9 March 2022, 5:30pm

Fascism and Finance. Economic Populism in Interwar Europe

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Discussants: Alexander Nützenadel (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin & LSE / German Historical Institute London), Christian Goeschel

Details on how to join this session will be sent to all registered attendees 24 hours in advance. Booking will therefore close the day before the scheduled date.

2 February 2022, 6pm

Book launch/discussion: Theodora Dragostinova, The Cold War from the Margins. Bulgaria on the Global Cultural Scene

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

An online event with Prof Theodora Dragostinova (Ohio State University), in collaboration with the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University College London

In the late 1970s-early 1980s, small Bulgaria launched an ambitious international cultural program centered on its celebration on its 1300th anniversary: exhibitions, concerts, museum and monument openings, book readings, film screenings, and other mass cultural events dominated public life at home and abroad. The cultural offensive of the small socialist state spread to the Balkans, Western Europe and the United States, various countries in the “developing world,” as well as Bulgarian émigré communities throughout the globe. Focusing on Bulgaria’s cultural outreach with India, Mexico, and Nigeria, this talk demonstrates the existence of vibrant partnerships along an East-South axis in the context of the global Cold War, explains the importance of cultural diplomacy in the late socialist period, and challenge notions of the seventies as a period of doom and gloom. Instead, when viewed from the margins, 1970s appeared as a time of measured optimism when the agendas of the East, West, and the Global South dynamically interacted and surprisingly empowered actors on the periphery.

26 January 2022, 5:30pm

Decolonising German Memory

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Discussants: Rita Chin (University of Michigan), Svenja Goltermann (Universität Zürich), Daniel Hedinger (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), You Jae Lee (Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen), Eve Rosenhaft (University of Liverpool), Christian Goeschel (University of Manchester)

For more than ten years, scholars of modern Germany have been debating how global history and efforts to decolonize German history affect the production of German history and German memory more generally. Some of the most prominent debates are about the longue durée of German colonialism, including the politics of reparations in Namibia and the debate about the colonial roots of the Holocaust. At the same time, Black German Studies, post-colonial German voices in literature and politics and new scholarship on migration studies have gradually come of age.

Can German memory be ‘decolonised’ and, if so, how?

Five scholars will each speak from their own perspective for ten minutes, followed by a discussion.

Tuesday 18 May 2021, 4pm

Book Launch/Discussion: Stella Ghervas (Newcastle) Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (Harvard University Press)

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Discussants: Balázs Trencsényi (Central European University), Boyd van Dijk (Melbourne)
Chair: Matthijs Lok (Amsterdam)

In collaboration with the Global Intellectual History Seminar (Amsterdam - Utrecht). For further details and registration please see: globalintellectualhistory.org

17 March 2021, 5:30PM - 7:00PM

New Research Panel: Empires and Frontiers in the Balkans

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: Jovan Pešalj (Leiden University) , Constantin Ardeleanu (Galaţi/Bucharest), Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular (Rutgers University), Discussant: Edin Hajdarpašić (Loyola University Chicago)

There will be three short papers all addressing shifts in political, military or cultural frontiers in the Balkans in the 18th or 19th centuries, as follows:

Hard Border Controls Safeguard Mobility? The Habsburg Sanitary Cordon in the Eighteenth Century (Jovan Pešalj)
In recent years, external border checks are used to restrict mobility. Walls are built, fences erected, travelers are closely monitored, with an aim to decrease migration numbers or exclude certain categories of migrants. The presentation takes us back to the eighteenth century, to the Habsburg-Ottoman border, where first permanent and systematic border checks were established already in the 1720s in the form of a sanitary cordon. Analyzing migrant lists from Habsburg border stations, in particular from Pančevo and Mehadia in the province of Banat, the presentation argues that the original purpose of border controls was to ensure free flow of people and goods even in times of epidemics, and that this goal was pursued with a reasonable success.

Bordering Empires: The Making of the Bessarabian Borderland in the Post-Crimean War Context (Constantin Ardeleanu)
By August 1856, peace in Europe seemed to depend on the fate of the small town of Bolgrad, now in southwestern Ukraine. The Crimean War had just ended, and through the Paris Peace Treaty signed in March 1856 imperial Russia accepted a border change in its southern province of Bessarabia, to the benefit of Moldavia, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. This paper will historicise the construction of the Bessarabian border, both during the delimitation and demarcation phase of its making. It will refer to the circulation of knowledge and the role of expertise, starting from the example of Charles Gordon, a young military engineer working under Colonel Edward Stanton, the British delegate in the international border commission appointed by Europe’s powers.

Bosnian Muslims between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires (Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular)
This paper will focus on the case of Bosnia Herzegovina after the Berlin Congress, 1878. Overlap of Habsburg rule and Ottoman legal sovereignty shaped the considerations of diplomatic and political relevance, including international conventions on occupation, sovereignty, minority protections, and migration. Shifting borders and an ambiguous legal boundary created space for Bosnian Muslim agency. Bosnian Muslims – native Balkan Slavs – navigated the Ottoman and Habsburg realms, developing a relationship with the new authorities in Vienna and transforming their interactions with Istanbul and the rest of the Muslim world. Observed more broadly, intersection, transregional connections, and networks across empires deconstruct the geohistorical boundaries between Europe and “the east” and complicate discussions of Muslim cultural and religious compatibilities still current in Europe.

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.

3 March 2021, 5:30PM - 7:00PM

A propaganda race? Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the midst of the Spanish Civil War

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío (Manchester Metropolitan University), Christian Goeschel (University of Manchester)

This paper explores Italian and German propaganda in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, looking at how both nations exploited the conflict — capitalizing on the propagandistic value of the conflict for their anti-Bolshevik campaign, while looking at Spain as a bridgehead from which to influence other areas —, and how they interacted both between them and with the emerging Francoist state. In so doing, it shows how despite Italy being in many ways at the forefront of the intervention, the development of tight Nazi-Falangist relations, among other factors, led to the replacement of Fascist Italy by Nazi Germany as a model for the rebirth of the nation in Spain. This illustrates how Italian cultural diplomacy had begun to shift away from the internationalization of Fascism to a policy more focused on the Italian communities abroad, and sheds light on the different roles these countries came to play in Spain after the war.

Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío is senior lecturer in European Modern History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research interests are the impact of war on neutral countries, the history of Francoism, and German-Spanish relations during the Second World War. She is currently working on a monograph on the development of Nazi propaganda campaigns in Spain and Spanish-German relations during the Second World War.

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.

3 February 2021, 5:30PM - 7:00PM

Book Launch: Dominique Reill (University of Miami): The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: Dominique Reill (University of Miami), Irina Marin (Utrecht), Matthew Kerry (Stirling), Alex Drace-Francis (Amsterdam)

Dominique Reill (Miami) presents her book The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire (Harvard University Press).

Chair: Alex Drace-Francis (Amsterdam)
Discussants: Irina Marin (Utrecht), Matthew Kerry (Stirling)

Recasting the birth of fascism, nationalism, and the fall of empire after World War I, Dominique Kirchner Reill recounts how the people of Fiume tried to recreate empire in the guise of the nation. The Fiume Crisis (Opens in new window)recasts what we know about the birth of fascism, the rise of nationalism, and the fall of empire after World War I by telling the story of the three-year period when the Adriatic city of Fiume (today Rijeka, in Croatia) generated an international crisis. Against the too-smooth narrative of postwar nationalism, The Fiume Crisis demonstrates the endurance of the imperial imagination and carves out an essential place for history from below.

Dominique Kirchner Reill is Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of Miami and author of the award-winning Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice.

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.

21 October 2020, 5:30PM - 7:00PM

Modern European History in the Age of Covid-19

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: Jennifer Sessions (University of Virginia), Bernhard Dietz (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz), Daniel Banks (European University Institute, Florence), Monica Black (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Sebastian Majstorovic (European University Institute, Florence)

The global Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly transformed our everyday lives and our work. In-class teaching has either been replaced with online teaching or can only be carried out with great risk to teaching staff and students. Working from home and a constant stream of video conferences have replaced informal chats on departmental corridors. As if this were not bad enough, positions for junior academics have been frozen or abolished altogether. Travel funding has been slashed by many universities. Many libraries are closed or can only be accessed with some difficulty. Archives are shut or operate long waiting lists.

In situ research that is essential for historians of modern Europe has become almost impossible.

At this forum of the Rethinking Modern Europe seminar, we will be hearing from colleagues, including early-career, mid-career and senior scholars, whose work has been affected by Covid-19. The aim is to discuss ideas about how the global pandemic will or will not change the way in which we write the history of modern Europe.

Each participant is asked to talk for no more than five minutes about their own experiences and the ways in which they have adapted their research projects in the light of the pandemic.

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.

4 November 2020, 5:00PM - 6:30PM

From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: John Connelly (UC Berkeley)

John Connelly (UC Berkeley) presents his book From Peoples into Nations. A History of Eastern Europe (Princeton UP).
Chair: Celia Donert (Cambridge)
Discussant: Jakub Benes (UCL).

In collaboration with UCL SSEES

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.

18 November 2020, 5:00PM - 7:30PM

Port and City in Modern Marseille

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: Venus Bivar (York), Gemma Jennings (Birmingham), Simon Jackson (Birmingham)

Marseille is a good vantage point from which to rethink modern Europe. A key node in French, European, trans-Mediterranean and global networks of trade and migration, its urban history also provides a rich framework within which historians have interpreted the socio-economic and political-cultural histories of citizenship, gender, space & housing, and post-coloniality. This seminar brings together two scholars working on Marseille in networked perspective, to consider the political ecology of migration and the politics of hydrocarbon energy in and beyond the city.

Venus Bivar, University of York: 'Unsafe Harbour: A Political Ecology of Migration in Modern Marseille'

This project excavates the entangled economic and environmental histories of urban development, migrant labor, and ethno-racial exclusion in modern Marseille. With a demographic profile defined by migration - from Italians, Corsicans, and Armenians, to Sephardic Jews, North Africans, and Comorians - Marseille has challenged French ideas about ethno-racial difference and national belonging. Building on existing literature that examines forms of inequality that are produced by ethno-racial difference, I am interested in exploring how inequality was not only the product of a French political ideology that privileges assimilation, but was also the result of differential access to urban infrastructure as well as differential exposure to industrial pollution. While rooted in the experience of modern France, this research should provide parallels for scholars interested in how similar dynamics played out in different port cities across the globe, from Cartagena and Baltimore to Liverpool and Guangzhou.

Gemma Jennings, University of Birmingham: 'The Marseille Petroscape: Identity, Space and the Infrastructures of Oil, 1958-1975'

Through ports, pipelines and refineries the physical flows of oil have been built into urban and rural landscapes across the globe. The importance of these physical assemblages has been somewhat obscured by the concentration on oil as an economic actor, but more recently an emerging field focused on the relationship between oil and space has started to demonstrate the critical role of hydrocarbon infrastructural networks in shaping urban life and design, socio-spatial inequalities and even nation building projects.

Despite the proliferating academic interest in these questions, there have been comparatively few studies exploring the history of oil in Marseille, despite the region’s status as a critical oil port and refining node. This is particularly striking in the context of the post war years , when, up until the1973 oil crisis, hydrocarbon infrastructures were dramatically extended in an attempt to resituate Marseille’s place in the national economy.

This paper, therefore, will focus on the development and evolution of the petroscape in the Marseille region between 1958 and 1975. It focuses in on how these infrastructures interacted with and impacted on urban geographies and local residents, whilst also drawing attention to their networked elements, examining how these shaped the conceptualisation of Marseille relative to regional and national space

This event is free and open to the public. Pre-registration is required, and space is limited. Registrants will receive a confirmation email with a link to join this virtual session via Zoom approximately three hours before the start time. You will be admitted to the Zoom from a waiting room, for security reasons.

‘Rethinking Modern Europe’ is an IHR seminar that showcases new research in European history, especially work that challenges existing paradigms, crosses boundaries, and promotes new topics of enquiry. Our formats include formal papers, book launches, roundtable discussions and sessions for PhD researchers. Enquiries on this event to Dr Simon Jackson (S.Jackson.1@bham.ac.uk)

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.

16 December 2020, 5:30PM - 7:30PM

Launch of Judith Surkis, Sex, Law and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930 (Cornell University Press)

• Event type: Seminar
• Series: Rethinking Modern Europe
• Address: Online- via Zoom

Speakers: Judith Surkis (Rutgers), Philippa Hetherington (UCL)

In Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930, Judith Surkis traces how colonial authorities constructed Muslim legal difference and used it to deny Algerian Muslims full citizenship. In disconnecting Muslim law from property rights, French officials increasingly attached it to the bodies, beliefs, and personhood.

Surkis argues that powerful affective attachments to the intimate life of the family and fantasies about Algerian women and the sexual prerogatives of Muslim men, supposedly codified in the practices of polygamy and child marriage, shaped French theories and regulatory practices of Muslim law in fundamental and lasting ways. Women's legal status in particular came to represent the dense relationship between sex and sovereignty in the colony. This book also highlights the ways in which Algerians interacted with and responded to colonial law. Ultimately, this sweeping legal genealogy of French Algeria elucidates how "the Muslim question" in France became—and remains—a question of sex.

Judith Surkis is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University (USA)

An event in collaboration with the Centre for Modern History, City University (London)

All welcome - this seminar is free to attend but advance registration is required.