Identities are powerful drives in human history. They build the understanding of the world of all human actors, and inevitably affect their actions. Both collective and individual identities are – now as ever – key features of all political activities. The creation and the control of identities are at the heart of all power relations, and as such they have been deeply investigated by human sciences. Indeed, political historians encounter the performative power of identities in most of their research. Nevertheless, they rarely find spaces to debate on identity issues and the tools needed to understand them. The main goal of the Florentine session of the 5th Workshop of the Political History PhD Network is to provide such space.
Since the cultural turn, the constructivist stance has been crucial in historiography. The seminal works of Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm questioned ethnical and national identities, while E.P. Thompson with his The making of the English working class inaugurated the investigation on the construction of class identities. In the meantime, gender studies have shown the cultural nature of gender identities. More recently, studies on personal identification have revealed the close relation between political power and the control of personal identities. In any case, it remains clear that it is not possible to conduct research on political history without questioning the identities used by both the historical actors and the historical observers as ourselves.
We encourage applications on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas:
The construction of identity as a political process
Performative identity: how collective identities influence politics (and vice versa)
Gender identities in question
Reframing national identity with transnational/global/diaspora case studies
Practices of personal identification throughout history
Identities in motion: borders and movements
Practical Information
Proposals for papers should include a title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short CV of the presenter. Please send proposals to phdpolhis@gmail.com before 30 June 2019. Notification of acceptance will be announced before 15 July. Participants are expected to submit a 3.000 – 5.000 words paper ahead of the workshop by 15 September. Limited funding is available for travel reimbursements. Participants whose travel costs are not covered by any other institution and who wish to apply for a reimbursement should indicate this on their application.
For further information and questions please contact us at phdpolhis@gmail.com, join the Political History PhD Network on Linkedin and sign up for our monthly newsletter by writing us an email.
The second session of the 5th Workshop for PhD Candidates in Political History is organised thanks to the contribution of the European University Institute, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Padua.
The question of what is political seems like a banal one as it is such an obvious part of our everyday lives and experiences. Most of us follow politics and are dependent on the political institutions defining the framework we operate within. But are historians taking the concept of politics for granted? Is politics too often understood only as parties and parliaments? The first session of the fifth annual workshop of the Political History PhD Network focuses on the meaning and understanding of politics. We invite PhD Students to discuss the complexities of the concept of political in the field of political history.
Politics is a subject that gathers and unites academics from different backgrounds and traditions. Historians interested in politics have studied, among other things, ideas, intellectuals, political cultures, parliamentary rhetoric, and social movements. But what are we talking about when we talk about politics? The analytical nature of politics should be one of the defining subjects of debate in the field of political history, enabling scholars of different subjects, cultures, and eras to participate in a shared theoretical and methodological discussions. We believe that such discussions would enrich the field of political history.
The tradition of political history practised in the University of Jyväskylä has traditionally emphasised the political in political history, a result of multidisciplinary co-operation with political science and applied linguistics. An inclusive understanding of the nature of politics is one of the founding principles of the political history practiced in Jyväskylä. Hence we encourage the participants of the first session of the 2019 Political History PhD Network Workshop to submit papers on the following themes:
Political and politics as analytical concepts
Historical uses of the concepts of political and politics
Differing understandings of the nature of politics
Political agents, movements, parties, and ideas
Transnational and global influences
Politics – continuity and change in the long term
Practical Information
Proposals for papers should include the title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short CV of the applicant. Please send proposals to phdpolhis@gmail.com before 15 February 2019. Notification of acceptance will be announced before the 15 March. Participants are expected to submit a 3 000 – 5 000 word paper ahead of the workshop by 10 June. An amount of funding is available for travel reimbursements. Participants who wish to apply for a reimbursement should indicate this on their application.
For further information and questions please contact us at phdpolhis@gmail.com and visit our website. We also encourage you to join the Political History PhD Network on Linkedin, and sign up for our monthly newsletter by writing us an email.
13:15 – 13:45 Registration (room 026) 13:45 – 14:00 Words of welcome
14:00 – 16:00 Parallel session I
Panel 1. The crafts of power. Observing, stratifying and condemning populations room 023C Chair: Remzi Çağatay Çakırlar (Leiden)
Joonas Tammela (Jyväskylä): Legitimation of Heavenly and Earthly Power: Local Sermons as a Mediator of the Societal Values in Swedish Realm, 1790–1820
Cristiana Plamadeala (Paris): On Dossierveillance and Collaboration with the Securitate, Romania’s Secret Police in the Communist Period (1945-89)
Sandrine Maulini (Geneva): The demands of former administrative inmates and children in out-of-home care: a crisis of legitimacy in Switzerland?
Panel 2. Signs of the times. Questions of legitimacy in periods of change Room 025 Chair: Iva Vukusic (Utrecht)
Raisa Blommestijn (Leiden): The step-in-the-back myth. Reconceiving Weimar’s legitimacy
Maja Lukanc (Ljubljana): The legitimation of communist power: Comparative cases of post-war Poland and Yugoslavia (1944-1948)
Pierre Botcherby (Warwick): Seeking continuity in a period of change: resisting industrial decline and postindustrial regeneration in St. Helens, Merseyside
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break (room 026)
16:30 – 18:00 Key note panel: The question of legitimacy Room 025
Maartje Janse, Anne Petterson & Elisabeth Dieterman (Leiden)
19:00 Dinner (Malle Jan) app. 21:00 Social programme
Thomas Ashby (Florence/Leiden): Resisting Satan: Algernon Sidney contra the House of Stuart, the invasion plot of 1664-1666
Catherine Hulse (London): Legitimising representative popular power: the ‘paradox’ of Sieyès and Roederer?
Arthur Ghins (Cambridge): A liberal view on democracy: Benjamin Constant on sovereignty, representative government and political liberty
Shane Little (Loughborough): The anarchism of Josiah Warren: Sovereignty of the individual and experiments in utopian living
Panel 4. The imaginary dominium. Identity constructs and aesthetic representations as sources of legitimacy room 025 Chair: Wouter Linmans (Leiden)
Fons Meijer (Nijmegen): Establishing a Dutch consensus culture: Representations of Dutch monarchs in times of disaster, c.1807-1861
Nathalia Schomerus (Potsdam): Viewpoints of National Liberals on legitimacy in 19th century Germany
Rohit Dutta Roy (Cambridge): Right to govern and the construction of epistemic authority: History as a source of Political Legitimacy in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century India
Marvin Menniken (Berlin): War veteran morality and the nation: The American Legion in twentieth-century U.S. politics
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 15:00 Parallel session III
Panel 5. Reading revolts against the grain. The legitimation of dissent room 023C Chair: Larissa Schulte Nordholt (Leiden)
Ivan Gracia (Barcelona): Legitimacy and popular violence in a catholic city: Barcelona during the Reapers’ Revolt (1640)
Oscar Broughton (Berlin): Redefining construction: Legitimacy and the National Guilds League
Juho Saksholm (Jyväskylä): The Nordic 1968: Transnational discourses on the legitimacy of dissent
Panel 6. Communicative challenges. Or how to mediate legitimacy room 025 Chair: Alp Yenen
Jonas Stephan (Münster): Security, authority and legitimacy. The art of doing politics in the Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of Westphalia
Zachris Haaparinne (Jyväskylä): The virtues and ideals of parliamentary representation and political participation
Chris Monnox (Australia): Legitimising party: Public meetings and party politics in Australia, 1910-1929
Sara Mirahmadi (Leiden): Ideological usage of poetry in the Jāmi’ al-Tavārīkh
The Pursuit of Legitimacy. Power and its manifestations in political history
4th Workshop for PhD Candidates in Political History 25 -26 October 2018, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Application deadline: 1 April 2018
Some political questions are never to be solved. The question of legitimacy is one of these issues that keep pressing themselves on history. How the wielding of political power is justified and contested hangs over the past as an open-ended question. Legitimacy may therefore very well be one of the great themes of political history. In the 4th annual workshop of the Political History PhD Network, PhDs from all over the world are invited to present their work and discuss this crucial question, thereby contributing to new historiographical perspectives on legitimacy.
Throughout history, legitimacy has been a contested concept. It was open to debate and dependent on mediation. As a political question, legitimacy was at play at intersections of different ideological outlooks. The issue of what constitutes a legitimate exercise of power, or a legitimate cause for revolt and resistance, engages all levels and spheres of political activity, from the individual actor to, for instance, the global structures of imperialism. The question of legitimacy therefore touches upon all the core themes of political history, including the topics of continuity and change, the workings of institutions, the dynamics of conflict, the functioning of networks, the spread of ideas, and the performativity of power. In encompassing these subjects, this workshop aims to bring together historians working on diverse periods and places.
The workshop’s central questions are: how did historical actors try to legitimate new capacities of power? How did discourses of legitimacy determine the shape and functioning of political organizations? In what ways was legitimacy depicted, imagined and acted out? How did understandings of legitimacy relate to notions of illegitimacy? How were dominant readings of legitimacy contested? How was legitimacy mediated between different settings and groups of people? Together, these questions should help us to grasp the multitude of ways in which historical actors thought about and engaged with legitimacy as a central issue of political activity.
We encourage applications on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas:
Theories of legitimacy
Diplomacy and legitimacy
Legitimacy in official and societal organizations
Discourses and depictions of illegitimacy
The legitimacy of violence and political resistance
Legitimacy amidst continuity and change
Practical Information
Proposals for papers should include the title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short CV of the presenter. Please send proposals to phdpolhis@gmail.com before April 1st, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be announces before the end of April. Participants are expected to submit a 3.000 – 5.000 words paper ahead of the workshop by 25 September. A limited amount of funding is available for travel reimbursements. Participants who wish to apply for a reimbursement should indicate this on their application.
For further information and questions please contact us at phdpolhis@gmail.com, join the Political History PhD Network on Linkedin and sign up for our monthly newsletter by writing us an email!
Remzi Çağatay Çakırlar, Universiteit Leiden Wouter Klem, Universiteit Utrecht Erik de Lange, Universiteit Utrecht Lauren Lauret, Universiteit Leiden
The Changing Frontiers of Political History,16th-20th Centuries
Workshop Political History PhD Network 26-27 October 2017, Sciences-Po Paris, France
Organisation
This two day-workshop is an initiative of the Political History PhD Network. It was organised by Alexandre Boza, Alessandro Capone, Laurent Cuvelier & Thomas Maineult (Sciences Po Paris).
Workshop report
by Alexandre Boza & Laurent Cuvelier
The third workshop of the International Political History PhD Network was hosted by Sciences Po Paris, on 26-27 October 2017. Federating under the headline « The Changing Frontier of Political History », around twenty PhD Students from several European countries (Italy, Spain, The Netherland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom…) and from United States, gathered to present their research. As defined in previous workshops’ organization, each paper was discussed within small groups of high expertise within their respective fields. Joint sessions were held for those study endeavours that bridged two of the panels, thus ensuring comprehensive feedback from the audience. Papers were distributed beforehand, and after brief presentations followed from an assigned commentator, collective feedback opened fruitful discussions. Contributors were grouped into four panels (Empires and Nation-States in a global perspective; Religion, politics, and modernity ; New perspectives in history of international relations ; Politics and practices of social control).
The first panel focused on the importance of Imperial studies for the renewal of political history. It emphasized the methodological influence of cultural history, especially the studies of controversies and discourses linked to specific social and political contexts. It also implied different extra-European contexts such as the first Spanish-Empire or the 19th Century French Empire.
Daniel Alleman (Cambridge University) analysed controversies between Spanish jurists about forced native labor in colonial Peru. Studying those debates, he has shown the connections between Spanish scholastic thought, more practically oriented treatises on the government of the New World, and the broader discourse of empire in early modern Spain.
Madeline Woker (Columbia University) presented her research about politics of taxation in colonial contexts. She focused mainly on colonial Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century, and has traced the debates that led to the abolition of the impôt arabe in 1918. In her paper and presentation, she underlined how taxation crucially shaped the way colonial rule was experienced by all members of colonial society.
Betto van Waarden (UC Louvain) studies how Belgian, British, and German political leaders interacted with the press during its expansion to a ‘mass’ phenomenon between 1880 and 1914. During the conference, he has developed a case study about the 1901-2 verbal conflict between British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow. This conflict has been shaped by the communication of both politicians and has contributed to the emergence of a transnational public sphere. Van Waarden’s study of their communication shows how they understood the importance of publicity and visibility to shape their political careers and their celebrity.
Remzi Çağatay Çakırlar (Leiden University-EHESS) focused on the role of French Radical politician Édouard Herriot in the relationship between France and the Young Turk movement in Turkey, both with its Unionist and Kemalist guise. Based on extensive archival research conducted in Leiden, Paris, Lyon, Aix-en-Provence, Carcassonne, and Istanbul, the paper demonstrates that Herriot’s relations with the Young Turks, in the time period from the 1908 Revolution to Atatürk’s death in 1938, were bilateral and frequent. His influence were crucial and can be seen through the ideological foundation of the Kemalist State. Thus, Republicanism and Laïcism are two of the Six Arrows who were added to Turkish Constitution in 1937.
Panel II drew the audience interest on the renewal of religious dimension in modern politics history. Speakers presented several perspectives on this general through diverse topics.
Chloé Lacoste (Université Paris IV) presented her ongoing inquiry on public funerals Northern Ireland in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. She focused on the way Fenians used public funerals and memorials to build up both their political and cultural identity. She wondered if catholicism was a way to nationalism a path to catholicism, and explained how catholicism has challenged and transformed the former Irish republican nationalism. Doing so she emphasized the importance of “role models” as narrative for such a construction and of monuments locations as milestones for identity building.
Serena Presti Danisi (Padua University) has proposed the first results of her prosopography on the first Roman Constituent Assembly of 1849. Elected through universal suffrage, these representatives expressed the liberal movements of the late 1840s, merging liberalism and elitism in a clientelistic way. Roman deputies appeared to have an important former political culture through local and european networking as most of them were already second rank actors in administration and economy.
Stefan Trajkovic Filipovic (Justus-Liebig University, Giessen) presented a study of the relation between belief and space through the media coverage of recent political uses of Mount Rumija. The building of a church dedicated to St Vladimir’s millennium cult raised harsh opposition between Serbian nationalism supported by Serbian orthodox church in Montenegro and Montenegrin nationalism. Articulating local, federal and european scales, S. T. Filipovic showed by this example how the geographical issue of the interface became symbolic frontier for political identities.
Panel III was focused on new perspectives in International relations. Speakers examined this issue following different perspectives and adopting original methodological approaches.
Francesco Caprioli (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid) has studied the Spanish diplomacy during the first third of the 16th century in Maghreb and in Italy as a system to preserve Spanish influence in the Mediterranean. He has focused on both the decision-making circles of the royal court in Madrid and the go-betweens employed with the Berber dynasties as well as with the Italian Renaissance families.
Edoardo Angione (Roma Tre University) has presented his work on information channels used by the papal State under Paul V’s pontificate. He analysed three of them: diplomacy, independent informants and clergymen to underline how the needs and local contexts of informants have shaped international relations between Rome and the Ottoman Empire.
Carlos Antolín Rejón (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid) focused on Prince Filiberto of Savoy (1588-1624) and his public image, using iconic representations and portraits. Between the image of a Habsburg-Savoy Prince or an Italian-Spanish one, the study of material aspects (his clothes for example) shows the progressive “hispanisation” of Fliliberto’s public image even if the Savoy identity were never left completely.
Michele D’Angelo (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid-Univ. de Toulouse) has shown how France and Spain established and consolidated, between 1950s and 1960s, diplomatic relationship throughout the control and repression of their foreign citizens. He underlined the new cooperative relations through different issues such as the control of anti-francoist activists or the Algerian Independent War. In that process, Spanish diplomats have taken a key part to avoid the politization of Spanish workers in France.
Finally, panel IV focused on the practices of social control. It underlined the importance of administrative connection and transfers across state borders and among the local, the national and the European scale. It also has shown how material approaches of political practices and specific case studies are still fruitful methodological perspectives.
Stefano Poggi (EUI, Florence) has developed a specific case study from his research focusing on the techniques of identification in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. With his case about Security Cards in the Napoleonic Vicenza (1805-1809), he has underlined the potential of a micro perspective in the identification studies, especially to study how the local society reacted to new practices of social control.
Erik de Lange (Utrecht University) studies the European fight against piracy and privateering during the first part of the 19th century. During this workshop he focused on European policies and efforts against ‘Barbary piracy’. After the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, European tried to address concerted communications to the Ottoman Porte. Moreover, France and England organised a joint expedition to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. The different reaction and opposition of the Barbary Regencies shows the limits of inter-imperial practices of security and the problematic application of the ‘piracy’ label.
Wouter Klem (Utrecht University) has presented his research focusing on the European campaign against anarchist terrorism and the importance of transnational networks of police. He has shown how the anarchist threat catalyzed police experts to engage in a transnational epistemic network, to exchange and readapt different kind of police practices (such as the anthropometric measurements developed by Alphonse Bertillon).
In his paper and presentation, Nicola Baković (Justus-Liebig University, Giessen) has focused on the methodological aspects of his research. The later is about marches in Soviet Yugoslavia, which has shaped the representations of Yugoslav Territory during the Socialist period. He has developed a methodological approach linked to the process of “place making” (geographical locations, material structures, human agencies…) and the concept of “routinisation”. This approach has let him to emphasize how local actors, non-political aims and economical factors were important for the success of those marches.
Uygar Aydemir (Sabanci University, Istanbul) has presented his work about a political treatise written by Mahmud Nedim Pasha during the 19th century. He developed Mahmud Nedim’s criticism of modern Ottoman bureaucracy and has tried to link Nedim’s perspective with the critique of bureaucracy in Eastern and Central Europe during the 19th century.
As a complement to the organization in panels, coffees and diner in the sideline of the workshop offered occasion to deepen discussions and establish personal contacts over coffee or dinner, eventually to discover french gastronomie.
The presence of scholars from so diverse countries allowed challenging discussions over topics and strong attention to methodological issues. Alongside with the good quality of most presentations, this seems to indicate that the Network is attracting a growing attention, starting being recognized as a valuable scientific experience. The conference programme was further complemented by a keynote discussion on Thursday evening where Michele Di Donato, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for History of Sciences Po, reflected on the challenges of applying for a post-doc position through transnational study of contemporary communists networks. The discussion was appreciated for focusing on the innovating processes in young researchers fundings projects.
On Friday 27th, Marc Lazar, chair of the Association for Political History, addressed the relationship between the PHPN and the APH, insisting on the strengthening of proximity between the two networks. The discussion highlighted the opportunity for PHD to join the APH and get involved in the three next steps : the 2018 APH Conference in Paris, the 2018 PHPN Workshop in Leiden. The discussion moved on to making explicit the Association’s concern for PhD students’ formation and job opportunities. Marc Lazar insisted on the forthcoming Political History job market initiated by the APH and on the importance for the APH website to contribute to turn into a place for “community building”.
This two day-workshop is an initiative of the Political History PhD Network. It is organised by Alexandre Boza, Alessandro Capone, Laurent Cuvelier & Thomas Maineult (SciencesPo Paris).
Please note: you are expected to make your own travel and accommodation arrangements. We advise you to book as soon as possible your room at the Jean Bart Hotel, 9 Rue Jean Bart.
There you will have the opportunity to benefit from the privileged Sciences Po flat rate (100,50€ per night, breakfast and taxes included). This also has the advantage of being very close to the workshop locations.
In case you have any food allergies, the workshop organizers would appreciate it if you could let them know.
In case you have any questions, please contact the workshop organizers at phdpolhis@gmail.com
Thursday 26 October 2017
12:30-13:00 Registration Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle Jean Monnet
13:00 Welcome
13:30-15:00 Panel I: Empires and Nation-States in a global perspective
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle Jean Monnet Chair: Alessandro Capone, Sciences Po
Daniel Alleman (Cambridge University), Natural slavery revisited: Spanish scholastic justification of forced labor in colonial Peru
Jelle Bruinsma (EUI, Florence), US dollar diplomacy (1904-1920) and its British antecedents: Transnational Perspective on Public-Private Partnerships for Empire
Madeline Woker (Columbia University), Abolishing the impôts arabes: the politics of taxation in colonial Algeria
Panel II: Religion, politics, and modernity
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle du Traité Chair: Alexandre Boza, Sciences Po
Glauco Schettini (Fordham University), Redefining virtue in revolutionary Italy, 1796-1799
Chloé Lacoste (Paris IV), Republicans, church and state: Public funerals and the confrontation for control over the Irish masses, 1861-1915
Serena Presti Danisi (Padua University), The men of the revolution: The Roman Republic of 1849 and the development of a new democratic elite
15:10-15:30 Coffee break
15:30-17:00 Panel III: New perspectives in history of international relations
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle Jean Monnet Chair: Thomas Maineult, Sciences Po
Francesco Caprioli (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid), The two side of the coin: Remapping the Habsburg’s political frontiers in the West Mediterranean through the Spanish diplomacy
Edoardo Angione (Roma Tre University), Knowing the “Enemy”: news transmission and Ottoman policies under Paul V (1605-1621)
Carlos Antolín Rejón (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid), Cultural nation and dynastic identity. The public image of Filiberto of Savoy (1588-1624)
Panel IV: Politics and practices of social control
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle du Traité Chair: Laurent Cuvelier, Sciences Po
Stefano Poggi (EUI, Florence), Personal identification in practice: A micro-history of the security cards in the Napoleonic Vicenza (1805-1809)
Erik de Lange (Utrecht University), What lies beyond the Conference: Barbary ‘piracy’ and the limits of internationalism, 1816-1823
Wouter Klem (Utrecht University), Between national politics and transnational action: Joint police efforts against the anarchist conspiracy, 1881-1914
17:00-17:15 Break
17:15-18:15 Keynote Conference (Michele Di Donato)
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle Jean Monnet
Friday 27 October 2017
9:30-10:00 Welcome
10:00-11:00 Panel I: Empires and Nation-States in a global perspective
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle Jean Monnet Chair: Alessandro Capone, Sciences Po
Betto van Waarden (UC Louvain), Politics in Public: The transnational conflict between British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow and the new relation between politics and the mass press around 1900
Remzi Çağatay Çakırlar (Leiden University-EHESS), Édouard Herriot: A radical republican between French Third republic and Turkish republic
Panel II: Religion, politics, and modernity
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle du Traité Chair: Alexandre Boza, Sciences Po
Stefan Trajković Filipović (Justus-Liebig University, Giessen), “It is not a church, but a watchtower. As long as it stands, Montenegrin people will live in discontent.” Religion and politics in contemporary Montenegro
Taylor Cade West (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid), The eclipse of the eternal: A revaluation of Evangelicalism’s politics and the function of religion in Cold War America
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-12:15 Panel III: New perspectives in history of international relations
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle Jean Monnet Chair: Thomas Maineult, Sciences Po
Omer Aloni (Tel Aviv University), Early environmentalism and diplomacy at the birth of modern International law: the League of Nations, 1919-1939
Michele D’Angelo (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid-Univ. de Toulouse), A good deal. Social conflicts repression as base of Franco-Spanish diplomatic relationships (1950s –1960s)
Panel IV: Politics and practices of social control
Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, salle du Traité Chair: Laurent Cuvelier, Sciences Po
Nicola Baković (Justus-Liebig University, Giessen), “Following the revolution’s trails”. Ritualised representations of Yugoslav territory during Socialism
Ademir Uygar (Sabanci University, Istanbul), Does bureaucracy ensure “rule of law” or “rule of bureaucrats”? A critique of modern bureaucracy in the nineteenth-century Ottoman empire
12:15-13:30 Lunch (salle Jean Monnet)
13:45-15:15 Plenary discussion: future and development of the PHPN
Rethinking Continuity and Change in Early Modern and Modern Political History
Workshop Political History PhD Network 16-17 December 2016, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
Organisation
This two day-workshop is an initiative of the Political History PhD Network. It was organised by Alessandro Capone (Sciences Po Paris), Thomas Maineult (Sciences Po Paris), Frederik Frank Sterkenburgh (University of Warwick) and Anne Petterson (Leiden University).
Workshop report
by Alessandro Capone & Thomas Maineult
The second annual workshop of the Political History PhD Network, created in 2014 by PhD students from the universities which joined the Association for Political History, took place at the University of Warwick on 16 and 17 December 2016. The first meeting, held at the University of Leiden in October 2015, had investigated possibilities of “Understanding Political History in and Beyond the Nation State”. The second workshop was aimed at questioning the categories used to distinguish the early modern and modern phase in four fields of political history, each of which provided the topic of a thematic panel. Young scholars coming from universities in England, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States presented their doctoral research on Parliaments and political deliberations (panel I), Confronting the emerging modernity (panel II), War and security (panel III) and Nation and state building and the language of politics (panel IV). The workshop included a keynote speech by Constanze Sieger (University of Münster) on and a round table with Mark Philp, Pierre Purseigle and Charles Walton (University of Warwick).
Participants of the PHPN Workshop 2016 – 16 & 17 December 2016, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
Focusing on parliaments and political deliberations, in Panel I speakers underlined the importance of the study of decision-making processes and the influence of ideologies on the institutional framework of supra-national institutions. On day 2, specific attention was payed to the set of political decisions, the confronting ideologies and the role of women in parliamentary institutions.
Zachris Haaparinne (University of Jyväskylä) analyzed the multisitedness of eighteenth century decision-making processes through the conceptual construction of ideas on representation in Britain and its Thirteen Colonies, with a particular focus on petitions and debates on petitioning. Using parliamentary records, the press and pamphlets, he concentrated on the problem of public sphere (Habermas) and stressed the intrinsic diversity and asymmetry of the eighteenth century political sphere.
Leonard van ’t Hul (University of Amsterdam) studied the political deliberations on the rearranging of the state-religion interlocution in the Netherlands between 1946 and 2009. Developing on recent trends in this field of study that casted doubt on the perspective of decline of religious organizations, he delved into the prolonged political deliberations behind the changes and continuities in the position of religion in the public domain. He insists on the interplay between religion, the state, and society with the example of the political deliberations on eligibility of ‘new’ faith-based organizations to provide spiritual care in the army. Rather than declaring religion plain dead, the case of the political deliberation on spiritual care in the armed forces shows that there are other dynamics at play that, surprisingly, even empowered faith-based organizations.
Carlos Domper Lasús (University LUISS-Rome) focused on the complex relationship between nationalism, elections and the European integration process. He underlined the influence of nationalism in the setting of the institutional framework of the European states which is a key element to explain the appearance of the differentiation in the current European political reality and, therefore, in the shaping the EU as a “system of differentiated integration”. In this regard, although the process of European integration has transformed the state model which was forged by nationalism, it has not removed the mechanisms inherited from nationalism that make them work as independent political units and jealous guardians of their autonomy.
On day 2, Lauren Lauret (Leiden University) described the meeting locations of the Dutch States General and the continuity of the early modern political world between 1719 and 1830. Considering the meetings’ different physical settings and the administrative machinery behind it, she underlines the fact that each regime change had significant impact on the States General physical appearance and practical, administrative organization. Constitutional changes confronted Members with both new political – and sometimes physical – surroundings, and consequently with questions on how to proceed correctly, both in terms of space and on paper. The crucial proximity between the States General, its archive and administrative office (griffie) for its proper functioning is also very important. Indeed, a decent working relation between the States General and its griffie has emerged as a lifeline between the old States General and its constitutional successors.
Charles Lenoir (Sciences Po Paris) concentrated on how to deal with reform, analyzing the use of historical references to legitimize conservative political stance regarding the reform of the state in France and United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Indeed, in France and the United States, conservatism changed in similar institutional contexts. Both countries were characterized by a disorganized conservatism, which became increasingly concerned by the expansion of the state from the late 1880s. In both countries, conservative figures referred to a founding moment of history to legitimize their stances regarding the reform process leading to the strengthening of the modern state. Despite some differences, a similar set of values and historical interpretation were shared across traditional political barriers and helped to grasp a conservative discourse at the turn of the century.
James McSpadden (Harvard University) studied the political influence of German, Austrian, and Dutch female parliamentarians between 1918 and 1940, focusing on individual women for each country who shed light on larger national political cultures. Through the examples of Anna Boschek and Gabriele Proft in Austria, Frida Katz in the Netherlands and Kathinka von Oheimb in Germany, he focuses on the fact that comparing case studies can make clear what was contingent and what was shared, as part of the same historical background noise. Among these three cases, Germany’s cross-party collaboration and robust social life that incorporated women stands out. It seems to be a model for a vibrant political culture in which female parliamentarians took part.
Panel II focused on the theme of confronting the emerging modernity, paying a particular attention to ideas, identities and values in social movements and their consequences on the shaping of a modern social order based on a new set of values.
Carolien Boender (Leiden University) analyzed honour and citizenship in the crisis of 1747-1749 in the Netherlands. She concentrated on the continuities in urban civic identities, discussing how a broader definition of citizenship can help to find such continuities. Focusing on the upheavals of 1747 till 1749 in the Dutch Republic, more specifically in the towns of Haarlem and Groningen, First, she explained how civic identity and citizenship were related. She discussed the historiography on citizenship during the tax revolt of 1747-1749 and explained how the study of concepts such as honour and harmony can provide new insights. Ideas about honour and harmony provoked town dwellers to exclude others and reshape the urban community.
Ettore Bucci (Scuola Normale Superiore-Pisa) studied hopes and utopias in French ideas of self-management. He tries to see if links do exist between social management ideas developed by French theorists of the 19th century and French Catholic social movements that promoted “autogestion” in 1968 and after. Analyzing the role played by the Catholic left-wing trade union CFDT and the social movement around the factory Lip in France, he tries to understand how the Catholic world may have contributed to the development of new decision-making processes that go with a different vision of the French society.
Jacopo Marchetti (University of Pisa) focused on new institutional economics (“NIE”) and the emergency of social costs and how to reconcile institutional changes with individual decision making processes, reflecting on the ideas of continuity and change between the 19th and 20th century in the ways of interpretation of politics and institutions. The NIE has been focused on the ability of social coordination processes, using methodological individualism as an epistemological approach. Marchetti reflects on the possibility of thinking social and institutional changes through the analysis of the decision-making processes.
In her keynote speech, Constanze Sieger (University of Münster) questioned the influence of situations of political transition on cultures of decision-making by looking at a concrete example at a local level, focusing on municipal incorporations in Gelsenkirchen (Ruhr Area) during the transition from the Wilhelmine constitutional monarchy to the Weimar Republic’s parliamentary democracy. Surprisingly, one can remarks a greater scope for co-determination and participation on the part of municipalities in the empire than in the Weimar Republic. Imperial legislation already allowed to force through an incorporation against the will of the municipalities affected by citing the “public good”, but such an option was used systematically only in the Weimar Republic. As this change in procedure is not based on different underlying legal conditions, Sieger linked it to the transformation in “cultures of decision-making”, from an “incrementalistic decision-making” to “plan-making” (Uwe Schimank). Reducing complexity, this change brought about a transition from many quickly successive and mutually corrective individual decisions to comprehensive and planned decision-making, embedded within a whole process. We can see above all a change to the “purposes” that the restructuring of a local authority was supposed to serve, in that, in the Weimar Republic, the idea of municipal self-government regarding all political areas was relinquished entirely in favour of the administration of services by the local authority.
Keynote speech Constanze Sieger, University of Münster
Panel III dealt with the problem of violence and security in inner and foreign conflicts. Speakers examined this issue following different perspectives and adopting original methodological approaches.
Nick Crown (University of East Anglia, Norwich), comparing Catholic and Protestant propagandistic uses of the memory of recently executed co-religionists, showed that martyrdom had a double function for both Protestants and Catholics in the 16th century. It played first a pedagogical role, as depictions of martyrdoms were used to explain specific features of the faith. Besides, linking the present struggles to the idealized past of Roman anti-Christian persecutions, the memory of martyrdom proved essential in consolidating the religious identity of English Catholic and Protestant communities. The religious struggle rapidly turned into a political conflict, especially after the 1569 Northern Catholic Rebellion. The relation between the internal conflict and the rivalry between Elizabethan England and the Papacy provoked an increasing politicization of the Protestant cause, now seen as deeply associated with the English national identity and the defense of English autonomy. This was a fundamental step in the forging of British identity and in the exclusion of Catholics from British citizenship.
Carlos Antolín Rejón (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) analyzed the importance of the concept of honour and reputation in the Spanish diplomacy at the beginning of the 17th century. Historiography has traditionally considered Philip III’s conservative strategy to be more concerned about financial recovery and avoiding wars than about the monarchy’s prestige and reputation. However, a closer analysis of the crisis between the Spanish monarchy and the Duchy of Savoy in 1610 suggests that reputation was also a major concern. Showing how deeply personal honor was concerned in diplomacy before the emergence of the Nation-State, Carlos Antolín Rejón’s research invites also historians of late modern and contemporary ages to take in consideration the anthropological dimension of the diplomatic phenomena.
Erik deLange (Utrecht University) focused on how the Congress of Vienna initiated changes in European attitudes to Barbary corsairing. De Lange examined the efforts of diplomats, transnational activists and pamphleteers in delegitimizing North African privateering during the Congress. As a consequence, the Regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were framed as threatening, ‘piratical’ political entities that could be intimidated and attacked in order to restore security on the Mediterranean Sea. The Congress of Vienna thus signified a moment of profound change for the Barbary Regencies, it initiated a period of increasing imperial encroachment and proceeding political delegitimation. The imperialist aspects of the international order founded at Congress of Vienna, De Lange argued, should therefore receive more historiographical attention.
Panel IV was aimed at reconsidering the role of language – taken in a broad sense – in forging national identities and state institutions before and after the 18th-century revolutions, traditionally seen as the starting point of the modern national rhetoric.
Jonas Tammela (University of Jyväskylä) shown that the Lutheran clergy, acting as an intermediary between the centre and peripheries of the monarchy, played a very significant role in the modernization of the Swedish patriotic identity during the Age of Enlightenment. Analyzing changes in the language of Lutheran sermons between the last third of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century, Tammela cast a new light on the origins of a modern patriotic discourse in the Kingdom of Sweden, as well as on the complex relationship between religion, nation and the state.
Glauco Schettini (Fordham University), focusing on the political and cultural history of Italian republics in 1796-1799, pointed out that Italian patriots redefined the classical republican concept of virtue, based on heroic sacrifice for the community, in order to make it more suitable to the new social and political context. Empathy, brotherly love and charity were the bulk of the new concept of virtue, according to which citizens were no longer required to die for the country, but to lead a harmonious family life and to care for their fellow citizens. Such a redefinition provided the ideal of virtue with a wider audience, thus contributing to imagine the nation as a familial community and to foster the emergence of an autonomous and properly bourgeois private sphere.
Tom Schuringa (University of Groningen) questioned how scientific expertise increasingly took over from political affiliation in being the most important qualification to be involved in the Dutch economic policymaking. Schuringa concentrated on the efforts made by the Dutch catholic movement in 1899-1927 in order to develop an economic expertise, seen as a means to acquire a more influent role in defining public policies. By this way, Schuringa showed that the institutionalization of economic policymaking, usually understood as a process that emerged in the Netherlands after 1945, was in fact the outcome, and not the instigator of a process of professionalization of political economy.
Alessandro Bonvini (University of Salerno) dealt with the political journalism of Mazzinian exiles in Southern America in 1835-1848, investigating the identity stakes of their language. Following recent developments in transnational history, he showed how Mazzinian journalists contributed to the creation of a transnational public sphere. Not only the press worked as a connector within a network of exiles and patriots spread on both sides of the Atlantic, but it witnessed also the connections established with the new world by exiles taking part into the local political and military struggles, as well as in social life. Their national identity became thus complicated and plural by the integration in a transnational framework.
Stefanie Hundehege (University of Kent) compared the poetical language of Baldur von Schirach and the prose of Ernst Jünger, showing that both the authors tried to find meaning in the First World War by connecting it to the Medieval past. Paradoxically, for both Schirach and Jünger the nature of the modern war is understandable insofar as it reveals destruction as the ancestral pattern of the human being. This archetypical pattern of destruction provides a global interpretation of the human history and allows to understand the significance of the First World War as an epiphany of the human nature.
Round table, with (l. to r.) Charles Walton, Pierre Purseigle, and Mark Philp, University of Warwick
The scope and chronological choices of political history were debated during the Round table which concluded the workshop’s first day. Mark Philp (University of Warwick) pleaded the case of adopting a broad definition of politics, taking in consideration how the meaning of this term has changed during the centuries. The range of collective and individual actions which were incorporated in the political spheres has undergone deep transformations, as before the 18th century people regarded to politics as to something far from their everyday experience (the power, the crown, international relations…). One of the most remarkable ruptures between early modern and modern history has been, as noticed by Charles Walton (University of Warwick), the alleged dissociation of economics and politics resulting from the emergence of political economy as a scientific discipline since the 18th century. As a consequence, historians of the modern age are led to envisage the spheres of politics and economics as something reciprocally autonomous, while, on the contrary, concepts such as those of feudalism and Marcel Mauss’ gift have an indissociably double dimension, both political and economic. Charles Walton invited therefore to rethink political history paying attention to the economic problem which led to the social contract, i.e. redistributing resources. The state, created to solve this problem avoiding civil wars, became the most important economic actor in modern societies. Broadening the scope of political history, also by adopting the analytic tool of redistribution, encourages to reconsider traditional chronological limits. Pierre Purseigle made the example of the First World War: to what extent can we consider it a watershed? Did the war change all the belligerent actors in the same manners? Looking at what the state did in dealing with economic and social issues before, during and after the war in all the belligerent countries helps in rethinking the beginning of 20th century in different local contexts.
