The one-day session on the major theme of the fall of empires will reassess the European empires in ancient and modern times. It will not only discuss the events surrounding the demise of empires but will also compare the end with the rise of the empires, and will ask the critical question whether some empires revived before they fell. >From the Greek and Roman to the Russian, British, French, and other modern empires, there were circumstances that made each empire unique, but were there common characteristics? Is there such a thing as institutional violence that existed in each of them? Other questions to be addressed are: to what extent did nationalism play a part in the end of empire in comparison to other major considerations such as the decline of will? What of changing economic and technological circumstances? How can the balance be struck between the vantage point of the colonized and the colonizers? In short, this session will engage in fundamental and controversial questions and the assessments will be far-reaching and comprehensive.

The History of Ethics has mostly been written by philosophers, who are well equipped to trace influences and uncover coherence, but less strong on the historical setting in life of the classics of moral philosophy.
Even those few philosophers who try seriously to integrate text and context - Alistair MacIntyre is an impressive example - tend to be amateurish on the historical side of the equation. The methodology of the 'Cambridge School' of the History of Political Thought offers a corrective, but its emphasis on the patterns of intention behind key texts is only one way to put philosophy back into their times. Again, studies of influence, such as Jonathan Israel's remarkable demonstration of the impact of Spinoza's works, do justice to philosophical works without tearing them away from the fabric of the past. There are however other ways also in which the history of classic philosophical texts can become part of mainstream History; this /table ronde /aims to explore them. It retains a focus on classic philosophical texts or problems, but integrates them History in new ways - e.g. by bringing them into conjunction with diplomatic history or African customary norms, or by employing sociological methodology. The type of social history envisaged is also comparative, so the table ronde has a broad chronological and geographical spread. There will be papers or discussants expert in the ethics of the twelfth century Renaissance, early modern European casuistry, ethical aspects of African law, and ethical dilemmas in twentieth century politics. The convenor's paper will attempt to provide a methodological framework for a history of ethics transcending specific
periods.

Is global history possible? That is the question the members of the international Committee of historical sciences decided to choose for this round table. At first sight, the question is surprising. Global history is in fashion, books and papers related to it are increasingly numerous, so the answer seems evident: yes, global history is possible. One could be not only surprised but also offended by such a question. After all are we asking if cultural, economic or social history is possible? No, and why? The question is nevertheless useful, since it gives us the opportunity to think about a movement - global history - that still remains unclear for many historians, even for scholars involved in it.

As a matter of fact, the answer to the initial question is depending on how we define global history. The chairman’s paper - an appeal to debate and not ready-made answers - will be divided into three parts: 1 – What is global history? 2 – How is it (and can it be) implemented? 3 – For what advantages and dangers?

As indicated in the Congress’ rules, the panellists will discuss the chairman’s paper. Each of them will tackle various themes, while focusing on a more specific one: writing the global history of a specific item (Sven Beckert); global history as (or not) new wine in old barrels (Thomas David); global history and the “commonwealthization” of history (Poul Duedhal); global history in a borderless age (Michihiro Okamoto).

The triple panel will attempt to connect the 19th- with the 20th-century
migrations/ migration systems in global and gendered perspective and as
regards interactions between them. (1) Research has often separated male
and female migrations; migrations concerning the productive,
reproductive, and service sectors; agricultural from industrial ones;
rural-urban or inter-urban ones from migrations across state borders; as
well as regimes of "free" (in the frame of economic constraints),
bound, and forced migrations. Especially the free-bound continuum
overlaps with race/ ethnicity and class. (2) It is necessary to study
the (forced) mass migrations in the plantation belt of the world
(capitalized from the core) as well as the free migrations (southern
China and South Asia) in the World of the Indian Ocean and Southeast
Asia in relation to the proletarian mass migrations across the Atlantic,
the continental migrations within West Central and Western Europe, as
well as in relation to those in Russia-Soviet Union-Siberia, intra-North
American, intra-Latin American, and northern China (and perhaps Japan
separately). (3) Over time shifting geographies of migration, both as
regards regions involved and directions selected, have emerged. The
1930s have been viewed as a break between the (late) 19th/early
20th-century migrations and those of the second half of the 20th
century. However, fundamental shifts in economic regimes and power
relations notwithstanding, potential migrants' departure plans,
life-course projects, dowry and inheritance patterns, and social norms
shift more gradually and, often, only over an intergenerational
timeframe. The 19th-to-20th-century perspective permits a reassessment
of the assumed break in the 1930s, between men's and women's moves, and
of interdependencies between the major system.

During last decades historical geography has transformed from simple technical skill of scholars to assimilate rather scant cartographical sources to the texts of ethno-geographical treaties of ancient and medieval epochs into complex research task to investigate in their interrelations the problems of natural history, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, historical hydrology, limnology and horology, historical anthropology and psychology, religion, taxonometrics, arts history, graphics and so on. The reconstruction of the Imago mundi of the pre-Columbian world includes as mapping proper, so analysis of mental historical characteristics reflected as in cartography so in textual space descriptions.
Primordial in this respect seems to be the problem of human orientation in constructions and locations , in surveying, in own environment in the physical and sacred space, finally in the world and universe. Such approach to the topic under discussion includes the results in such fields of sciences humanities as child perception of space, human geography, cognitive knowledge of the universe, the theory of mental maps, space epistemology etc.
The study of the historical cartography has become the search of the human mental way from mythological perception of the environment with its symbolical pictographic cosmograms towards attempts to the textual and visual realization and reproduction in form of geographical description or map.
The everlasting discussion of scholars, whether the way was from “Imago mundi” towards “mappa mundi”, or vice verse, or their ways were parallel, has adepts on both sides. As far as the problem of orientation is concerned, it is clear, that the modern northward orientation of the maps was not initial, but became the dominate form of cartography (first of all in European) only during last several centuries. Claudius Ptolemaic, who has introduced the northwards principle in orientation , was unknown even in medieval Europe until the 15th C.
The kiblah principal of orientation was another important for the Middle ages structural form of mapping the world, spread as in Moslem tradition (e.c. al-Idrisi map of 1154) so even in Ancient Russian. The kiblah-principle coexisted with the main (but not always most ancient) solar orientation supplemented with the astral one (according to stars movement).
Bur the mostly spread type of geographical literature was not a picture, a map, but description in form of Itinerary (periplous, periegesis, periodos, chorographia). In the debate between geographical description and cartographical drawing the priority in the pre-Columbian tradition had the text.
Nearly one quarter of the century has passed since the publication of the summarizing and generalizing volumes of “The History of Cartography” and some editions of the type “instrumentum studiorum” (e.c. “Lexikon”) of the history of cartography). Since that time new results of the concrete studies of ancient and medieval maps have been received, on one side, new approaches in humanities, such as historical anthology, microhistory, eco-history, have been established and developed. Thus the topic of the talks at the session of our “Table ronde” should be the influence of modern achievements in various fields of historical geo-cartography and the perspectives of subsequent research

The theme of Biography and Microhistory poses a fundamental problem: how to talk in general terms without losing sight of the individual?
Or vice versa: how to describe individual situations and persons without falling into generalisations/stereotypes and without losing sight of the wider issues?

It is perhaps because they start with this unresolved problem that historians often speak of their dissatisfaction, sometimes imagining that it is possible to resolve it with the discovery of new facts and new subjects,.

The outcome risks becoming empathetic but not methodologically innovative: history has partially cancelled the marginal classes, woman, oral cultures, daily life, societies different from our own. But it is not enough merely to talk about someone to include them in world history, to show their existence and relevance. What is crucial, is the way in which they are talked about.

Microhistory needs, therefore, to be above all, an attempt: to narrate openly, without concealing the rules of the game followed by the historian. This, certainly, cannot be simply with reference to new sources – this is part of normal professional ethics. But with an open declaration of the the process through which history has been constructed: the right ways and the wrong ones, the way in which questions have been formulated and answers sought. This way, detailed laboratory work is not hidden and the recipe does not remain the cook’s secret. Because perhaps those truly excluded from the attention of historians are not only the protagonists, neglected by events, but the readers, caught between heavy, generalising interpretations, authoritative opinions, simplified causal mechanisms and facile judgement. Those really excluded the reader from these investigations made as a detective story in wich the name of the killer is already known.

Microhistory is not, therefore, necessarily the history of the excluded, the powerless and the far away. It needs to be the reconstruction of moments, situations and people who, studied with an analytical eye, in a defined context, regain both weight and colour: not as examples, in the absence of better explanations, but as points of reference within the complex contexts in which human beings move.

The scale is a smaller one than usual and this immediately places in discussion the conceptual instruments of our craft: trivialized by long use, lying somewhere between allusion and metaphor, they are covered with the rust of ambiguity. Take, for example, the convenient definitions which are now given to explain political organisations and behaviours, or social stratifications and power structures: popular culture, middle classes, working classes, the modern state, peasants. Not withstanding their usefulness, we need today, more than ever, to specify and verify the concrete situations in which concreteindividuals belong; in a social reality, the concrete circumstances of which, help us to understand the successes and failures of efforts to change.

Studies focus on situations and people within their context, that is, in the complex relationship between free choice and necessity/constraints that individuals and groups create in the interstices of the contradictory plurality of the normative systems that direct them. These choices and these contradictions are the internal motors of social change, which are not seen only in one way, with an unmovable and unmodifiable power if not in the extraordinary moments of open revolt, but as the fruit of a continuous conflict the effects of which are for the historian to measure.
The normal, the every day, thus become protagonists of history and individual situations acquire an intensity of point of view from which we can explain the complex social functions.

Biography is, therefore, the meeting point for many questions posed by the historian today. In responding to this statement, we would therefore suggest that our session of the congress avoid reducing biography to the typical or, vice versa, to the specific, and at the same time avoid using microhistory as the study of minor realities, unable to ask general questions. History must be the science of generalised questions and localised answers.

Giovanni Levi

Description and Some Proposed Issues for Specialized Section 18 “Higher Education in Moslem, Jewish and Christian Societies”

The purpose of this session is to examine in a comparative perspective the nature of Higher Learning in Islamic, Jewish and Christian societies, in the pre-modern and modern periods. Hence, papers, while they can be based on specific case studies, should aim at broader issues which can be discussed comparatively. Synthetic surveys will also be welcome. Among key questions which it is worthwhile to address are:
1) The role of the religious tradition and/or religious authorities in forming the content of higher learning.
2) The “image of knowledge” informing higher learning: traditional and closed or more open-ended and oriented towards innovation, discovery and the advancement of knowledge. Are such dichotomies applicable at all?
3) The relations between higher learning and political authority.
4) Teaching techniques and skills (like the European “disputatio” in medieval and the early modern period, or the “Pilpul” in Jewish traditional Rabbinical schools).
5) The relations between teachers and students, whether “authoritarian” or more “egalitarian”.
6) The social matrix of higher learning. Which groups in society are participating and to which strata of the population higher learning is aimed at.
7) Attitudes towards the “other” – towards alien traditions, religions, cultures, minority groups.