Innovation and Improvement in Infrastructures and Services as a Cultural Product of Italian Medieval Cities.

What does a city put into its development, its modernization? It plans more efficient communication systems, seeks new sources of energy while augmenting the old ones, improves the quality of life of its citizens. This is a cultural legacy that comes to us from all of our history. However, there have been moments in which the innovative push was particularly strong, periods in which plans for development were manifested and then realized in later times. There have been numerous particularly decisive periods on the road to innovation and “modernization”, but among them, one must not forget the centuries of the central Middle Ages, because it was then that the steps were taken which made our cities a cultural product that fosters growth.
In particular, during the 13th c and the beginning of the 14thc, ever more efficient sources of energy and supplies were sought. An urban setting that responded to a rapidly growing population was imagined. The city was organized so as to govern development and to meet the needs of the population. Then, like now, the citizens had to produce and live in the city, without wasting resources and in pursuit of a high quality of life.
In fact, all of the Italian cities that became Comunes (city states) in the 12th century strived as early as possible to create norms that would regulate ordered growth. The period witnessed the greatest urban development, development that would last until the 13th century. The cities were adjusted by increasing their surface area at such a rate as to satisfy, in reality, the urban needs up to the 19th century, and in many cases up to the beginning of the 1900s. However, it was also necessary to modernize the “historical city”, not only in terms of building renewal, but also with the collection of potable water, the regulation of plumbing in the homes, the rennovation of the sewage systems, the re qualification of drainage and of the large main sewers, without deteriorating the groundwaters which were used for motive power.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, when the city governments had acquired the strength to enforce all of their rules, urbanistic themes that had been started in the previous century were developed with rigour. The cities built aqueducts, straightened and widened roads, realized sewage networks, installed or finished the systems of walls around the cities. One could say that the “medieval” cities became “modern” in that period. In fact, illegal construction, invasion of public lands, artisans who worked on the streets, and the pollution of soil, air and water, were no longer tolerated. In the middle of the 14th century there was a drammatic arrest due to the plague that struck all of Europe. Recovery from that was fairly soon, and delapidated structures were replaced with buildings that were made less and less of wood and more and more of stone and brick.
The important legislative action taken by the Comunes during the centuries of the central Middle Ages determined the infrastructures and services of Italian cities for centuries after. Urbanistic intervention in the modern age (16th to 19th c.) was limited to small adjustments, improvement in construction quality, widening of roads, and unification of land parcels for the construction of luxury buildings, but the Italian urban identity did not change. In more recent times, some parts of the cities have been sacrificed to reclamation, to the flow of traffic, to the enactment of zoning regulations. In general, however, apart from a few execptions, the “culture of the city” that developed in the Middle Ages is the heritage of the present day city. This is because it combines the ancient and the modern, allowing people today to live in the city of yesterday where, in the Middle Ages, policies were enacted that allowed the cities to modernize without losing their identities.

Prussian Classicism as postcolonial lieux de mémoire: A transnational perspective on the Korean metropolis Seoul

This paper falls under the umbrella of comparative urban history. It will compare two modern capital cities, Berlin and Seoul, which do not seem to share any commonalities or special relations with each another. Seoul has experienced, however, multiple cultural transfers through Japanese colonialism which was strongly inspired by German authoritative culture.
The main topic of this paper will be the legacy of Prussian classicism in the Korean capital city Seoul. Inspired by new cultural history as well as cultural studies, this paper will explore the transnational mode of cultural transfer in terms of specific memory culture. Big cities must be places where various memories are formed, crossed, transformed, and occasionally fragmented, the alleged “lieux de mémoire”in the sense of Pierre Nora. This kind of the temporal dynamics seems to be in the case of postcolonial cities more evident. The Prussian classicism is relevant to the Seoul’s memory culture because it reminds most Korean people of Japanese colonialism and marks a turning-point in Korean history. It is no accident that in Korea the Prussian classicism of Japanese shade is simply identified as “early modern” style.
More concretely, this paper will connect Friedrich Schinkel’s neoclassicist Architecture in Berlin with the so called “capitol Hall” in Seoul by focusing on the temporal dynamics of cultural transfer. This work should be accompanied by following three methodological or heuristic questions.
1. How should a postcolonial city deal with its own memory, alleged historical trauma which will not easily disappear?
2. How can we apply a transnational approach to the cultural transfer between metropolises?
3. How do we analyze and value the visual representations of a city’s past through which places of memory might emerge and win a political, social, cultural pregnancy?

Métamorphoses d’une ville-témoin : la (re)création de Rome à l’époque moderne

Notre contribution se concentre sur Rome à l’époque moderne à la fois comme cas d’étude paradigmatique et comme chantier exceptionnel de production culturelle dans la longue durée. Dans cette double nature, nous croyons qu’elle représente un contexte particulièrement fertile pour mettre à l’épreuve les implicites interprétatifs et pour sélectionner les outils d’analyse d’une histoire de la ville comme produit culturel. Il s’agit d’observer l’imbrication des formes culturelles et des espaces urbains, la dynamique entre cultures savantes et cultures populaires, la sélection des thèmes et des modèles qui transforme le sens et la configuration des identités urbaines.
Dans notre intervention nous nous concentrerons sur le XVIIIe et XIXe siècles en tant que moment particulier de transformation du « langage de Rome », autour du quel se cristallisent les tensions entre attentes et contraintes de la production culturelle de la ville.
Des très nombreuses études ont analysé le mythe de Rome et la façon dans laquelle le caractère symbolique et exemplaire de la ville est implémenté dès le Moyen Age, et particulièrement à la Renaissance et à la Contre-réforme, pour en faire une véritable icône culturelle afin de renforcer le rôle que Rome exerçait en tant que capitale politique et religieuse à l’échelle mondiale. Mais que se passe-t-il quand le statut de Rome comme centre politique est mis en crise par les nouveaux équilibres après les paix de Westphalie ?
Le XVIIIe siècle est marqué par l’ambition des papes et des élites religieuses de re-affirmer le statut de capitale de Rome. Cela se traduit dans une complexe stratégie, qui se concentre sur la valorisation du patrimoine ancien (profane) et médiéval (sacré), et sur la promotion de la création artistique contemporaine. Un vaste programme urbanistique et culturel re-crée véritablement la ville, en modifiant en profondeur à la fois sa matérialité et le discours à travers lequel l’on peut « lire » son historicité.
Certes, les présupposés qui animent la volonté du pape et du sacré collège demeurent l’affirmation de la religion, de l’Eglise catholique et de son chef visible. Dans cette optique traditionnellement confessionnelle, les “monuments” antiques et modernes (y compris la production contemporaine) se trouvent placés dans une logique de contiguïté. Mais sous l’apparente continuité, des glissements s’opèrent : sous l’effet de la sécularisation progressive dans le regard que l’Europe porte sur Rome, et dans les pratiques culturelles de la ville elle-même, se creuse un écart entre les intentions politico-religieuses et les effets à long terme de cette politique. Il en résulte, par ailleurs, une re-configuration des identités urbaines, qui accentue la fragmentation sociale. Seulement après la Révolution française, les choix effectués par le pouvoir politique et les élites sociales se placent sous le signe d’une “antimodernité” qui semble réconcilier les multiples facettes d’une ville-témoin.
Nous analyserons donc quelques moments forts, dispositifs et acteurs de ce processus, en essayant d’en mettre en lumière les articulations sociales.

The idea of "Latin American City"

This paper proposes a historical analysis of the category “Latin American City” as a cultural construct. The central subject is that, during the period between the Second Postwar and the 1970’s, the idea of a “Latin American City” became a category of social thought, as part of the intellectual and political imagination in several regions of the continent.

Le multiculturalisme dans les villes de l'empire des Habsbourg autour de 1900

Le développement urbain des villes marginales de l'empire les rend de plus en plus multiculturelles. Dans le même temps, le discours national se renforce et fait de chaque ville un lieu de conflit potentiel. La contribution entreprend de démonter deux clichés : celui de la confrontation d'une part, celui de la coexistence idyllique, de l'autre. On examinera les espaces publics, la vie associative, les institutions culturelles et éducatives à l'appui de cette thèse.

History and Cultural Heritage - Transfers Between Urban and Rural Culture (European experience)

This contribution will address the expansion of urban culture, the transfers of urban patterns in the attitude to history and cultural heritage. The examples from history as well as contents of cultural heritage are important elements in definition, construction and protection of collective identities especially in the multiethnic and multicultural environment so frequent in European conditions. The paper will ask about the strategies, their motivation and context and about their results. It will explore these strategies on the basis of case studies chosen from various European regions where history, culture and natural conditions create very contrasting context. It influences the perceptions, images and stereotypes in all kinds of social and spatial scales. I expect to have results from a research project focused on the construction of European cultural identities based in Prague and from an international research project Frontiers and Identities involving young and experienced researchers from twelve European countries within the Cliohres 6FP network of excellence, which will close its five year programme on 31.5. 2010 and at the moment when the Congress in Amsterdam opens, all its results have to be published. It will be then a unique occasion to discuss our results. The presentation will contribute to the discussion of interconnections between local (urban), regional and national (and supranational) identities and their spatialisation.

Urban cultural diversity and the quest for national unity: Helsinki and Dublin in the 1920s and 1930s

Urban cultural diversity has often been seen as a fertile ground for new ideas and groundbreaking innovations, but at the same time much concern has been expressed that celebrations of different cultural identities may also result in conflicts, segregation and the fragmentation of society. Therefore city governments and other important urban actors have continually sought to find a balance between enhancing cultural diversity on the one hand and regulating and repressing it on the other. Where exactly the 'right' balance lies at any given moment in history depends on many factors.

This paper will contribute to these discussions by examining attitudes towards urban cultural diversity in Finland and Ireland in the years after independence. Before the First World War Helsinki and Dublin were 'colonial cities' under the Russian and British rule respectively, and in the 1920s they were capital cities of independent states. The aim is to examine how cultural diversity and difference were constructed and treated in Helsinki and Dublin after independence. To what extent the independence and the accompanying quest for national unity altered existing cultural differences and perhaps created new ones. What cultural differences were seen as worth preserving and cultivating, what differences were defined as 'unacceptable' and 'disruptive' and how these disruptive cultural differences were accommodated or repressed?

From an industrial to a post-industrial urban culture

The idea is to analyse urban transformations during the turn from a society dominated by industrial culture to a society marked by post industrial norms and values. Preliminary, focus will be on changes of urban space linked to an evolving new concept for urban life. The time period under consideration will mainly be after 1950. Research is planned to be on Stockholm in a comparative way

Urban Culture – Cultural City: A case-study with regard to Vienna

Starting with considerations about possible definitions for “city” as well as “culture” it is clear and indisputable that the city is a cultural product; what about possible misunderstandings re ‘cultural product’?
Elements of urban or civic culture (from the medieval period to the present times): what can be called specifically ‘urban’ and does not (or not in this form) exist outside of the urban framework? What about the significance of urban or civic culture seen from the standpoints of rulers, of elites and of the mass of the city’s inhabitants?
Phenomenon of the modern (past?) self-identity of the city as well as the perception of the city seen from outside; the modern term of ‘Cultural City’ in the context of city-image, urban promotion etc. (the ‘Wiener Festwochen’, tourism, cultural heritage of the world …)

Globalization, Migration and City Development in Nigeria, Ibadan Example

Abstract.
This study intends to examine the existing nexus between globalization and migration as it influences or debars development of cities in Nigeria .On the surface, globalization as a process seems to enhance movement of people, goods services and information within and across the borders of countries. Boost in migration thus becomes a natural outcome of the phenomenon of globalization. To the proponents of the new economic order, globalization will bring more development to our cities ( Urban centers) by increasing the efficiency in industries, competitiveness, speedy growth of the economy in general and efficient environmental management. But opponents are also accusing globalization of impoverishing the greater percentage of world population, lowering standards of living and destroying the environment especially in the underdeveloped parts of the world. All of these to the benefits of the advanced countries\. This contradictory position, no doubts call for more serious research on the role of globalization on the local economy especially the activities of migrants as regards environmental management and city development in Africa. Ibadan- the largest city in sub-Saharan Africa will be the focus of this study.

Obviously, Ibadan presents a terrible environmental picture. Visits to major streets and residential areas especially the core city centers, reveals a prevalence of ubiquitous huge heaps of refuse almost everywhere and the ever repulsive aroma of open sewers. The general picture is that of urban crisis. Both people and factories are reckless in waste management; nearly all the infrastructures are in deplorable conditions. And to many these problems are as a result of increasing urbanization, which encourage influx of migrants to Ibadan city from within and without Nigeria. Hence the need for the study of this nature which will inter alia attempt to : explore the long term interactions of man and nature; study how these interactions enhance migration; analyses how migration affects development or otherwise of cities in Nigeria and Ibadan specifically; assess the migrants interactions with their environment and the impact on the development of Ibadan ;evaluate the attitude of the people towards personal hygiene and urban environment management ; generate useful scientific information for policy makers on how to utilize migrants for effective environmental management and city development.

The City as Cultural Laboratory: Trieste 1918-1954

The granting of maritime and commercial privileges to the higher Adriatic region by the Sacred Roman Emperor Charles VI’s in March 1717 led to the rapid transformation of Trieste from a small fishermen’s village into major hub for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The growing commercial role played by the Triestine port, together with the urban and architectural expansion carried out under the illuminated reign of Maria Theresia, brought about significant population growth in the course of nearly a century. Trieste welcomed a dynamic, upwardly mobile, cosmopolitan and increasingly culture-hungry middle-class. Demographically diverse and yet linguistically cohering thanks to a Venetian-based dialect, the Triestine port hosted heterogenous and increasingly competing ethnic and religious groups: a sizable Jewish community, significant from both the numerical and social view-point, as well as a numerically smaller though no less important Slav minority, Slovenian and partly Croatian. Faithful to the Empire, staunchly catholic and strenuously resistant to Italian cultural assimilation, the latter was in more or less latent competition with the former throughout, to name only one of the dynamics and contradictions nurturing local culture.
Following the First World War and the demise of the multi-national Empire, Trieste was assigned to Italy. The local middle-classes welcomed this ‘redemption’ in the bosom of an idealized Italian Kulturnation. However, even this coveted recovery precipitated the decline and fall of the Triestine port. Relying on its own established and substantial ports (Venice, Genoa, Bari), Italy had no long term interest in sustaining the peripheral Triestine hub. State subventions and investments provided by the fascist regime in the 1930s did little more than extend the city’s slow but steady agony. In the course of a handful of decades, Trieste became a pawn of political negotiations, a microcosm of the Cold War and its divisive politics, outpost of the democratic west on the cusp of the Balkans.
Even this cursory historical ride suggests a whole series of problems, ambiguities and contradictions framing the cultural identity of a rapidly growing and equally rapidly declining city poised at the unstable north-eastern borders of Italy. Not dissimilarly from other border towns, hinging on geo-political and national confines that are at once permeable and impenetrable, Trieste has historically been swayed by national and, frequently, nationalistic discourses, which I gather under the title italianità (e.g. the ‘quintessence of Italian culture’). On the other hand, Triestine culture traditionally entertained a number of localistic, regional discourses, aimed at highlighting the particularity of local culture, especially in the literary arena and in contrast with the Italian canon. I have labelled this second attitude triestinità, that is to say a ‘quintessence of Triestine culture’. Unstable and loosely defined categories, mirrors of disparate national, ideological and cultural loyalties, as well as heterogenous phenomena precipitated by the rapid and confusing succession of historical events and ideological stances, my contention is that the cultural identity of modern Trieste cannot be fully understood without reference to italianità and triestinità. Compounded with the pressing issue of its border identity, emerging from the proximity of an elusive border, itself a paradigm of instability and rapid change, Trieste can be regarded as one of the more skewed cultural cities in Italy, not exactly a modern city, perhaps, but a utopian modernist town nonetheless, a city to be understood as laboratory of future cultural, urban and political configurations.

Central Planning of Tourism in French Indochina

This paper explores the French colonial government's program of organizing tourism in French Indochina in the 1910-1939 period. Through examining the central planning of developing the infrastructure of travel, including hotels, the paper treats the vision of the French colonial government regarding tourism and travel, and compares this to the reality of travel patterns of the period.

From the Darkness of Barbary to the Enlightenment: the British Image of the Finn during the Enlightenment

My paper deals with the British image of the Finn (and Lapp) from the early 18th century to the times of the Napoleonic wars. The research material consists of maps, philosophical works, history books, review articles and especially of travel literature written mainly by British authors who toured Sweden-Finland. The main thesis of the paper is that the British perceived the Finns as living in an intermediate stage between 'savagery' and 'civilization', on the verge of becoming 'European' and a 'race' of its own, no longer Mongol, but not quite 'Caucasian' yet. What stroke the British was the ability of the Finns to acquire 'European' physical characteristics and learn 'civilized' ways, and some of their customs, like the sauna-going, were now deemed as useful, no longer as promiscuous. What the philosophers like Voltaire or historians like Gibbon had been telling of such peripheral 'races' as the Finns were, was now contested by the testimony and experience provided during travels to Finland and Lapland.

Delight and disgust: food and cultural identity in early modern travel accounts (1550-1750)

Handwritten and printed travel accounts, memoirs and correspondences testify of the travellers’ perceptions of the Other and of their reactions to it. Focusing on French and German travels through Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, my paper investigates the role of food as a means of symbolic communication and as a field of negotiation for cultural otherness.

Food was in fact a major concern for all travellers. There is hardly any travel account which does not relate experiences with foreign food. What is more, among the different elements of foreign cultures, food was the one that provoked the most vehement reactions, be they positive or negative.

In contrast with other elements of foreign cultures, such as language or religion, it was impossible for travellers to avoid immediate contact with foreign food. This contact implied an assimilation of the Other, and even a transgression of the limits of the traveller’s own body. Since food both expresses and constructs cultural identities, the exposure to foreign food necessarily had an effect on the travellers’ physical and psychic integrity as well as on their cultural identity. Disgust and delight were by no means expressions of the travellers’ individual taste, but were culturally coded. They are thus revealing for the way in which cultural frontiers were drawn, cultural hierarchies defined, and cultural contacts negotiated in early modern Europe.

When it came to eating and drinking, travellers had to give up the position of an exterior observer and become involved with a foreign culture. Focusing on food as an indicator of cultural otherness thus allows us to analyse interactions between travellers and inhabitants of their host countries. Food was both a means of symbolic communication (i.e. as gift or at courtly banquets) and a field of negotiation for cultural differences (i.e. through adoption, transformation or rejection of foreign food habits).

Travel for profit - European Travellers in India, 17th and 18th centuries

The paper focusses on the nature of travel in India in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when the East India Companies were involved in the trade to the country. Travel was part of the work of the factors, and was also undertaken for various other reasons.
It is argued in this paper that 'profit' was a major criterion. However, profit is to be understood in two ways - that of material gain, as well as that of knowledge. The paper therefore proposes to discuss the trvel writings of some select travellers, from the point of view of travel for profit in terms of both monetary gain, and knowledge acquisition.

From Barriers to Bridges: The African Union Border Programme in European Comparative Perspective.

Regional integration demands the effective devaluation of the barrier functions and effects of the boundaries between participating sovereign states. The elimination of the border as barrier and its promotion as bridge between one another constitutes the acid test of sincerity of purpose of the national states engaged in a regional integration project. Manifestations of “closed borders’, including unrelenting exercise of restrictive controls, suggest absence of a sense of commitment and a lack of seriousness of intention on the part of the participating State actors.
In Europe, beginning with the Western European initiatives in the aftermath of the Second World War, the spectacular regional integration success story has derived from an ever increasing lowering of borders as barriers between the World’s oldest nation-states with, hitherto, a history of recurrent and most devastating territorial and border conflicts and wars. The inauguration of the European Union has been based on the theory and practice of the concept of ‘Europe without Frontiers’ enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty and the Schengen Agreement of 1992 - 1993 as well as the evolving European Constitution mile-stoned in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty on the European Union.

The result of these developments, focusing on the elimination of restrictive controls on the Internal Frontiers of the European Union and the pooling of policy in respect of policing, immigration and the administration of criminal justice, has been a growing European regional constituency and a consciousness that tends to transcend national boundaries and identities. Of particular significance for the European regional integration process has been the incredible lobbying influence, if not power, exercised by the directly affected local populations in the diverse border areas organised into the highly pro-active Association of European Border Regions with headquarters in Bonn, Germany, and an influential operating office close to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
In Africa, as indeed other regions of the developing world, on the other hand, regional integration experiments have not met with a similar success in spite of demonstrable similarities in the basic structures and functions of state territories and boundaries. In the particular case of Africa, focused in this presentation, the records of failure have been remarkably dismal. While the desire has remained strong, the actual performance has been one of disillusion. The events have for long been an affair of governments rather than of the people; and the chances of success are constantly put to flight by contra-indications of negative nationalism and the attendant actual and potential boundary and territorial disputes and conflicts within and, more manifestly, between many a territorially adjacent African state. Pro-integration decisions, taken usually in the context of familiar-type summits of Heads of States and Governments, are not reflected in the behaviour of the law and border-enforcement agencies of the individual national authorities.
The recently inaugurated African Union Border Programme (AUBP) is aimed at changing the trend in Africa in the general direction of the more desirable developments in the European Union. Based on a solemn Declaration of the historic Conference of Ministers in Charge of Border Issues held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 7 June 2007 and a unanimous endorsement of the Executive Council of the African Union in its 11th Ordinary Session held in Accra, Ghana, 26th-29th of the same month, the AUBP is a four-fold policy instrument targeted on a simultaneous pursuit of (a) Accelerated Demarcation of the International Boundaries Between Member States; (b) Cross-Border Cooperation Focusing on a Regional Approach to the Planning and Development of ‘Cross-Border Areas’, African Regions or ‘Afregios’ equivalents of the ‘European Regions’ or ‘Euregios’, (c) Capacity Building with particular reference to relevant knowledge infrastructural innovations and specialized training and research programmes in support of cross-border cooperation initiatives and wider regional integration orientations; and, finally, (d) Resource Mobilization within and outside Africa. The strategies for implementation embrace roles for local, national, regional and continental levels of execution, based on a strict adherence to the principle of subsidiarity.
Clearly the climax and the most comprehensive policy instrument ever designed at continental level on the issue of Africa’s problematic inherited borders, the AUBP has resulted from a long historical process that dates back to the accidental origination of the modern African State territories and boundaries in the European ‘Scramble’ and subsequent imperialist partition of the continent at the turn of the 19th century.
This presentation is focused on the African Union Border Programme in context of a comparison with the European historical experience. The essay is organised in five distinct but inter-related sections. The first, of an introductory theoretical and conceptual concern, discusses the problem of comparison with special reference to the issue of comparability between Europe and Africa in the matter of State territories and boundaries. The second provides a sketch of the history of the border factor in the European regional integration process. The third is a critique of the history in Africa with special reference to border policy-making and policy implementation in the era of the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) from 1963-2002. The fourth, on the on-going African Union (AU) phase, is a more detailed description of the recently launched Border Programme. The essay concludes with a fifth section of critical reflection on the Euro-African historical comparison and the logic for linkages and networking’s of organized research and training programmes and institutions.

Indigenous of Minas Gerais: Native Resistance in the Wilderness of the Portuguese Crown

In this lecture we seek to demonstrate the presence of indigenous peoples of various ethnic origins in the wilderness and towns of Minas Gerais / Brazil throughout the colonial period. We discuss the resistance of Indians in the eastern forests, taking into account the central role of conflicts with colonists and armed expeditions ordered to conquer the zone. In the second, we examine the struggle for liberty of those Indians incorporated into colonial society in the condition of “administrados” and/or slaves. In this context, we attempt to depict the conduct of Indians as important social agents in the socio-cultural formation of Minas Gerais.

Legends of National Borders. The Myth of the Nöteborg border (1323) in a Comparative East-European perspective

The paper (co-authored with Professor Jukka Korpela) studies the concept of border in Finnish historical literature from a comparative East-European perspective. We will analyse conceptual changes in the early definitions of Finnish Eastern border, especially to what extend the border has been defined in national terms as a demarcation based on ethnicity, language and national culture and to what extend it has been understood in broader supranational terms as a frontier between two civilizations, religious and cultural spheres.

The analysis of the historiography of the Nöteborg Treaty is based on the examination of key 20th century scholarly debates on the early construction of Finnish Eastern border. In the comparative analysis new studies on Central and Eastern European historiography as well as key contributions in Medieval Studies are utilized.

The preliminary analysis suggests that the national and European conceptualizations of the border can not be understood as two separate discourses producing overlapping interpretations. It seems evident that in this sense we can hardly speak e.g. of a post-war turn to modern “European” approaches after the “nationalist” 1930s. Rather it seems that both dimensions have been intertwined in the definitions of European borders from the beginning. The emphasis and character given to these dimensions has, however, varied from different political context to another.

Northeast Asia: Region, National Frontiers, and the Boundaries within

The major countries of Northeast Asia – China, Japan and Korea – are commonly seen as relatively self-contained countries whose borders have remained relatively unchanged over time. This paper seeks to challenge this perception, by exploring the ways in which the reshaping of the Northeast Asian region over the past 200 years has led to major shifts in the location and function of national borders. The changing nature of these borders in turn has profoundly the way in which, within each nation of the region, national identities are defined and the national “majority” is distinguished from “minorities”. Taking case studies from the borderlands of each of these three countries, the paper will trace the major shifts in the national boundaries of the region, and the impact of these shifts on the identity and status of minority groups within each nation.

Frontières entre "barbarus" et "humanus" dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine

Les notions de « barbarie » ou de « civilisation » ne sont familières ni aux Grecs ni aux Romains, ce qui n’empêche ni les uns ni les autres de concevoir une frontière entre celui que l’on nomme "barbaros" en grec, "barbarus" en latin, et le Grec ou le Romain. La démarcation est mouvante et devient, dans la perspective diachronique qui est choisie ici, complexe. L’opposition classique repose sur l’antithèse Grecs vs non-Grecs : l’analyse des occurrences de "barbaros" révèle que le terme grec a dès l’origine une valeur péjorative. La frontière est nette, d’un côté sont les Grecs, de l’autre les "barbaroi", mais aucun des deux groupes n’a de caractérisation abstraite : les concepts de « barbarie » ou de « civilisation » n’existent pas, ce sont les Romains qui vont les créer. Les Latins héritent de cette opposition Hellènes vs Barbares, dans laquelle ils se trouvent du côté des Barbares. Leur effort consiste à sortir de cette dichotomie en exploitant deux voies : substituer à l’hellénisme le concept de "latinitas" ; accentuer la séparation entre les Romains et les Barbares. Une première frontière, linguistique, est ainsi dressée pour se démarquer des Grecs. Celle qui sépare les Romains des Barbares définit encore plus nettement l’"humanitas". On peut se demander pourquoi les Latins, disposant d’une dizaine de termes pour désigner « l’étranger », ont emprunté le mot grec "barbaros". La frontière, pour les autres « étrangers », signale la différence entre un ici, romain, et un ailleurs auquel appartient l’étranger : "barbarus" est le seul terme qui définisse l’étranger comme « l’autre qui n’est pas romain, qui est exclu du territoire romain ». Face à la diversité et à la multiplicité des barbares, se dresse l’unité postulée du "populus Romanus" ; face au "barbarus inhumanus", rejeté aux confins du territoire romain, se présente le Romain "humanus". Mais un autre déplacement des lignes de partage se produit avec Cicéron, premier auteur latin à qualifier des Romains de « barbares ». Le brouillage de l’antinomie "barbarus" vs "humanus" va aller en s’accentuant. Bientôt les Grecs, d’Asie Mineure ou d’Egypte, sont considérés comme barbares, tout comme certains « sauvages » vont représenter la pureté originelle antérieure aux dégradations provoquées par l’homme civilisé. La frontière entre le barbare et le civilisé n’est plus géographique ou même ethnique, elle est une question de morale. Un nouveau brouillage est introduit par le christianisme : est barbare celui qui n’a pas accès au Verbe divin, donc le païen, l’infidèle. Désormais les lignes de partage entre civilisation et barbarie vont se multiplier et se déplacer selon les époques et les lieux, chacun devenant le barbare d’un autre au 16ème siècle et plusieurs auteurs s’interrogeant depuis sur les différents visages pris par la barbarie. Les Latins, en comprenant que la frontière entre "barbarus" et "humanus" n’est pas étanche, que la démarcation n’est pas absolue mais relative, ont franchi une étape décisive dans l’histoire de la définition des frontières entre le barbare et le civilisé.

Translation as Bordering - Translation and the Inderminacy of National Language

A plurality of peoples inhabits the world, and frequently the world is presented as a common space where differences among peoples are manifest. Each people is a group, so differences among peoples are not entirely reducible to differences among individuals. In order to tell the plurality of peoples from the plurality of human individuals, we often rely upon categories for collective identities such as family, kin, race, nation, ethnos, and culture. The most commanding category for collective unity in the modern world is given in language, so that the language is represented as expressing the primordial union of a people. If one human body is somewhat a marker of human ‘individuality,’ the image - or figure, trope, or schema - of a language gives the sense of an individual or indivisible collectivity. Yet, on what ground is it possible to claim that the image of a language is autonomous and self-oriented?
My paper argues that what is primarily given is not an image of a language but the image, figure, trope, or schema of languages; the locale where languages are identified is never contained in a language. The identification of a language is possible only in an heteronomous encounter of frontier where translation is conducted. Differences among peoples precede the union of a people, just as translation comes before the identification of a language. I call this process of social encounter “bordering,” borrowing the term introduced by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson.
Then my argument seeks the consequences of the language’s pluralist origin in two directions: the first is a historical analysis of a schematism by which the image of languages was reorganized in modernity. The national language comes into being through this schematism. The second is the question of culture, and of its subordination to the schematism of national languages. Culture is often modeled after the image of a national language.
From these two perspectives, I want to explore the concept of ‘heterolingual address’ and “bordering.”

Synagogues, Churches and Mosques

Amsterdan houses one of the most splendid synagogues of the western Sephardim. This building is one of a serie of synagogues erected by the members of the 'Portuguese' Naçao in Western Europe as well as in the new world in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. When we turn our gaze to the Levant, the skyline is dominated by the minarets of the mosques. We see nothing which is comparable with these western houses of prayer that where also meant to be showcases for the beauty and honor of Judaism in the eyes of non-Jews. My paper will try to explain the difference between eastern and western Sephardi congregations, the difference in the social space, the differing mentalité etc. Needless to mention that the various eastern Christian communities faced similar problems in erecting or reconstructing houses of prayer.
But the difference wasn't complete. In the Ottoman cities too, much of the outside came in. An ongoing process of deep acculturation was manifested in the seventeenth century on in the holy space as well – the décor of the synagogue, the style of the ornaments and the textiles. The influence of the Islamic culture affected the liturgy as well. Sephardi liturgy all over the east was stamped with the heavy stamp of Ottoman court music and the tariqat (religious orders) music.

The Jewish Ritual Bath as a Social and Religious Space in Early Medieval Europe

Scholars have noted that the ancient Roman bath and the Islamic hammam which succeeded it were not merely intended for the pursuit of cleanliness, but also “community centers of sorts.” My presentation will examine the degree to which the mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath, played a similar role in medieval and early modern Jewish society, particularly in the Mediterranean. The mikveh was intended primarily for married women who needed to purify themselves on a monthly basis, but could take on non-ritual functions as well, related to both material and social life.
Early in the thirteenth century the eminent Ashkenazic rabbi Baruch b. Isaac of Worms, who passed through Crete on his way to the Holy Land, was responsible for instituting a local ordinance decreeing that “no Jew may use the mikveh for washing any sort of clothing, nor for any other activity that might introduce dirt into the bath.” The latter phrase evidently alluded to the soaking of hides by Jews involved in the local tanning industry. Three centuries later the community of Crete faced a related, but even more curious problem: “We have…seen that some of the unmarried women go to the ritual bathhouse in the summer to cool off in its waters, and lock the doors behind them. As a consequence the [married] women desist from immersing themselves in a timely manner, as required by the Torah and our sages.”
My presentation will seek to get at the root of the problems faced by the Cretan Jewish community with regard to its ritual bathhouse, particularly through a comparison with the neighboring Jewish communities of Italy and Sicily.

Ezrat Nashim: The women's Section in the Early Modern Synagogue as Space that Tracks Cultural Transformation

This paper will discuss the development of the women's section (ezrat nashim) in northern European synagogues (especially in Poland)in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The thesis is that space for women in the synagogue became progressively more integral to the synagogue prayer area. This both paralleled and embodied the growth of Jewish women's cultural capital in this period.

The Shemita Controversy 1888-1910: Halacha and History

The debate over the observance of the Shemitta year is one of the foremost halachic issues to have been raised in the Jewish modern period. The most intense periods in the deliberation over this issue were the years 1888-9 and 1909-10, however the controversy continues, even to this very day, and it would appear to be an unsolvable halachic problem.
The issue concerns whether the Torah's prohibition from tilling the soil every seventh year is applicable today. Without entering into the detailed halachic issues involved, it is striking that a halachic precept which has been neither observed nor relevant for generations, and hasn't been a part of daily Jewish ritual practice, can become an issue of such acute concern among Jews in modern times. What has made this topic so important and the discussion so passionate?
I would like to suggest that the very fact that our issue touched upon the ideological and political turmoil of Jewish nationalism, provides a partial explanation for the events. The underlying question was whether halacha would be applicable in modern times. In other words, can a modern Jewish state exist whilst governed by a traditional Jewish jurisdiction? This problem attracted a spectrum of approaches. The Ultra-orthodox, at one extreme, argued that the halachic law overrides secular law, whilst the secular insisted that halacha is not relevant anymore to modern society. The issue has touched the core of Jewish identity, the very earth of the Holy Land, and Jewish memory, stirring deep emotions amongst Jews aspiring to 'Renew our days as of old'. All these elements combined have contributed towards making the controversy over the Shmitta altogether such an alarming, sensitive and complex subject.

Tolerating individual religious thought in collective religious politics. 17th century confessionalist Sweden.

This paper investigates the toleration of individual religious thought in the religious climate of 17th century confessionalist Lutheran Sweden. This is a climate usually thought highly collective and repressing all deviant behavior or thought, some consequences of which were court trials against witches and blasphemers as well as sexual offenders. However, these trials actually reveal a great deal of religious toleration, too. The material shows clearly a fluctuation of concern between the common good and the righteousness of the whole community threatened by individual error on one hand, and the individual religious thought that is evident in the for e.g. the defense of many witches who claim they were doing God’s work when they healed cattle, praying when they cited charms and who considered themselves in general good Christians. Similarly various cases of blasphemy often sprang from an individual’s unfortunately voiced deliberations on matters of religion. What is interesting in this context, however, is they extent to which these individual, possibly deviant religious opinions were discussed in courts. The defendants were given time to explain their views, they were listened to, and surprisingly often they were tolerated. More than a half of those accused of witchcraft, magic and superstition were acquitted – their thoughts and conduct had been considered acceptable, although it had been deviant enough to cause concern. Some defendants were also found guilty of religiously unacceptable (and therefore criminal) practices, but as they had not caused major harm, they were merely sent home with an exhortation to behave better in the future. The persecution of witchcraft and superstition tolerated and even expected some religious individuality, even in things thought erroneous. However, blasphemy was usually treated more severely.
This study will focus on the Finnish side of 17th century Sweden, but it will take the full context of the Swedish Great power in Europe into account.

Comparing Utopias, Checking Realities: tolerance among Sephardic Jews and Catholics in the Portuguese context

In recent years, scholars devoted to the study of apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian phenomena have concluded that such movements were disappearing from most European territories by the beginning of the 1500’. However, the study of Iberian literature shows that in the Iberian world and its colonies this was not the case. Between the end of the 15th and the end of the 17th century, such movements had reached their peak in Portugal, Spain and their Atlantic colonies.
It is our purpose to argue in this paper that Catholics and Jews who lived in Iberia and its colonies shared a common hope: the achievement of a divine kingdom of God. Obviously, this expectation took different nuances according to the writer’s religious background, social status, and geographical location. The geographical mobility of most of these writers makes it possible to argue that this tradition spread to the Iberian Diaspora abroad, taken either by Catholics working outside of Portugal and Spain, and by Sephardic Jews into their Diaspora communities in Northern Europe (especially in Amsterdam).
Isaac Avravanel, Sebastião Paiva, Samuel Usque, António Vieira, Antonio de Montezinos, David Rubeni, the Cardinal Cisneros are some of the names one comes across when studying the emergence of eschatological movements in Iberia. Although the work of most of these authors cannot be detached from political events as the Maritime Expansion, the Union of the Iberian Crowns (1580-1640) or the Portuguese Restoration (1640), other factors may have influenced the intellectual development of most of their writings. That was the case of their religious affiliation and their cultural backgrounds.
The common feature in the work produced by these authors is a very strong, and continuous suggestion for toleration, tolerance, cultural exchange, and syncretism between Catholics and Sephardic Jews, opening the Early Modern Iberian intellectual world, in the first instance, and the Early Modern European intellectual community, secondly, to notions of toleration and cultural integration never seen before.
Therefore, we will compare how two major authors, Ben Israel and António Viera, a Jew and a Catholic, developed a theory concerning the need for religious tolerance within the Portuguese world, allowing in that way to consider the existence of a universal religion that would lead towards the establishment on earth of the divine kingdom of God.

Shifting Geographies of Migration in Southeast Asia: Continuity and Change in Proletarian and Gendered Migrations

Transnational Asian labour migration to Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an essential dimension of European imperial expansion into Asia and coincided with the growth of the global trade in commodities. Asian mass migration also approximated European transatlantic migration during the same period. The Asian migration flows comprised mainly Chinese and Indian males who migrated predominantly as indentured migrants or “unfree” wage labour, and were considered as sojourners or temporary migrants. Few women migrated of their own accord and it was not until the India Office stipulated a small percentage in the labour flows that Indian women migrants became a regular feature in the Indian labour movements. Chinese women’s migration also grew in the 1930s when they went either as domestic workers or to work as panners in the tin industry. Crucially, the region’s demographic configuration had important implications for the location of colonial economic activity and determined migration processes, migrant workers’ destinations and gendered migration movements prior to the Second World War.
Since the 1970s disparities in economic growth and demographic divergence between the ‘more’ and ‘less’ developed Southeast Asian nations have created conditions of complementarity between these countries, resulting in the resumption of labour migration within the region. The new regional (and trnsnational) flows are premised on the guest worker program and are increasingly seen as one of the best ways to manage labour migration. The guest worker programs invite foreign nationals to work temporarily, in an industry – either high- or low-skilled – that is experiencing labour shortages. The migrants are offered short-term contracts that come with a range of restrictions. The most important change however has been the feminization of migration. The gendered migrations have also coincided with emerging gender-selective policies of labour-importing countries and the development of gender-specific employment niches. This in turn has resulted not only in the self-sustaining feature of this migratory stream, but also the appearance of particular female migratory linkages between groups of countries. In particular, care-giving demands are both being generated and met through migrant women’s employment, underscoring the complex causal relations that tie together migration, gendered labor and care-giving regimes.

Women Migrant Workers and Visibility in Malaysia:

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese and Indian migrant labour played a key role in the economic development of Southeast Asia The migrant workers worked in the mines and plantations to produce mineral and agricultural commodities for the international market. These workers, who were mainly men, endured harsh working conditions and were regarded as expendable commodities. Their poor working conditions were often reported in newspapers in China and India, and increasingly in local newspapers in the colonies. By and large migrant workers were invisible and had no voice. Migration to the region, which had virtually ceased by the1940s, resumed in the 1970s. The new migration flows are no longer between colonies but between independent nation states and regional flows between Southeast Asian countries dominate. Moreover, women now comprise a large percentage of the labour flows, and work in gender-specific roles, predominantly as domestic workers. They enjoy few labour protections and their situation has captured media attention both in the destination and source countries, and internationally.
Malaysia is the largest importer of Indonesian domestic workers and increased media reporting of abuse and denial of labour rights of these migrant domestic workers, coupled with regional campaigning on the isssue in the last two decades, has led Indonesian women to reject Malaysia as their preferred destination country. Intense negative reporting in the Indonesian press about the abuse has further contributed to deteriorating relations between the two countries. Malaysian media’s retaliation about the problems employers face with regard to migrant workers and the agents/intermediaries in the sending countries has aggravated this situation. Generally, migrant women workers have little visibility in the mainstream media. When there is any, the mainstream media in the host country focus on issues of their unreliability, dishonesty and other negative images while the mainstream media in the country of origin of the migrant workers focus on issues of employer abuse of employees. The migrant workers are thus not given a voice in the host country’s media. Most do not have access to Internet sources, and although some may have mobile phones to contact their families, a majority of them are not allowed to own mobile phones.
This paper examines how the media serves its agenda setting role by providing (or not providing) the information required to address societal problems and issues relating to migrant domestic workers in Malaysia. It reviews the media’s role in the earlier period in addressing migrant workers’ rights in Southeast Asia; and compares the roles of Malaysian mainstream media vis-a-vis the ethnic/community media in countries such as Thailand and Hong Kong where migrant workers have visibility and a voice.




Kiranjit Kaur, PhD
Associate Professor,
Faculty of Communication and Media Studies
Universiti Teknologi MARA
40450 Shah Alam, Selangor
MALAYSIA
Email: kiran126@salam.uitm.edu.my
Mobile: +60123813145

Chinese Migration in Global Context, 1850-1940

This paper provides an overview of the origins, destinations and timing of Chinese emigration from 1850-1940 in global and comparative perspective. It then focuses on trends in return and female migration, the features that are often said to distinguish Chinese from other migrations. These trends are compared between different flows of Chinese overseas migrants, with Chinese migration to Manchuria, and with non-Chinese migrations. The most interesting conclusions have implications for the methodology and assumptions that shape the study of global migrations: 1) Comparisons should be situated in historical time because the most interesting results are often the long-term trends of convergence or divergence, and time series provide different results than the comparison of average trends; 2) Cycles and patterns may converge across different migration flows while diverging across others; 3) The results of comparison change along with the scale of units being compared; and 4) Both extensive comparisons and an awareness of the global context are necessary to understand the patterns, causes and organization of mass migration.

The Empress Frederick and Female Education in the late Ninteenth Century: Germany, England, and Italy

The two most common approaches to Crown Princess Victoria/Empress Frederick of Germany have been to view her as either the great "might have been" for German liberalism or the overbearing mother of Wilhelm II. This paper will focus instead on her work in the area of educational reform for girls and young women. Beginning with her patronage of numerous institutions in Berlin, it will then examine her support for both the Maria Grey Training College and the Froebel Educational Institute in London and for the Istituto Froebeliano in Naples. In the process it will illuminate both the international networks of women reformers with whom she worked and the positive accomplishments of a much maligned monarch.

Women, Education and Intellectual Co-operation in the Inter-war Period

This paper examines the “entangled history” of “intellectual sociability and the transfer of ideas and practices”1 around women and international intellectual co-operation in the inter-war period. International intellectual co-operation aimed to foster “an international outlook” by promoting “collaboration between nations in all fields of intellectual effort in order to foster a spirit of international understanding as a means to the preservation of peace”.2 International intellectual co-operation was adopted by the League of Nations (SDN) after the failure of the SDN in 1921 to establish an International Committee on Education in the face of resistance from British delegates and representatives of new countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, who considered national education to lie outside the competence of any official committee of the League.3 The paper argues that international intellectual co-operation provided a contested, shifting and gendered cultural space for women’s political activity in the inter-war period in both international and national arenas.

The paper uses the International Federation of University Women [IFUW] to explore this “entangled history” of “intellectual sociability and the transfer of ideas and practices” between organisations and individuals. These include the SDN and intellectual circles; the SDN and national committees of intellectual co-operation; intra-national transfer between national committees of intellectual co-operation; committees of intellectual co-operation formed by women’s international and national organisations and their inter-and intra-national transfer; and women embedded in this web of intellectual sociability and transfer, including those employed in the SDN. The paper draws on approaches from ego network analysis and group biography, and from studies of transnational advocacy and networks. It focuses on two aspects of international intellectual co-operation in which the IFUW was particularly active: first, shifting ideas around the “intellectual worker” and second, the notion of “moral disarmament”.

The paper concludes that in the changing European economic, social and political contexts in the run up to the Second World War, the cultural (and at times philanthropic) orientation of international intellectual co-operation enabled women to enter and shift political debate, albeit on less than equal terms.

1. See Christophe Verbruggen and Julie Carlier, “An entangled history of ideas and ideals. Feminism, social and educational reform in children’s libraries and children’s literature in Belgium before the First World War”, unpublished paper. I am grateful to the authors for sight of this paper prior to publication.
2. League of Nations, International Intellectual Co-operation 1933, Paris: International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1934, 3-5.
3. Eckhardt Fuchs, “The creation of new international networks in education: the League of Nations and educational organisations in the 1920s”, Paedagogica Historica, 43, no.2 (2007): 207.

Female education and the cultural transfer of pedagogical knowledge in the 18th century

In the course of the socio-structural transformations at the end of the 18th century, the rise and emancipation of the bourgeois class as well as the emergence of systematised pedagogical knowledge, attention in Germany also was focused on female education. Numerous pedagogical publications addressed the hitherto largely neglected question of educating the female sex. Though this discourse was strongly shaped by the national formation of Enlightenment thought, it nonetheless took place in the context of an intercultural exchange. The educational interchange of ideas is exemplified not only by the broad geographical reception of Rousseau’s conception on female education and its cultural different adaptations, but also by the numerous translations of publications on girls’ education whose role in the flow of ideas must not be underestimated. Thus, Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Väterlicher Rath für meine Tochter (Fatherly Advice for my Daughter, 1789) not only saw several editions and reprints in German, but was also translated into Dutch (1791), several times into French (1803, 1804, 1812, 1820), into Russian (1804), Polish (1805) and Danish (1804). And Wilhelmine Karoline von Wobeser’s book Elisa, oder das Weib wie es sein sollte (Elisa, or: Woman as she should be, 1795), which had gone through five editions and several reprints by 1800, was translated into French in 1798 and into English in 1799 (under the title Elisa or the pattern of women: a moral romance). This manner of knowledge transfer operated in both directions and played a formative role in the national pedagogical discourse as well. August Hermann Niemeyer’s frequently reedited work Grundsätze der Erziehung und des Unterrichts (1796ff.), regarded as one of the earliest attempts to systematise the state of pedagogial knowledge in Germany, listed among the “properly pedagogical works on female education” not only the traditional French writings by Fénelon (1687, German trsl. 1698), Mme de Lambert (1729, German trsl. 1729) und Mme Leprince de Beaumont 1764 (German trsl. 1764, 1768) as well as several German works such as F. H. C. Schwarz’ Grundriß einer Theorie der Mädchenerziehung (Outline of a Theory of Female Education) (1792), but also the German translation of John Burton’s Vorlesungen über weibliche Erziehung und Sitten (Lectures on Female Education and Manners, 2 vol.).

Burton’s Lectures were first published in Germany in 1795, translated by Christian Felix Weisse, a poet and author of children’s and youth books; a second, improved edition followed in 1798 and 1799. The two volumes were reprinted in Vienna 1799, too. However, the impact of Burton’s writings on female education on the contemporary pedagogical discourse was not limited to Britain and Germany. They contributed to the transfer of pedagogical concepts and values in other English-speaking countries as well, with several editions and reprints both in Ireland and the United States. In my contribution I will deal with the international circulation of pedagogical thoughts, taking the translation and reception of Burton’s Lectures in Germany as example. A particular emphasis will be placed on the manner in which educational thoughts emerging from a specific cultural context are adopted into a different discursive system, how they served to support certain concepts and values and how they differed from the specifically national characteristics of the discours.

Gendered Dimensions of Education Controversies: The Case of the Greek Debate of Marasliaka, 1925-1926

Education has been constituted more and more, during the 20th century, socially, culturally and politically as a favourite field of encounters and antagonisms between different groups and agencies, a domain of power relationships revealing dominant trends and alternative attempts for changes. History of Education as well as social or political history tends to explain the phenomenon by taking predominantly advantages of the analytical categories of the ‘nation’ or the ‘class’. Gender is neglected or disregarded all though it is in many cases a category through which controversies and debates are rendered legible.
The aim is to highlight that gender dimension of the educational debates in Greece in the first decades of 20th century as well as its omission by the dominant historiographical explanations. The case of a Greek controversy taking place in 1925-1926 in a progressive school preparing teachers for the elementary schools is going to be paradigmatically the occasion to proceed to the above statements. In the focal point of the debate, stood a Greek pedagogue Roza Imbrioti and her way to teach history. Imbrioti was simultaneously an active member of the feminist movement of the period asserting political rights for women.

Language learning versus vocational training: French, Arab and British voices speak about indigenous girls’ education in XIXth-century colonial Algeria

The first school for indigenous girls in Algeria emerged in 1845 and was followed in 1850 by the creation of three other “Arab-French” schools for girls. These schools focused on teaching girls the rudiments–French language and grammar, reading, arithmetic and Arabic. The afternoon hours were devoted to sewing as in French primary schools at the time. This early focus on teaching French in order to achieve the “fusion of the races” by forming women who would be intermediaries between the French colonizers and indigenous families foundered in the early 1860s. In the place of language learning, the colonial administration decided to support vocational training and transformed the existing schools into embroidery workshops. These workshops, however, did not develop and multiply until the end of the 19th century when colonial administrators once more sought to include women in their “civilizing” efforts. The new legislation paid careful attention to the development of vocational skills, rather than learning French, revealing how policy had changed since mid-century.
This paper focuses in particular on the first school and then workshop created by Eugénie Luce whose example decisively influenced later developments. The workshop continued to exist until 1906 under the responsibility of Luce’s granddaughter, Henriette Benaben. The two women’s friendship with British women tourists had an impact on the way they promoted their activities and played a role in the shift toward teaching vocational skills. An analysis of the debates and discussion surrounding the nature of the Luce-Benaben school and workshop provide a way to question how cosmopolitan encounters and imperial examples shaped educational experiments in Algeria. By including the voices of French colonial administrators, Arab notables, British women visitors and, of course, Mme Luce herself, the paper argues for the importance of considering trans-imperial encounters, as well as the weight of individual actors, in the interpretation of shifting colonial educational policy.

Transnational connections in early twentieth century women teachers’ work

This paper focuses on Lillian de Lissa, foundation Principal of Gipsy Hill Training College in London, United Kingdom, and her graduates ‘who carried Gipsy Hill to the ends of the earth’. The first section highlights ways in which de Lissa, an Australian by birth, drew on and fostered transnational networks of people and discourses of progressive education. She was especially proud that a handful of students from countries such as China, Turkey and Canada studies at Gipsy Hill. Likewise, graduates who left British shores, either temporarily or permanently were featured in the College magazine, the Gipsy Trail. Some emigrated as teachers and missionaries, and others accompanied their husbands to countries such as Canada, the United States, New Zealand and South Africa. The second section of the paper examines reports from various British graduates for the ways in which they represented their lives and work overseas to readers of the Gipsy Trail. Together, de Lissa and these graduates constructed Gipsy Hill as a progressive educational institution whose influence transcended national boundaries. At the same time, however, they upheld a range of social divisions in their portrayals of people and places ‘in the uttermost parts of the earth’.

L'échange dans les campagnes au XVIe siècle: dette et société en Terre Ferme vénitienne (Vicence)

L'intervention consiste à prêter l'attention sur les échanges qui définissent les relations interpersonnelles en Terre Ferme vénitienne lors de la première modernité. Mis en lumière par les actes notariés enregistrés dans une vallée du nord-ouest de la province de Vicence au XVIe siècle, le lien social autorise une lecture renouvelée des rapports interindividuels, sur la base du contrat de nature économique, à les envisager sous l'angle anthropologique, conjuguant à la fois l'histoire sociale et politique, l'individu et l'émotion, la norme et la pratique de la justice civile.

Aspects of credit markets in Finland

n.a.

Without of sight? - Kinship, credit, risk and geographical distance in the 19th century Sweden

The aim of this paper is to outline a qualitative perspective in studying the importance of credit strategies in the rural area of Sweden, forming a base for successful entrepreneurship. The conditions that form the discussion is – according to geographic location, social relation and social position - why different creditors were more or less successful as "bankers", why they gave credit to different households, why the sustainability among credit relations were different, why some creditors forced some households to stake, but not others, the possibilities for negotiating credit agreements, and if the behaviour among creditors changed over time.

The ‘Parish Bankers’. Credit Relations and Early Banking: Evidence from Sweden during the 18th and 19th Centuries

Internationally there is a growing interest in exploring credit market structures before the modern industrial period, but research is often obstructed by the lack of adequate quantitative sources. In the Swedish case probate inventories of a homogeneous standard, at the level of the Swedish population statistical data and national registration, give greater opportunities for research than in many other countries.
The paper – that will set out from my doctoral dissertation at the Department of Ethnology, Stockholm University – will include not only a focused summary of this, but also make an attempt to make this field of investigation a subject to further examination, following the traces of this history backwards in time to the late 1700´s.
This new analysis will be established from the same kind of empirical data, supplemented with parish records, dealing with the same local community. It will achieve its purpose by deepening the analysis of interpersonal relations, taking also into consideration the cultural-theoretical implications of the developed interest in transaction costs, as well as possibly game theory.
Theories on human behaviour and transaction costs contribute to our present understanding of why new institutions, such as banks, were established. Private promissory notes had long been circulated as local instruments of credit, and to a much greater degree than the new banknotes. While the time period in question certainly favoured the development of banks, institutional economic theory doesn’t really highlight the cultural conditions relevant to their creation. People are cultural creatures. This narrative focuses on the importance of that – from an economic perspective.
Conditions for the institutionalisation of the credit market and its significance for economic growth and structural social change are investigated through a local historical study. Interpersonal relations are in focus – the social activity field expressed through credit transactions – both before and after the establishment of the local savings bank. In this particular case, the epistemological starting point and analytic method is the new cultural history.
The study has been facilitated by a technique that makes use of population statistical data and probate inventories where the economic circumstances of deceased persons are compared to those of a corresponding living population group. In short, the latter’s credits are estimated and compared with the local savings bank’s actual lending activities, and of which the discrepancy is not more than 10 percent.
The result shows that there were specific people in the local community who had the knowledge and ability to change the credit market in a very short time – within a generation. This happened during an intensive period for the country’s financial markets, where all the credit segments expanded at the same time.
This transformation was not, however, prompted by these “parish bankers”. In the economic web that had previously connected households to each other, and that consisted of chains of situations of a ritual character, the parish bankers had dominated. The formation of the savings bank meant the appearance of new actors: bank officials with strictly formalised routines. A kind of power shift occurred that contributed to a definite change – a discontinuity – in the history of the local credit market.
Are there possibly any more discontinuities transforming the credit market before the late 1800´s? One important question to ask is therefore how this set of locally active parish bankers emerged, by which methods they were discerned in the local community, and when that happened. And how may their emergence be viewed; what kind of difference did they make, from a wider societal perspective?

References
Anders Perlinge 2005. Sockenbankirerna. Kreditrelationer och tidig bankverksamhet. Vånga socken i Skåne 1840-1900. Nordiska museets handlingar 130. Nordiska museets förlag: Stockholm. ISBN 91-7108-500-9. 312 pp. Ill. With a 20 pp. English Summary. http://www.diva-portal.org/su/abstract.xsql?dbid=612 [Diss. Stockholm.]

National History in Global Perspective: Theoretical Considerations

The growing prominence of world history and the lived experience of contemporary globalization have combined to prompt fresh considerations of national histories and particularly of their relationships to larger patterns of global history. The most successful efforts to globalize national histories have enriched the understanding of national historical experiences by locating them in comparative and cross-cultural contexts that both extend and deepen received explanations of national histories. Nevertheless, there remain some tensions between the kind of global historical analysis favored by world historians and the approaches taken by those seeking to globalize national histories. World historians by no means deny the significance of national communities, but they do not recognize national communities as permanent or natural forms of social organization, and they certainly do not regard national communities or national states as meriting special privileges as focuses of historical analysis. In the very nature of their project, however, scholars working to globalize national histories run some risk of naturalizing the nation and (re)inscribing it as the default focus of historical attention. What status would globalized national histories afford to nations within the nation, such as Lakota and Native Hawaiians within the United States of America, Tibetans and Uighurs within the People’s Republic of China, or Kurds within the Republic of Turkey, the Republic of Iraq, and the Islamic Republic of Iran? Shall we envision globalized national histories for all 192 member states of the United Nations, many of which are also home to colonized or demographically overwhelmed minorities? While acknowledging that efforts to globalize national histories have enhanced the study of national historical experiences, this paper suggests that this scholarly project has not yet come fully to grips with the problem of the

National History in a Global Perspective: The American Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and the American Myth

The history of the United States as found in textbooks appropriate for middle level and secondary students from the nineteenth century through the early 1970’s provided students with a story of the nation that highlighted the exceptional nature of the Republic accompanied by a triumphal narrative of progress. Stories of slavery, civil war, economic hardship, and civil rights were included largely to demonstrate how American institutions and people were able to overcome such obstacles to further strengthen the State. The critique of this type of grand narrative has a long history and includes notables such as Charles and Mary Beard, William Appleman Williams, and more recently Eric Foner who took exception to the conceptual shallowness of these narratives that left out controversy and largely omitted the global context in which the history of America unfolded. In spite of, and because of their critique the controversy over national, or what is also called traditional history continues, intensified by the rapid changes that took place after World War II. The story of the American Civil Rights movement and its connection to the War in Vietnam encapsulates this controversy. To this day, textbooks continue to emphasize the traditional civil rights era and the politics engagement at the expense of a meaningful attempt to examine the more controversial black power years.

The ascendancy of the United States as a superpower in the context of the Cold War following World War II ensured that global contingences would have to be factored into the American narrative. For example, America’s record on civil rights already utilized against the United States by the Axis powers was highlighted by the Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China and their suzerains in a bid to make American assertions about the exceptional nature of their State problematic. The connections between the inequities found in the Third World were not lost on those within the Civil Rights movement in the United States who increasingly challenged American segregation and racism based on international law and precedent. The continued resistance to civil rights following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 led to a growing radicalization within parts of the civil rights movement. The intensification of American efforts in Vietnam 1962 – 1965 coincided with the seemingly unending violent resistance to the demand for civil rights. This led civil rights leaders such as John Lewis and Malcolm X to draw parallels to the violence being unleashed against people of color in the United States, Africa, and most notably Vietnam. Connecting the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese to the cause of civil rights was political fire. In many ways the Cold War liberal consensus found in mainstream American politics could tolerate the critique of those demanding equality before the law and dissent against foreign policy. It was another matter entirely however to align in a critique of the United States that was joined by America’s nemeses in the global system. Vietnam and the radicalized struggle for Civil Rights made the connection between the United States and the world explicit at a global level. Not surprisingly, setting this part of American national history in a global context has met extraordinary resistance.

This paper briefly revues the well established scholarship regarding Cold War Civil Rights and then continues, establishing linkages between Civil Rights and Vietnam as found in intellectual critique, the street, and at a popular level in sports. The division spawned by this critique of American foreign policy that seemingly linked parts of the civil rights movements with America’s nemeses further deepened divisions within the American polity that are felt today, reflected in both political discourse and importantly in the curriculum and standards found in American public schools. How do arguments pitting traditional vs. revisionist history resonate in schools? Are their lessons to be learned from contested national histories found outside the United States? This paper concludes with a review of current scholarship set against what is being taught in American public schools utilizing curriculum and standards found in Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia.

World War II: national or global history?

This paper focuses on the representation of World War II in popular culture (1945-2008) in Europe, North America and Asia. How do popular images of World War II, as (re)presented in internationally distributed (and translated) novels, movies and comic books, relate to the national narratives of this global conflict, which have been dominant in the institutionalized historical culture? An analysis of the main developments and influences in the production and reception of such representations in the globalizing postwar world will be presented. This will not only shed light on the national and international frameworks of history writing, but also on the worldwide transformation of popular historical culture in general and the collective memory of WWII in particular.

The beginnings and development of world-telecommunication in 19th century - Transnational qualities of national projects.

The conception and development of telegraph lines and telegraph networks goes back to a 200 years history. The study deals with aspects of globalisation of telecommunication in 19th cen-tury, focussing the transnational quality of national telecommunication projects.
The 19th century encloses the development from early telegraph experiments, the optical tele-graphs (semaphores) since late 18th century, to the invention and world wide diffusion of the Morse technique since the middle of the 19th century, and completed by intercontinental un-dersea wires since the middle of the 1860th. Telecommunication became an important tool of world economy and politics before the First World War.
Transnational qualities of national projects will be demonstrated with examples from three stages of development:
1. The period of early telecommunication (ca. 1800-1850) will be analysed from a global per-spective to point out unknown qualities of early data networks. The technical and national restricted telegraph facilities found already use for the support of international and even inter-continental transaction. Transnational qualities are visible in telegraph plans, codification, and practical use.
2. The integration of electric-magnetic telegraphy in Europe (ca. 1850-1865) was a short and successful process. But it is possible to point out that plans with national or bilateral character caused the essential effects on international and intercontinental integration. The integration in technology, administration and finance was realised in about 15 years.
3. Intercontinental telecommunication became possible with undersea cable connections (ca. 1865-1914) in hand of private national companies (North Atlantic area). Sensitive and com-plex systems of strategic cooperation and aggressive competition among the companies guar-anteed permanent telegram intercourse on a very high standard.

à la recherche d'un primitivisme fédérateur, le peintre Atlan rencontre le groupe Cobra

Venu de Constantine, se réclamant de ses racines judéo-berbères et de son africanité, le peintre Atlan connaît à Paris après 1945 un succès immédiat. Sa peinture sort des canons européens et affirme sa singularité qui le rapproche des peintres novateurs en Europe du groupe Cobra (Copenhague-Bruxelles-Amsterdam) qui prône la recherche d'un primitivisme fédérateur pour renouveler l'expression artistique.

Le particularisme togolais, expression d’une hybridité multidimensionnelle ?

Paper title:
La situation politique au Togo en fait un cas atypique dans la sous-région ouest africaine. Sur l’échiquier politique, les facteurs de différenciation sociale tirent leur fondement des considérations culturelles, qui elles-mêmes sont tout aussi diversifiées que les intérêts socioéconomiques. Sans remonter jusqu’à la mise en place lointaine du peuplement, il est loisible de détecter que, dès le XVIe siècle, période des premiers contacts avec l’Occident, une variété d’influence socioculturelle dont les impacts sont restés pérennes et continuent de marquer la personnalité des Togolais.
Au nombre de ces valeurs, il y a à noter, dès l’ère de la traite négrière, avec les premiers contacts avec les négriers sur la côte un début de métissage précoce qui va se poursuivre avec le retour des Afro-Brésiliens, anciens esclaves revenus sur les côtes africaines à partir du milieu du XIXe siècle. Les influence participant à l’hybridation culturelle se retrouve, en dehors du métissage physique, dans les emprunts linguistiques, les habitudes alimentaires, dans l’architecture, mais également dans les pratiques religieuses et plus généralement dans la pensée et la conception du monde. A tous cela sont venus se surajoutés l’influences d’une triple colonisations : allemande, anglaise, puis française, qui ont laissé des traces très visibles surtout dans les centres urbains. A ces influences très prégnantes dans la zone côte, se sont mêlées celle d’une culture soudanaise, parfois islamique, venues du nord de l’Afrique, dues au commerce interafricains en direction est-ouest, portées par les diaspora haoussas, soninké, etc. D’autres influences sont simplement le fait de l’interférence du voisinage des aires culturelles notamment akan à l’ouest, yoruba, à l’est, gourma au nord.
De ces influences multiformes, il résulte un niveau d’hybridité culturelle qui confère des capacités d’adaptation relativement rapides des Togolais faces aux différentes influences culturelles.

Le cinéma,un véhicule culturel en contexte colonial

Dans les colonies, puis dans les pays indépendants, le cinéma s'offre à la fois comme un vivier d'images dans lequel puiser et comme un scène où se rejouent les relations interpersonnelles. Les images mouvantes permettent d'instaurer un dialogue avec le monde extérieur, d'échanger avec un au-delà inconnu des éléments symboliques qui peuvent être recyclés localement. Circulent des bribes de western, de films hindous, de comédies égyptiennes… et plus récemment de productions de Bollywood qui véhiculent chants, attitudes, dialogues dont l'impact reste à mesurer.

Saint Louis du Senegal: Hybrid Identities and French Colonialism in a Nineteenth Century West African Town

Saint Louis du Senegal emerged in the nineteenth century as a thriving port town located at the intersection of West Africa and the francophone Atlantic World. Founded in 1659 as a fortified trade post for French merchants seeking human and material resources to satisfy a growing demand for slave labor in the Americas and the needs of an expanding capitalist and industrial economy in Western Europe, the island town served a key role in facilitating trade relations between Senegal and France. The viability of the town, however, depended on the autonomy of the local population. The Saint Louis community served as middlemen and translators, builders and food preparers, river boat crews and the wives of European strangers. They came from the Senegalese countryside and various European countries. Marriages between African women and European men produced a distinct “mulatto” class. These individuals provided the trust, cooperation and security needed to carry out across linguistic, national, international and cultural borders. In creating this dynamic trade society, the inhabitants of Saint Louis forged new identities that were uniquely rooted to their place and time. Nineteenth century writings by European travelers and officials reveal inherent biases based on their perception of Africa that obscures the world that local inhabitants created. Intense scholarly focus on Africa’s role in the Atlantic economy has also created lacunae in our knowledge of the social and cultural history of West African port towns.
The paper that I propose for the 21st Congrés International des Sciences Historiques (22-28 Aug 2010), examines the construction of identity in Saint Louis, Senegal during the nineteenth century. I pay particular attention to how notions of Saint Louis identity shifted in response to the expansion of formal French colonialism. Between 1816 and 1895, Saint Louis transformed from a remote outpost for mercantile trade to the capital of the Senegal colony and the temporary capital of French West Africa. I argue that Saint Louis identity neither corresponded directly to African societies of the interior or to that of metropolitan France. Saint Louis identity also did not conform neatly to notions of syncretism or creolization. Rather, this town gave rise to a cosmopolitan society of different national, ethnic, linguistic and religious identities increasingly shaped by their relationship to the states and societies of the Senegal River valley, trans-Atlantic commerce and a discourse around universal citizenship and republican democracy taking shape in nineteenth century France and the French West Indies. The changing environment of French colonialism transformed Saint Louis identity into one united by Republican citizenship but differentiated in new ways by race, class and religion.
My paper offers a re-reading of accounts by European travelers and officials combined with study of archival records, publications such as the Moniteur du Senegal, private papers and portrait photographs. Based on extensive field work, this paper sheds light on an overlooked aspect of African history and casts new light on modern Atlantic and French colonial history by suggesting that these locations were not solely formed by elite European actors but by local inhabitants of the colonies and remote outposts.

Hybridité musicale: Réponse ou défi à la colonisation en Afrique?

Colonialism posed the challenge of coexistence amid almost insurmountable differences. Some French looked to music for help. Seemingly neutral because empowering a notion of race as an imaginative projection beyond the known and the knowable and yet a construct with a purpose, music was expected to infuse energy into the colonial process. In Algeria, those seeking a rationale for French imperialism in the region saw in the Phrygian (Greek) musical mode used by the Kabyles an argument that these people were distantly related to Europeans and thus particularly apt for assimilation. European settlers, hoping that the area could give birth to a new “Mediterranean race” formed of the intermingling of Europeans and locals willing to embrace France, looked to music to provide a sense of the culture that they shared and a means of community-building. Yet, inevitably, the performance of opera, orchestral, and chamber music contributed to their distinction from the colonized. Music was also expected to help address the problem of assimilation among the indigenous people: through songs taught in schools and performance on Western instruments, the colonized would take the moeurs and values of the colonizer literally into their bodies. Performance on Western-style military drums and violins, such as in parades on July 14 in Madagascar and elsewhere, could be understood as suggesting latent respect for French culture.

This paper will examine musical hybridities in Africa created by both colonizers and the colonized, lending new meaning to Homi Bhabha’s concept of “unresolved and unresolvable hybridity.” For example, the “indecision” and “uncertainty” resulting from the juxtaposition and superimposition of timbres, themes, and temperaments associated with Western and Arabic music in Saint-Saëns’s “Rapsodie mauresque,” together with the “compromise” westerners accepted because of the “rational succession of the chords,” is a kind of musical metaphor for the benefits and the costs inherent in colonialism. Elements borrowed from Arab music may infuse French music with new kinds of sounds and musical effects. But by ignoring the effects of displacement and disjunction on the borrowed objects and their meaning, exotic melodies lose their most distinctive characteristics when combined with Western musical procedures and therefore some of their capacity to signify.

Although marches were used by European militaries to symbolize the social order they were imposing, as in Saint-Saëns "Marche militaire française" that follows the "Rapsodie" in his Suite algérienne, in the hands of the colonized their meaning changed in significant ways. One such example, as discussed by T.O. Ranger, is a form of East African music called ngoma, march-like music and dance based on the idea of military drill. This music was an attempt not only to absorb and master what was considered powerful in the life of their conquerors, a way of becoming "modern," they were also a form of resistance, a way to reject the colonizers' emasculinization, recast the expression of their own communal values, find new outlets for artistic innovation, and maintain their own pride and prestige among their peers.

Looking at history through the lens of music, musical instruments, and performances, French understanding of themselves and their colonialism comes across as something less settled than we might have imagined, their tensions mediated by representations whose interpretive outcomes were far from stable.

Colonial Encounters: A Danish Planter in German east Africa, 1888-1906

In 1888, Christian Lautherborn set out to establish a cotton plantation for the German East Africa Company in Pangani, Tanzania. Little did he know that he was heading out at a dramatic moment, and would soon (literally) be caught in the crossfire of a war between the coastal Africans, the Zanzibar government and German imperialist interventions. Lautherborn stayed through the war, during which he saw military action and rebuilt much of war torn Bagamoyo, and stayed on to set up and manage plantations for the Germans until his death in 1906. While in Tanzania, Lauterborn wrote a series of letters , some published in a local Danish newspaper and some written privately to family. He was soon fluent in Swahili, and had unusual access to African, Arab and Indian workers, business people and townsmen. Lautherborn spent eighteen years in Tanzania, with regular visits home. The letters reveal his acceptance of colonial discourses, while at the same time revealing changes to his thinking and writing over time. The paper will use the letters as a means for analysing the relationship between colonial discourse and assumptions and the impact of living in a complex, colonial world which often encouraged hybrid, multiple identities over time.

A substantial number of Chr. Lautherborn’s letters home were printed in a newspaper, Vendsyssel Tidende, as “Letters from our correspondent in German East Africa”. The paper will take its point of departure in an analysis of differences between what may be termed the “public” and the “private” discourses in the letters. Parts of the letters may be read as a contribution to the formation of a colonial discourse in Denmark/Europe. Here one finds a number of familiar stereotypes about Africa and Africans. On the other hand, some of the letters, often eyewitness accounts of incidents that diverge from the common colonial discourse, suggest very different interpretations. These divergences occur more often as time passes and the author becomes more acclimatized to the complex ways colonial societies work on the ground. The letters may thus be read both as a way of negotiating African experiences and European expectations and also as evidence of cultural adaptation and hybridity.

The paper will therefore comment on discrepancies between common stereotypes present in the letters about the African’s childishness, laziness etc. and Chr. Lautherborn’s actions as a plantation manager and member of colonial society. A careful reading of Chr. Lautherborn’s letters also reveals a number of contradictions between what he says and what he does. The contradictions between discourse and actions raise some important questions about established notions about the power of discourse, and suggest a need to adopt a more nuanced view on the relationship between discourse and agency, where the concept of enactment/performativity (Judith Butler) may prove useful.
It is in our view paramount that we leave room for conflicts, nuances and contradictions when we discuss colonial history besides the obvious line of conflict between colonisers and colonised and try to look behind the stereotypes, which abound in colonial discourse, and look for subtexts, contradictions and nuances in the colonial discourse.

Beyond the abuses of history

Beyond the abuses of history
More than 300 scholars of classical Greece recently signed a petition to President Obama asking him to “erase a historical fault” in Southeastern Europe. They urged him to intervene and change the constitutional name of Macedonia on behalf of “historical truth”. Archeologists, philologists and historians, most are people of high reputation and belong to prestigious institutions, in the United States and Europe. The idea expressed in my paper is that political intervention in historical research has also a reverse aspect: the intervention of historians (and academia in general) in politics. As a consequence, and from a broader perspective, there is no single dimension to this confrontation. Of course, the long history of mutual confrontation and interconnectedness between history and politics can hardly be considered a novelty. But is it something new in the last two decades? There are several discourses on how to approach and how to understand these changes, and the paper will explore them, searching for a new understanding beyond the uses and abuses of history and beyond the confrontation between history and memory. The scope of this paper is not to promote a relativist approach, but just to outline the landscape in which critical historians are working.

L'histoire, la mémoire et la loi en France (1990-2008)

La France s'est fait une spécialité pendant quinze ans de l'ingérence du pouvoir politique dans la recherche et l'enseignement de l'histoire : loi Gayssot (1990), destinée à lutter contre le négationnisme ; loi dite Taubira (2001), qui fait de l'esclavage et de la traite atlantique des Noirs un "crime contre l'humanité" ; loi "par laquelle la République française reconnaît le génocide arménien" (2001) ; loi en faveur des "Français rapatriés d'Afriuque du Nord", qui "reconnaît le rôle positif de la présence française outre-mer" (2005). Ce modèle français dit des "lois mémorielles" a été exporté à l'échelle européenne par une décision-cadre, adoptée en novembre 2008, qui aggrave et élargit à l'ensemble de l'Union les dispositions prévues par la loi Gayssot.
Inquiets des risques d'une moralisation rétrospective du passé et d'une censure intellectuelle généralisée, l'association Liberté pour l'Histoire s'est créée en 2005 sous la présidence de René Rémond. Elle obtenu en particulier deux résultats importants : une commision du Parlement français a conclu à la nécessité de renoncer à poursuivre cette dérive législative ; à l'échelle européenne, un mécanisme dit de l'option permet aux Etats de ne reconnaître le crime contre l'humanité que dans les cas où il a été ainsi qualifié par un tribunal pénal international.
Par-delà les risques que font courir aux historiens de telles dispositions criminalisantes, se pose le probème de ce qu'elles signifient en termes philosophiques et historiques dans la cité contemporaine.

'Expert in Truth'. When the Historian Collaborates with the Judge

With the end of World War II has become more and more common to utilize historical studies for the political condemnation of totalitarian regimes, above all the Nazism; nevertheless, the utilization of historians in trials is more recent. At Nuremberg historians did not play any important role; for the Eichmann trial had to be, those who performed the investigation consulted the then available historical studies, and used the archive and the staff of Yad Vashem; however, the only historian who was called (from the Prosecutor) to bear witness was Salo Baron, teaching Jewish History at Columbia University, who witnessed about the Jewish life in Europe before the Shoah.
Just after a few years (1963-1965), in the Frankfurt trial against 22 officers of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, some historians of the München Institut für Zeitgeschichte (among them Martin Broszat) witnessed as advisers of the Prosecutor. It is only at the end of the 80s that a new historian asserts himself, “who choose to play the role of ‘expert’ in public debates about the past” (Carole Fink quoted by Harriet Jones, Kjell Östberg and Nico Randeraad, Introduction to Contemporary history opn trial. Europe since 1989 and the Role of the Expert Historian, Manchester and new York, Manchester University Press, 2007, p. 1)
Since its foundation as a branch of learning, history – as well the historians - has been utilized to fix the borders of the identity, the belonging to a local or national community, to support “that set of customs and values that constitutes for a people the sense of their identity and their fortunes” (Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Riflessioni sull’oblio, in Aa.Vv., Usi dell’oblio, Parma, Pratiche editrici, 1990 [1988], p. 19). However in the utilization of the historian as an expert in a court there is something more than in the past public uses (and abuses) of history: that is, to be convinced that it is possibile to operate according to thuth and justice.
Coming to Italy, I want to observe that in the previous decades I know only one case of a historian utilized as expert in a court: in 1976, in the trial at the Court of Assizes in Trieste against the officers operating in the Risiera of S. Sabba camp, prof. Enzo Collotti witnessed as an adviser of the Court. The new season opened with the trials against Eric Priebke, for the Ardeatine Caves massacre, at the Military Court in Rome (1996-1998), in which prof. Gerhard Schreiber, from the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, operated as a prosecutor’s expert. Since then, about 15 judicial enquiries arrived at the hearing phase, and often historians were called, exclusively by the public Prosecutors, to operate as experts: as a matter of fact, the studies on massacres of italian civilians by German army have had a remarkable development in the last 15 years, and sometimes the historians, also out of a courtroom, has been committed the responsibility of a final verdict on the actual responsibility of facts which divided the communities which suffered because of them: if the material German executioners often have been put into the shade, the memories divided on the partisans’ role, accused by a part of the survivors and relatives of victims to have caused with useless actions the German reprisal and to have not defended the people.
One thing, however, is that the judges read books of history, able to give them the necessary information and to orientate them while performing the role of prosecutor or judge. Completely different it is a situation in which the historical truth has an official character, through the writing of an historian, which has the character of a sworn expert report. To this problem I will devote my paper.

Humanising history by mourning and forgiving – how to deal with traumatic experiences of the past

The paper is divided into three parts. The first one reflects the specific nature of traumatic historical experiences. The Holocaust will be used as a paradigm, and fundamental issues of generating and destroying historical sense will be addressed. The second part gives an overview over the usual treatment of the Holocaust and similar events in present day historical culture with special respect to identity politics. Its main thesis is that in this treatment historical trauma functions as means for identity formation which lead to inadequate ways of historical thinking. The third part discusses the problem of moralizing in history and proposes new modes of historical sense-generation in historical culture: mourning and forgiving. They will be described as factors of humanizing historical thinking in its public function.