4. Themes of World History, Part I

Panel 17: Europe’s Globality before Globalization. Contributions from Medieval Studies to the Writing of World History History

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

The globalization debate in its historical dimension can hardly be traced back beyond the 19thcentury. Although individual studies have shown that proto-globalizing processes took place in earlier centuries, German historiography has so far paid little attention to transcultural comparison or the entanglement of pre-modern societies. This is all the more astonishing since the European Middle Ages are usually understood as the epoch responsible for the uniqueness and world historical importance of Europe. The panel will present contributions to the history of interactions and relationships as well as to transcultural comparative history relating medieval Europe to extra-European cultures. The contributions will consider Christian world historiography in typical Islamic areas, the European silk industry in the medieval world system, the medieval
system of foundation trusts in a transculturally comparative perspective and transcontinental cultural contacts as motor of European self-assertion in the late Middle Ages.

Chair:
Thomas Ertl (Freie Universität Berlin)

Panelists:
Thomas Ertl (Freie Universität Berlin ), Heike Johanna Mierau (Universität Stuttgart), Johannes Pahlitzsch (Freie Universität Berlin), Felicitas Schmieder (FernUniversität Hagen), Dorothea Weltecke (Universität Göttingen)

Panel 18: International Payments from the Middle Ages to the Present

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

This panel will address the history of international payments from the Middle Ages to the present on the basis of precious metals and cash-free payment media (bills of exchange, cheques). The purpose is to demonstrate the ever closer entanglement and interaction of the various regions of the world by means of the system of international payments. Until well into the 19th century, Europe was by far the most important core area of the system, while from around 1870, from the point of view of the system of international payments, a bipolar world (Europe - USA) was emerging and after the First World War a tripolar world (Europe - USA
East Asia) has successively developed.

Chair:
Markus A. Denzel (Universität Leipzig)

Panelists:
Markus A. Denzel (Universität Leipzig), Wolfram Fischer (Freie Universität Berlin), Dennis O. Flynn (University of the Pacific Stockton, Ca.), Jürgen Nautz (Universität Kassel/Wien), Margarete Wagner-Braun (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg)

Panel 19: Coercion in European Agrarian Societies of the
Early Modern Period – from Comparisons to Interaction?

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

By comparing four regions from the Central and Eastern European context – North Western Germany, Brandenburg, Poland and Wallachia – the following questions will be put up for discussion: Can the continued existence of coercion in North Western Germany and that of being bound to one’s own soil in Eastern Europe as well as the regional economic differentiation in long-distance trade be not only compared but also explained as an interaction with the same central space in Western Europe? Could we agrue that the increase in free farm work in the West and unfree labor in the East is in a causal connection refl ecting the relationship between center and semiperiphery or periphery? What do the differences within the semiperipheral space mean, e.g. between Poland and Russia or between Poland and Wallachia? What was the similarity between serfdom and being bound to one’s own soil or the slavery of non-Christian prisoners of war? What was the actual difference between the conditions of coercion in North Western Germany? What are the similarities with slavery in the Americas?

Chair:
Carl-Hans Hauptmeyer (Universität Hannover)

Panelists:
Dariusz Adamczyk (Universität Hannover), Heinrich Kaak (Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam),Udo Obal (Universität Hannover), Daniel Ursprung (Universität Zürich)

Panel 20: Regimes for the Production and Diffusion of
Useful and Reliable Knowledge in China and Europe 1368-1839

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

An expanding library of research in modern economic history on Asian agricultures, industries, credit systems, mercantile enterprise and markets for commodities a it nd factors of production has degraded traditional and simplistic “Weberian” perceptions that the West alone had
evolved the political, institutional and cultural frameworks of Smithian growth. As Marshal Hodgson observed decades ago “All attempts to invoke premodern seminal traits in the
occident can be shown to fail under close historical analysis”. Nevertheless, there seems to be one potentially highly signifi cant area in which contrasts between Western Europe and Asia became apparent long before the period of the French Revolution (established by Pomeranz as the conjuncture
for economic divergence) and that is in technology and science. Global histories of science and technology certainly leave an impression that fl ows of useful and reliable knowledge linked to process and product innovations emanated fi rst to an increasing and by the 19th century to an overwhelming degree from European locations. This panel will offer four presentations exploring the origins, nature and signifi cance of contrasts in regimes for the production of useful and reliable knowledge in China and Europe from the Ming Dynasty to the Opium War.

Chair:
Patrick O’Brien
(London School of Economics)

Panelists:
Kent Deng (London School of Economics),Ian Inkster (Nottingham Trent University), Patrick O’Brien (London School of Economics), Harriet Zurndorfer (Universiteit Leiden)

Panel 21: The League of Nations Revisited: The role of
International Organizations in the Globalization
Process

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

This panel deals with the transnational politics of the League of Nations and its global effects. It not only investigates the national interests competing within the League, but also the League’s structures, its actors, and networks. The five papers analyze various aspects of the League’s work, such as its policies toward economic, legal, health, and educational issues, as well as white slavery. These topics are also approached in a broader outlook by putting the role of transnational organizations into a world history perspective in general and by emphasizing the specifi cs of the League as the main actor of “European internationalism” during the interwar period.

Chair:
Eckhardt Fuchs (Universität Mannheim)

Panelists:
Ines Borowy (Universität Rostock), Thomas Fischer (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Eckhardt Fuchs (Universität Mannheim), Isabella Löhr (Universität Leipzig), Matthias Schulz (Vanderbilt University Nashville)

Panel 22: Power - World - Heritage - History: “World
Heritage” and World History

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

“World Heritage”, as defined by UNESCO, represents a specific version of world history. It de- history signates cultural, natural and mixed sites inscribed into the “World Heritage List” which have paramount and universal value for mankind. The inscription is to promote their protection,
advancement and development, which may also lead to an intensifi ed economic exploitation of sites, e.g. in terms of tourism. The panel intends to contribute, in an interdisciplinary way, to the scholarly and pedagogical discussions of transnational history as a new discipline and is
to introduce relevant approaches from fields such as ethnology, media studies, art and cultural history into the conference, in order to contribute - from their respective viewpoints - to a common notion of a “history of the world.” The contributions inspect different forms of invention,
conzeptualization and staging of “World Heritage”.

Chair:
Matthias Bruhn (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Panelists:
Matthias Bruhn (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Norbert Epstein (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus), Petra Henzler (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Carola Muysers (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus), Esther Ohse Universität Cottbus)

Themes of World History
Panel 23: Global Perceptions of a Eurocentric Theory
of Civilization: The Perception of Social-Dar- Socia
winist Thought in Japan, Turkey and
Vietnam in their Early arly arl Nationalist Discourses
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Friday, 23 September
09 H 00 - 12 H 00 AM

This panel focuses on Intellectual History in a global perspective and will work out different perceptions of Social-Darwinist thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The countries concerned are Japan, Turkey and Vietnam. Our line of inquiry starts with the question of how a Eurocentric concept of World History, as Social-Darwinism was, had been adopted into early nationalist discourses in extra-European contexts and it ends with a glance at national policies of imperialism in the countries mentioned above. We would like to discuss the problem of the extension of a Eurocentric idea of civilization and how it was transformed with changing cultural contexts. In our opinion, ideas are not unchanging entities, rather but occur in specifi c culturally bound shapes and forms of discourse. The panel will therefore address the infl uence and appropriation of a Western European idea in other parts of the World.

Chair:
Gesa Westermann (FernUniversität Hagen)

Panelists:
Christoph Johannes Franzen (Johann Wolfgang Goethe- Universität Frankfurt/Main), Christoph Ramm (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Stefan Scheil (Neuhofen), Anneli Wallentowitz (Universität Bonn), Gesa Westermann (FernUniversität Hagen)