrity leaders and the emerging mass press in Europe, 1895–1908
Joana Duyster Borreda (Oxford), Towards an International History of Nationalism: Performing, Remembering and Disseminating Catalan Culture Abroad

Carlos Domper Lasús (LUISS Rome), Polls without Democracy: Elections under European dictatorships during the Cold War: Spain and Portugal in a comparative framework
Mari Hauge (EUI), Another third standpoint? Scandinavian left-wing intellectuals and their Cold War

Christian Wiesner (Innsbruck), Reception and regulation of the Tridentine reforms: The Roman curia of the 16th and 17th Century and the implementation of the residential obligation of priests and bishops
Tanja Zakrzewski (Potsdam), Conversos and Moriscos: Identity and violence in Early Modern Spain

Iris Busschers (Groningen), Making Missionary Lives: Collective biography, missionary memory, and Dutch self-fashioning in the context of Reformed Missions to Dutch New Guinea and East Java, c. 1900–1949
Norman Aselmeyer (EUI), Fractured Spaces: East Africa, the Uganda railway, and patterns of disintegration, c. 1890–1914

Conveners: Gregor Feindt, Johannes Paulmann (Mainz) and Lyndal Roper (Oxford)
Venue: Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Germany
Date: 24 – 26 January 2018

The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), an independent research institution in Mainz (Germany), contributes to the history of Europe across boundaries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It fosters research on the social, political, cultural and religious dynamics in Europe from the early modern period into the twentieth century and focusses on processes of establishing, coping with and enabling difference. The IEG has a fellowship programme for PhD students, PostDoc researches and Senior Research Fellows. For further details see here.

 

IEG Research Fellowships for Doctoral Students

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The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) awards
Research Fellowships for Doctoral Students
for a research stay in Mainz beginning in September 2018.

Profil
The IEG awards fellowships for international junior researchers in history, theology and other historical subjects. The IEG promotes research on the historical foundations of Europe from the early modern period to 1989/90, particularly regarding their religious, political and social dimensions. Projects dealing with European communication and transfer processes as well as projects focusing on questions related to theology, church history and intellectual history are particularly welcome.

What we offer
Funding is currently € 1,200/month. Research fellows live and work for between 6 and 12 months at the Institute in Mainz pursuing their individual Ph.D. project. Fellows will be assigned a mentor from the IEG’s academic staff.

Requirements
PhD theses continue to be supervised and are completed under the auspices of the fellows’ home universities. Fellows are required to register officially as residents in Mainz and to reside and take part in events at the Institute. The linguae academicae at the IEG are German and English; fellows should have a passive command of both and an active command of at least one of the two languages so as to participate in the discussions at the Institute.

Application Deadline
15 February 2018

For further information on the fellowship program and application see:
http://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/fellowships

Contact:
Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG)
Fellowship Programme | Barbara Müller, M. A.
Alte Universitaetsstraße 19 | 55116 Mainz – Germany
E-Mail: fellowship@ieg-mainz.de | Tel. 0049 (0)6131 – 39 39365
http://www.ieg-mainz.de/en

Helsinki 1975: Détente and Human Rights in the CSCE Process

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New IEG open access publication “On site, in time” – Bernhard Gißibl’s entry on the CSCE process.

“On site, in time” takes a look at events that took place in European locations and that exemplify how difference and inequality were negotiated in Europe.The 60 articles depict strategies that were developed to promote, present, preserve, mitigate or abolish difference. Such strategies may include discussions, peaceful solutions and aid as well migration, mission and protest or even exclusion, war and destruction.

Cross-posted from: http://en.ieg-differences.eu/on-site-in-time/bernhard-gissibl-helsinki/

Conference diplomacy and the CSCE process (constellations)

In the history of international conference diplomacy, Helsinki symbolizes détente, cooperation, and human rights during the Cold War. The reason for this is the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), whose Final Act was signed in Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall on August 1st, 1975 by the leaders of 33 European states, the USA, and Canada.

Helmut Schmidt, Erich Honecker, Gerald Ford and Bruno Kreisky at the CSCE Summit in 1975 in Helsinki, Finland.

This initiated a dialogue and negotiation process on confidence-building measures and principles between the blocs of the Cold War, which was designated the CSCE or “Helsinki process”. At the same time, the conference location signifies the role that neutral and non-aligned countries played as catalysts, facilitators and – in the case of Finland – as intermediaries of the security conference.

Cold War and détente in Europe (differences)

The CSCE conference had its roots in the superpowers’ efforts to ease tensions in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. By the early 1970s, conditions had changed: NATO had adopted a new strategy of easing tensions (“détente”), while the Federal Republic of Germany had concluded the Eastern treaties and recognized the GDR. In July 1973, the foreign ministers of all 33 European countries (with the exception Albania), as well as the USA and Canada, were able to begin with preliminary negotiations on security and cooperation in Europe. Continue reading →

Reminder: Call for Application GHRA 2018 open until December 31, 2017

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Drs Fabian Klose, Johannes Paulmann, and Andrew Thompson are pleased to announce that the Call for Applications for the fourth Global Humanitarianism Research Academy (GHRA) 2018 is now open, with a deadline of 31 December 2017.

Academy Leaders:
Fabian Klose (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)
Johannes Paulmann (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)
Andrew Thompson (University of Exeter) in co-operation with the International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva)
and with support by the German Historical Institute London
Venues: University of Exeter & Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva
Dates: 9-20 July 2018
Deadline: 31 December 2017
Information at: http://ghra.ieg-mainz.de/, http://hhr.hypotheses.org/ and http://imperialglobalexeter.com/

The international GLOBAL HUMANITARIANISM | RESEARCH ACADEMY (GHRA) offers research training to PhD candidates and early postdocs. It combines academic sessions at the Imperial and Global History Centre at the University of Exeter and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz with archival sessions at the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. The Research Academy is for early career researchers who are working in the related fields of humanitarianism, international humanitarian law, peace and conflict studies as well as human rights covering the period from the 18th to the 20th century. It supports scholarship on the ideas and practices of humanitarianism in the context of international, imperial and global history thus advancing our understanding of global governance in humanitarian crises of the present.

Continue reading →

Europe and the World: Between Colonialism and Globalisation

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Second Gerda Henkel Acadamy at Villa Vigoni in June 2018

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS – Workshop on “Europe and the World: Between Colonialism and Globalisation”. PhD candidates in the Humanities and Cultural Studies as well as in the Social Sciences and Law will present their dissertation projects and to discuss their ideas in a stimulating, interdisciplinary environment overlooking Lake Como.

Venue: Villa Vigoni, Menaggio, Como, Italy; Date: 18-22 June 2018

Deadline for applications: 15 December 2017

Villa Vigoni – German-Italian Centre for European Excellence on Lake Como

In cooperation with the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the German-Italian Center for European Excellence Villa Vigoni has established the Gerda Henkel Academy at Villa Vigoni to discuss past and present challenges of Europe in the political, social and cultural realm. The Academy’s work is dedicated to the theme “From the Ideas on Europe to the European Citizen”. The second graduate workshop of the Gerda Henkel Academy will take place in June 2018 at Villa Vigoni.

The workshop’s theme is “Europe and the World: Between Colonialism and Globalisation”. The aim is to bring together young scholars for an interdisciplinary exchange on the notions of Europe’s relationships with other societies and other parts of the world, both from a historical and from a contemporary perspective. Among the questions the workshop will address are the following: What was and what is the relationship between “Europe and the World”, and which tensions and which potentials can we identify? What are (or have been) the underlying constructions and narratives of “Europeanness” vis-à-vis other cultures, and in which ways have they informed European colonial and imperial practices abroad? What role did economic, scientific, national, religious, and ethnic categories play in shaping practices of formal and informal colonialism outside Europe, and to which degree do we find remnants of such structures in contemporary global relations? How does, vice versa, globalisation influence the ideas and the politics that define the European “Self” (or “Selves”)?

For further information see Call for Applications at www.academia.edu.

Academic Board:

Continue reading →

Political Mobilisation in the Early-Twentieth Century

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Special issue of Immigrants & Minorities on “Homelands and Hostlands: The Spatial Dynamics of Political Mobilisation”

This special issue edited by Eveline G. Bouwers (Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz) and Niall Whelehan (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) considers the categories of ‘homeland’ and ‘hostland’ as a means to approach questions of identity, loyalty and estrangement that both inspired and shaped political mobilisation in the early twentieth century world. During these years the advance of the global went hand in hand with a renaissance of the particular. Within this context of both high mobility and increasing localism, the articles in this special issue consider the importance of spatial perspectives in understanding how people and communities are moved to action by grievances, frustrations and loyalties.

Drawing on rich archival detail, each article considers different case studies that highlight diverse forms of politicisation and provide new insights into how communities negotiated questions of boundaries and space, and how the juxtaposition of homeland and hostland shaped their thinking. They show that, in an era of high mobility and increasing localism, political mobilisation was intimately connected with questions of space, making both use of it yet also depending on it.

Table of contents:

Eveline G. Bouwers & Niall Whelehan, Introduction: The Importance of Space for Understanding Political Mobilisation.

Eveline G. Bouwers, Challenging de Republic from the Provinces: An Analysis of Crowd Action after the Separation Law (1905).

Pietro Di Paola, ‘Capturing Anarchists Across Borders’: The Transnational Dimensions of Italian Antimilitarist Campaigns, 1911-14.

Elisabeth Marie Piller, To Aid the Fatherland. German-Americans, Transatlantic Relief Work and American Neutrality, 1914-17.

John Cunningham, Tom Glynn and ‘Pickhandle Mary’ Fitzgerald: Two Irish Syndicalists in Pre-World War One South Africa.

Rebecca Ayako Bennette, Remapping the German Homeland: Germania and Catholic Efforts to Mobilise Continued Support during the First World War.

Re-Inscribing Islam into European History

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European History Yearbook 2018: Forum Essay by Manfred Sing

Against All Odds: How to Re-Inscribe Islam into European History 

The central place that Muslims and Islam are accorded in the European media and public debates today contrasts with their near-complete absence in parts of European historiography until recently, Manfred Sing argues in his recent essay on Islam and European History.

Participants of the first congress of European Muslims, Geneva 1935. Picture: Van Beetem’s Family Archive (The Netherlands) – ERC Starting Grant “Muslims in Interwar Europe”, University of Leuven – n° 336608.

 

While right-wing demagogues campaign against refugees, Muslims and the supposed Islamization of Europe, their argument that Islam does not belong to Europe is, at least partially, supported by the rather patchy awareness of a continuous and multi-facetted Islamic history in European societies and, horrible dictu, even in some history departments. Recent research challenges this neglect, tries to overcome the “Othering” of Islam, and demands a new conceptualization of European history that leaves behind the Europe/Islam binary. As the construction of a European identity and a European space is based on “Othering” – a definition of what is not European -, the conscious and visible integration of Muslims into European history poses a systematic challenge to narratives of Europeanization. The article draws attention to the difficulties that spring from this challenge and discusses new approaches in scholarship that try to overcome them.

Manfred Sing’s essay is published open access in

 

 

 

 

 

History of Houses as Ressource and Representation

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Out Now – Open Access

New issue of the European History Yearbook on “Housing Capital: Resouce and Representation ” has been published.

ed. by Simone Derix and Margareth Lanzinger with contributions by:

The open access volume analyzes houses as an economic resource as well as a means of social, political and cultural agency. From the early modern period to the 20th century, the multifaceted capital of houses linked individuals, families and societies in specific ways. The essays collected here probe the material texture of past societies concerning the inheritance, value, sale or maintenance of houses as well as the symbolic meanings that houses conveyed.

The Spanish Atlantic and Global Europe

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Workshop at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in cooperation with Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG)

On 6-7 October, the workshop analyses global Europe in the long ninenteenth century by focusing on the Spanish Atlantic. Participants from UPF and IEG as well as Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Sevilla) and EHESS (Paris) discuss how the history of this period can be written from a global perspective.

Cádiz: Plaques at Oratorio de San Felipe Neri commemorating the first Spanish constitution of 1812, presented in 1912 amongst others “By the Spanish of the Americas in Honour of the American Deputes at the Cortez of Cadiz”; similiar ones from Montevideo and Puerto Rico.

In writing the history of the long nineteenth century, historians have traditionally concentrated on given macro-spaces reproducing present-day loci of power: China, India, the United States, and Europe. However, such a perspective neglects important regions and their significance for global history. In this regard, the absence of the Spanish Atlantic is most striking, especially since Spain and her Empire were both crucial for the first wave of globalization and embodied imperial decline in the course of the nineteenth century. Reflecting on Spain in her connections, encounters, and entanglements offers new insights into a global Europe in the long nineteenth century. This will bring together two strands of research in global history – i.e. Spanish Imperial history and European history in its global contexts – represented by researchers from the UPF and the IEG.

Continue reading →

International Conference: Humanitarianism and Charity. Expressions of or Alternatives to Socioeconomic Rights?

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Convenors: Fabian Klose (Mainz), Claudia Stein (Warwick), Charles Walton (Warwick)
Venue: Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) Mainz
Date: September 28 – 29, 2017
Information: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/research/serhn

Socioeconomic rights have a long but poorly understood history. They are sometimes referred to as ‘second generation rights’, as twentieth-century additions to core civil and political rights stretching back to the European Enlightenment. Yet, socioeconomic rights – such as the right to work and to subsistence – emerged in the political struggles of the French Revolution and have been repeatedly argued for since then. Although most countries in the world have legally recognized them as ‘human rights’ by signing the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, they tend not to receive the same degree of legitimacy and visibility as civil and political rights.
At this international conference at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, as part of the Leverhulme International Network ‘Rights, Duties and the Politics of Obligation: Socioeconomic Rights in History’, international scholars discuss the history of socioeconomic rights from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. In particular, they focus on the complex relationship between a discourse on socioeconomic rights and debates about humanitarianism and charity thus seeking to connect these two important fields of research. In this context the leading questions are: How has humanitarianism and charity figured within the rhetoric of rights? How have the politics of obligation differed between voluntary and rights-based approaches to dealing with socio-economic crises and deprivations? How have states and NGO’s tried to balance providing for urgent needs with the more long-term development of a rights-based approach upheld by the sovereign state?

Program

Thursday, September 28, 2017

2:00pm-2:30pm Fabian Klose (Mainz), Claudia Stein (Warwick), and Charles Walton (Warwick), Welcome and Introduction

2:30-3:30pm Keynote Lecture I:
Michael Barnett (Washington), ‘Humanitarianism and Socio-Economic Rights: Look, But Don’t Touch’

Continue reading →

Call for Applications: Global Humanitarianism Research Academy 2018

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Drs Fabian Klose, Johannes Paulmann, and Andrew Thompson are pleased to announce that the Call for Applications for the fourth Global Humanitarianism Research Academy (GHRA) 2018 is now open, with a deadline of 31 December 2017.

Academy Leaders:

Fabian Klose (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)
Johannes Paulmann (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)
Andrew Thompson (University of Exeter) in co-operation with the International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva)
and with support by the German Historical Institute London

Venues: University of Exeter & Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva
Dates: 9-20 July 2018
Deadline: 31 December 2017

Information at: http://ghra.ieg-mainz.de/, http://hhr.hypotheses.org/ and http://imperialglobalexeter.com/

The international GLOBAL HUMANITARIANISM | RESEARCH ACADEMY (GHRA) offers research training to PhD candidates and early postdocs. It combines academic sessions at the Imperial and Global History Centre at the University of Exeter and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz with archival sessions at the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. The Research Academy is for early career researchers who are working in the related fields of humanitarianism, international humanitarian law, peace and conflict studies as well as human rights covering the period from the 18th to the 20th century. It supports scholarship on the ideas and practices of humanitarianism in the context of international, imperial and global history thus advancing our understanding of global governance in humanitarian crises of the present.

Continue reading →

Call for Papers on Revolutions of 1848: European Protagonists in the People’s Spring

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An international conference will take place in Paris in May 2018 to take a fresh look at the 1848 revolutions. The focus will be on the protagonists of the People’s Spring (printemps des peuples/ Völkerfrühling).

Frédéric Sorrieu, La République universelle démocratique et sociale, 1848. Source: http://grial4.usal.es/MIH/struggleForFreedom/en/index.html

Papers are invited on the following themes:

  • The new rulers and their entourage
  • The parliamentarians
  • Protagonists at the interface of the national and the local
  • International travellers
  • Insurgents and the forces of law and order
  • Social protagonistes and groups
  • Cultural and spiritual mediators
  • The 1848 protagonists after 1848

For further details see CfP 1848 International colloquium/ English or Appel à communication/ francais.

The conference is a jointly organised by Le Centre d’histoire du XIXe s., le LabEx EHNE (Écrire une histoire nouvelle de l’Europe), la Société de 1848 et des révolutions du XIXe s., le Comité d’histoire parlementaire et politique et le Centre interuniversitaire d’histoire de Padou.

Please submit proposals to crhxixe@univ-paris1.fr

Deadline: 15 September 2017

European Memory: Universalising the Past?

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A new special issue of the European Review of History, edited by Friedemann Pestel, Rieke Trimçev, Gregor Feindt, and Félix Krawatzek.

European Memory has become an omnipresent phenomenon of our times. Both scholarship and the public sphere frequently refer to the European quality of something past or a specifically European way of remembering. It is, however, especially in Europe’s present crisis that these discussions on European memory reveal conflicts and a broad, often contradictory meaning of ‘Europe’. Practices of universalising the past are central to these conflicts and allow for an in-depth understanding of European Memory.

Invoking ‘European memory’ promises to overcome such conflicts by acknowledging difference and relating particular memories to other memories, i.e. those of different experiences or those of different people. This process of universalizing memory reduces difference, omits contexts, and eventually diffuses conflicts. To confront this bias, future research needs to employ an understanding of European Memory as a discursive reality rather than a normative ideal. In a new special issue of the European Review of History recently published, we – Friedemann Pestel, Rieke Trimçev, Gregor Feindt, and Félix Krawatzek – have taken up this challenge and confronted our discursive approach towards ‘European Memory’ with a set of empirical examples, ranging from the early modern memory of ‘Turk’, Versailles and French May 1968 to the massacre of  Srebrenica. This blog post outlines ideas and central findings from the Special Issue ‘European Memory: Universalising the Past?’. Continue reading →

CROSS-files: New Blog of ICRC Archives

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Cross-posted from https://hhr.hypotheses.org/

The Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva has created the new blog CROSS-files! This blog aims at promoting the contents of the rich audiovisual archives, library collections, general archives and what the ICRC calls the “Agency Archives”. This great collection of books, sound recordings, films, videos and photos illustrate and document the activities of the ICRC from the end of the 19th century up to the present day. These archives and library have been continually expanded over more than 150 years and today represent a significant heritage in the field of humanitarian law and action. It is a fantastic resource for all researchers working in the entangled fields of the history of humanitarianism and peace and conflict studies!

Furthermore, there is also the new ICRC Archives facebook account, where you can find additional material regarding the archives.

Enjoy exploring the rich history of the International Committee of the Red Cross and its archives!