Workshop Call for Papers

Transnational relations of experts, elites and organizations in the long 19th century

Date: 5-6 September 2008
University of St Andrews, School of History
Dr Davide Rodogno, Dr Bernhard Struck, Dr Jakob Vogel (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)

Concept and leading questions
The long 19th century in Europe has often been portrayed as a time during and geographical space in which frontiers and borders were erected and national rivalries intensified. From a European perspective, the second half of the nineteenth century has been viewed as the age of nationalism and imperialism (E. Hobsbawm) and of modern territorial regimes (C.S. Maier). In many respects these definitions reflect the reality.
However, this state-centered view fails to take into account the intense trans-territorial and trans-border relations in most Western European countries during the same period. It was in the second-half of the nineteenth century that a growing number of transnational elites and organizations contested the very idea of borders as barricades and felt the compelling need to act beyond national frontiers. If, on the one hand, bureaucratic and administrative centers intensified the control of territory and borders, formal organizations as well as international and transnational associations, the ancestors of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the Red Cross, founded in 1863, on the other, established formal and informal networks which trespassed national frontiers.
The workshop aims at exploring the history of various forms of transnational groups of elites and experts as well as networks and organizations between ca. 1800 and the 1930s and focuses on the following questions:
- When and where did transnational networks emerge during the nineteenth-century?
- What were the fields and main objectives of transnational cooperation?
- What was their impact on a national as well as international level?
- How did modern state bureaucracies, administrations and governments and transnational organizations interact?
- To what extent did transnational groups reshape national as well as international policies and politics?
- On which levels did NGO’s as well as networks of elites and experts cooperate?

The workshop revolves around, though it is not conceptually limited to, concepts of comparison, transfer and circulation of knowledge as well as the theory of networks. As far as the chronology is concerned papers can cover the long nineteenth century as well as the interwar period.

Organization
The conference is organized as a workshop. Papers must be submitted by 1 September 2008 in order to prepare panel comments. Oral presentations will last twenty minutes in order to leave time for comments and discussions.

Deadline of Applications
Abstracts of 1-2 pages are to be sent to Davide Rodogno and Bernhard Struck until 15 January 2008.

Contact
Bernhard Struck bs50@st-andrews.ac.uk
Davide Rodogno dr40@st-andrews.ac.uk

School of History
University of St Andrews
St Katharine’s Lodge
The Scores, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AR
Scotland