The summer school will focus on colonial cities and imperial border regions as spaces that developed representative positions of respective colonialisms and imperialisms, also as a way to re-center colonial political and economic power.
Colonial Cities and Border Regimes in the Long 19th Century in Inter-imperial and Intra-imperial Comparisons
Colonial cities, especially port cities, as well as border regions between empires have historically played a decisive role in the perception of colonial rule. They formed key transitional spaces in political, social, cultural, economic, administrative, military and religious conflicts and can be regarded as having held particularly prominent hinge positions with respect to the mobility — in some cases the limited mobility — of people, animals, goods, ideas, epidemics and much more. Hence as kinds of “crossroad regions”, they have been places where questions of the imperial states’ and societies’ security/insecurity have been addressed very differently.
The summer school will focus on colonial cities and imperial border regions as spaces that developed representative positions of respective colonialisms and imperialisms, also as a way to re-center colonial political and economic power. Moreover, they can be seen as part of a network that existed beyond a single colonial point of reference, for example in the relationship between Shanghai and Singapore and Jakarta, or in the connections between Riga and the Russian Empire. In the long 19th century (1780-1920), and thus in an intermediate phase between two decolonization processes, colonial cities and border regions formed spaces of intensive inter-imperial inter actions (as well as rivalries), as “crossroad regions” so to speak, where dynamics of intertwinement developed through transnational interrelationships. The research interests of the summer school will draw on these ideas by recognizing colonial cities and border regions as instruments of various forms and mechanisms of expansion, in which conflicts (around mobility) were carried out just as opportunities for cooperation were sought. Not infrequently, these places reflected experimental phases — concerning the conceptualization of laboratories between colonial and transnational interrelationships, as well as the securitization, and, not least, on the re-centering of the “peripheries”.
Programm
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
12.00 pm Registration at Herder-Institute
12.30 pm Antje Coburger (Marburg):
GUIDED TOUR trough Marburg’s Old Town and Main Sights
Please send an email to forum@herder-institut.de if you don’t want to participate!
3.00 pm Benedikt Stuchtey (Marburg) / Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg):
Welcome and Introduction of all Participants
3.15 pm Benedikt Stuchtey (Marburg):
Some Brief Introductory Remarks of on Empire Studies
Discussion
4.15 pm Break
4.30–6.00 pm KEYNOTE (online)
Frank Sterkenbergh (Utrecht):
Modernizing the unmodern: Europe’s continental imperial monarchies and their pathways to modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth century
Registration for guests: sfbevent@uni-marburg.de
(you will get an automatic reply with login information)
Discussion and Text Discussion:
Frank Sterkenbergh and Heidi Hein-Kircher:
„Modernizing the Unmodern. Europe’s Imperial Monarchies and Their Path to
Modernity in the 19th and 20th Centuries”
6.45 pm Welcome Dinner: Mon Ami
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
19.00 am Textwork
Current Research on Imperial History. Methods and Approaches
10.30 am Break
10.45 pm PANEL I: Acquiring and Developing Imperial Peripheries
Malika Zekhni (Cambridge):
Permits, Passports, Papers: Mobility and Bureaucracy in Colonial Central Asia, ca. 1868–1918
Thomas Rettig (Greifswald):
The West Russian Volunteer Army. A History of Imperial Entanglements in Europe
after the Fall of Empires (1917–1923)
Oleksandr Polianichev (Stockholm):
Batum/Batumi: Tsarist Gate to the Tropics
12.15 pm Lunch Break
11.30 pm Sven Mörsdorf (Florence):
Austro-Hungarian Consuls in Ottoman Port Cities:
Urban−Global−Translocal Diplomacy
Tobias Mörike (Wien):
Ottoman Borderlands. Cartography and the Hejaz-Railway
Yves Schmitz (Duisburg-Essen):
Marginal figures. Illegal Arms Trade in Imperial Border Regions
Discussion
3.30 pm Break
4.00 pm Inessa Kouteiniova (Amsterdam):
Divisions, Domination and Coexistence: Geography and Imagery in Central Asian
Photography during the Russian Rule
WEDNESAY, SEPTEMBER 28
19.00 am PANEL II: Creating Identities under Imperial Rule
Aleksandr Turbin (München):
Discussions About Free Trade in the Far East as a window to Political Visions and
Practices in the Late Russian Empire
Paul Van Dijk (Amsterdam):
Experimenting with Empire: the Land Question and Imperial Hierarchies in the Russian Borderlands, Livland and Ufa provinces, 1861–1917
Sarah Maria Noske (Gießen):
Colonial Microcosmos. Places of Commercial Intimacy in the Pacific
(ca. 1860–1920)
10.30 am Break
Yvonne Tan Yit Fong (Malaysia):
Piractical Headhunters in the like of the Malays and Chinese: Creating the Abject Other Natives in the Mat Salleh Rebellions (1894-1905)
Juho Korhonen (Istanbul):
Democratic Breakthrough in the Periphery: Non-Souvereign Democratization in the
Grand Duchy of Finland of the Russian Empire
Panel Discussion
12.30 pm Lunch Break
11.30 pm GUIDED TOUR through Herder-Institute and Hands-on Work
15.15 pm Break
6.00 pm KEYNOTE (online)
John Connelly (Berkely):
Was the Habsburg Empire an Empire?
Registration for guests: sfbevent@uni-marburg.de
(you will get an automatic reply with login information)
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29
19.00 am PANEL III: Imperial Port Cities as Points of Contact and Transfer
James Halcrow (Auckland):
Internationalism and Imperialism in the Chinese Treaty Ports
Chong Xu (Soochow):
Chinese Nationalism under Imperial Rule in Colonial Port Cities in Southeast Asia,
1892–1945
Nuno Grancho (Copenhagen):
Three Port cities in the Borders between East and West:
Diu, Pondicherry and Tranquebar
10.30 am Coffee Break
Taoyu Yang (Shanghai):
Colonialisms Entangled: Multi-Imperial Relations in Treaty-Port China, 1860s–1930s
Thomas van den Brink (Delft):
Mirroring Maritime Mindsets, Colonial Port Cities connected by Commodities
Panel Discussion
12.00 am FINAL DISCUSSION
12.30 am Lunch and Farewell
PD Dr. Heidi Hein-Kircher
Herder-Institute for Historical Reserach on East Central Europe
Gisonenweg 5-7
D-35037 Marburg
E-Mail: heidi.hein-kircher@herder-institut.de