4. Themes of World History, Part II
Panel 24: Early Modern Era Globalization from an Economic Point of View
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
In this panel a manuscript by Peer Vries entitled “Eurocentrism, Sinocentrism or no centre at all. Refl ections on globalization and the economic history of the early modern world” will be discussed.
After a brief introduction by the author, the debate will focus on the question of whether and on what grounds one might speak of a global economy in the early modern era. Reference will in particular be made to the views of Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank, Williamson and O’Rourke, and Flynn and Giráldez. More in particular the increasingly popular but, according to Vries, quite mistaken and unsubstantiated view will be addressed that China had been the center of a global economy at the time.
Chairs:
Peer Vries (Universiteit Leiden)
Panelists: Andrea Komlosy (Universität Wien), Erich Landsteiner (Universität Wien), Patrick O’Brien (London School of Economics), Peer Vries (Universiteit Leiden)
Panel 25: Enlightenment and World History
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
The theme starts from the observation that in the present process of globalization, references to the Age of Enlightenment are booming. This is true in particular of the imperial claim to the process of globalization by the Americans, even though their own denominational atavisms are involved in the problem. But Enlightenment has yet another aspect: the scientific-technological one, which is not restricted to the area in the narrower sense, but impels into a rational pervasion of the world. The question would thus be: are there “enlightenments” in other cultures with different effects? Could Western Enlightenment be thought or received “halved”? Finally: How does Enlightenment itself, with its key categories, prepare a Eurocentrist, imperial understanding of the world?
Chair:
Günther Lottes (Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung Potsdam)
Panelists:
Iwan-Michelangelo D’ Aprile (Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung Potsdam), Günther Lottes (Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung Potsdam), Jacob Emanuel Mabe (Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung Potsdam), Ricardo K.S. Mak (Hong Kong Baptist University), Silvia Sebastiani (Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Firenze)
Panel 26: Transnational Systems of Transport, Communication and Information in the 19th and 20th Centuries in a Global Perspective
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
Since the mid-19th century new systems of transport, communication and information have been established connecting Europe internally but also with the world: railway, telegraph, modern sea vessels, telephone, airplane and the internet are technical innovations which have produced a hitherto unknown dynamic of mobility that cannot be studied without including “the world” as a reference point. In this session we will try to explore (1) the politics of such systems, esp. the role of the nation state and of private institutions; (2) the (in)equality and direction of “global connectivity” of some of the modern systems mentioned; (3) the impacts of such systems on modern societies inside and outside Europe in the different stages of globalization throughout the late 19th and the 20th century; and (4) the experience of “global connectivity” in the view of the subjects participating in such global systems. On a more theoretical level, the example of global transportation, communication, and information will give us the opportunity to discuss the new chances but also the boundaries of the world history approach in general, especially when compared to more traditional ways of research.
Chair:
Marcus Funck (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
Panelists:
Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Universitetet i Oslo), Valeska Huber (Universität Konstanz), Saskia Sassen (University of Chicago), Helmuth Trischler (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München/ Deutsches Museum München)
Panel 27: The African State – Historicity and current Challenge
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
Over the past 15 years, violent confl ict in sub-Saharan Africa has produced new forms of governance beyond the state. In some cases, African states have been fully taken over by “insurgents”, “armed rebels” or “warlords”, while in others violent actors have only managed to establish partial control over a state’s territory. In both cases the monopoly of the means of violence – which Africa’s empirically weak states have claimed with some success in the post-colonial era and which was supported by the structure of the international system of ‘sovereign’ states and the very nature of its governance – has undergone dramatic changes. African responses to ‘state failure’, but also international interventions, by and large, have been aimed at the restoration of the state. In most cases, however, these attempts have failed. The papers presented at this panel argue that Africa’s historicity of non-statehood may be one factor to explain the failure.
Chair:
Ulf Engel (Universität Leipzig)
Panelists:
Ulf Engel (Universität Leipzig), Gero Erdmann (Institut für Afrika-Kunde Hamburg), Andreas Mehler (Institut für Afrika-Kunde Hamburg)
Panel 29: The World Re-Ordered. Global Moments and Movements, 1880-1930
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
In the course of the increase in global interactions since the late 19th century, the order of the world has been fundamentally restructured. Imperialism, the globalization of the nation-state system, but also universalizing visions of world order such as socialism or anarchism have spread quickly around the globe, albeit locally specific versions. Many of those visions have been countered and challenged by concepts of world order based on different cultural positions outside Europe and the United States. Some of the approaches, often shared by transcultural opinion camps, have posed alternative modernities and alternative universalisms as strategies to decenter the globalizing process.
Chair:
Andreas Eckert
(Universität Hamburg)
Panelists:
Cemil Aydin (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Sebastian Conrad (Freie Universität Berlin), Harald Fischer-Tiné
(Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Christian Geulen (Universität Koblenz-Landau), Erez Manela (Harvard University, Mass.), Klaus Mühlhahn (University of Turku), Dominic Sachsenmaier (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Panel 30: Global History and Evolution
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
Within the research perspective of “World History” or “Global History” new focus is placed on the Evolution of Human Culture as the basis of historical processes. This perspective researches historical phenomena and processes by means of an interdisciplinary approach taking into consideration aspects of the biological and the cultural evolution of humankind. The approach of “Global History and Evolution” is studying and tracing historical processes and evelopments on the level of individuals and groups as well as on the species-specifi c level asking for relations and linking elements in the common background of human cultural evolution. The panel’s contributions will discuss the implications of the evolutionary approach for the concepts of a Global History aiming at fostering and enriching the dialogue between the historical and the evolutionary perspectives.
Chairs:
Johanna Forster (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Jörg Wettlaufer (Residenzen-Kommission Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen/Kiel)
Panelists:
Johanna Forster (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Uwe Krebs (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Christa Sütterlin (Film Archives of Human Ethology Max-Planck-Gesellschaft), Jörg Wettlaufer (Residenzen-Kommission Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen/Kiel), Franz Manfred Wuketits (Universität Wien)
Panel 31: Environmental History
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
Historians have long integrated the environment into their field of research, especially with respect to world and global history and it has meanwhile taken an eminent place because environmental problems do not stop at national borders and the environment has greatly determined the development and encounters of societies. The spread of diseases and the different strategies of dealing with them are just one of the facets that will be discussed in the panel.
Chair: tba
Panelists:
Christian Andreas (University of Oxford), Peter E. Fäßler (Technische Universität Dresden), Dieter Schmidt-Sinns (Meckenheim)
Panel 44: Globlization of knowledge? Experts between Local Insertion and Circulation of Knowledge
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
The contributions investigate the tension between the local institutional and intellectual setting and linkup of experts and the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge, exemplified by the following case studies: (1) contacts of the map makers in Canada and Europe, (2) the mining industry in German-language areas during the 18th century and its relationship to extra-European territories, (3) the references to Bentham’s ideas in monitorial systems of education in Madras/India and in the region of the Rio de la Plata in the 19th and 20th centuries and (4) globalization of times and calendars around 1900.
Chair:
Jakob Vogel (Technische Universität Berlin)
Panelists:
Vanessa Ogle (Freie Universität Berlin), Jörg Seifahrt (Technische Universität Berlin), Gabriela Trentin (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Jana Tschurenev (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Jakob Vogel (Technische Universität Berlin)
Panel 48: Conceptions of “World”
Friday, 23 September
14 H 00 - 17 H 00 PM
This panel investigates which mental and cultural visions of “world” have been produced and reproduced in different contexts of the past and the present. Therefore the concept of cosmopolitism of Habermas will be critically discussed as well as the vison of “world” and “the other” within the discourses of ecumenical Christianity. Moreover the scientifi c world view of the anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro will be subject of the discussion.
Chair:
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer (Universität Leipzig)
Panelists:
Martin Blumenthal-Barby (Yale University), Khaled Hakami (Universität Wien), Helke Stadtland (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)