News and events

Up-coming events

The programme is continuously updated. New events might be advertised with short notice. External participants are welcome but preferably on a regular basis. Since the number of seats is limited pre-registration with project coordinator Minna Vainio (minna.vainio[at]helsinki.fi) is requested.

23 May
16-18
"The Finnish Civil War",
by Lars Westerlund

A panel by Lars Westerlund, who has written extensively about the wars in Finland and Baltikum in 1918-1919 and about the treatment of Russian prisoners of war during World War II, will provide input for a discussion.

venue: Tieteiden Talo, room 313

Past Events

9 May
15-17

History-Literature-Fiction/Fact-Ideology
by Hayden White (bio)

The seminar was Co-organised by The Research Project Europe 1815-1914, CENS and the Finnish Literature Society

In this seminar emeritus professor Hayden White reminded the audience of the difference between studying an aspect of history and telling history.  Nearly forty years after the publication of the groundbreaking first edition of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, White insisted on close readings to analyze the literary devices used by authors writing “history” and declared that historiography is a discourse rather than a discipline.  The composition of a story about the facts is a different operation than the existence of the facts themselves.  The facts do not tell a history. Only the historian can construct a narrative from the facts, said White. The historian as writer constructs a story from a caos of facts by fashioning and emplotting them.  Narrative history has the same epistemic force as myth, and constitutes a way of mastering temporality to flatten ontology.
To illustrate his well known theory, White used the examples of the history of the holocaust written by Saul Friedlander. Friedlander has criticized White as a relativist, and believed that a master narrative of the holocaust was possible and necessary, so he set out to write one. He researched the facts for twenty years and recently published a more than 600 page book titled The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945 that tried to avoid “even a hint of fiction” by leaving out central protagonists and plots.  White pointed out that Friedlander, however, was also in the business of construction because he used several literary devices to tell a new story of the holocaust.  In other words, White demonstrated that even someone who tries to avoid the classical techniques of story telling, must use others that still convey a type of story, even if the story seems different to previous ones.
 White declared himself a “pastologist”: someone interested in how people used their knowledge of the past for taking a stance in the present.  He also said he was “the last Marxist” in the sense that he continued to believe that the idea of history writing is related to the spread of Christianity and capitalism, and that the present world economic and environmental crisis are the consequence of capitalism´s paradigm of consumption and waste.

Finally,  White explained how he was now more in the business of advicing young writers rather than proposing anything novel, because “I have already said what I had to say”.  His advice to to young historians was that they should write whenever they begin a project and not limit themselves to waiting to use an outline and to collect all the necessary “facts.” In his own experience, White has found that he only discovers what he knows and wants to say by writing it first, without worrying about the form it will take later.  He also reminded young historians that they are not “researchers,”  they are writers, therefore they need to learn how to write well more than  develop further research skills, because history is not a science and life is not logical.

8May
14-16
"From Law to Luxury - Entering the Nineteenth Century through Antoine Yves Goguet´s Stadial Theory of Human Understanding", by Liliana Obregon

Obregón presented a new version of the first chapter of her book manuscript based on a reading of Antoine Yves Goguet´s “The Origins of the Laws, Arts and Sciences and their Progress in the Most Ancient Nations” (1758).  Goguet´s work was quickly translated into all major European languages and was extensively read and cited well into the nineteenth century.  Obregón places Goguet as central opening chapter to the book because he sets forth a theory of progress based on legal development in growing civilizations. Obregón argued that Goguet´s narrative had a normative effect as it valued certain practices over others, and created the imagination of evolutionary hierarchies based on his conjectural analysis of historical causation. EReRe colleagues gave feedback on how to better present this idea in the book.

17 April
14-17
"History, experience and modernity in México, 1750-1850" by Guillermo Zermeno, Colmex

Inspired on by the historical theoretical approach of Reinhart Koselleck, the presentation examined if in Mexico "history" was experienced as "modern". The new experience of modernity there  was distinguished by disarticulating and reconfiguring the classical relations of temporality. Essentially, the answer to the question was positive, albeit there were overlapping and far from uniform developments, especially comparing the former European imperial centers with the new American nations.

The presentation by Zermeno and the discussion of it was followed by the discussion of a work in progress report by Francisco Ortega:"The Writing of History and social diversity in the Great Colombia, 1820-1840"

EReRe members gathered for a double session seminar focusing on the uses of history in the Iber-American world in the nineteenth century. During the first hour, guest speaker Guillermo Zermeño Padilla, professor at the Colegio de México in Mexico City and current Visiting Professor at the University of Santander in Spain, spoke about the relation between experience and modernity in Spanish America through a conceptual analysis of the concept of History. Based on a comparative study of the semantic transformations of the concept of history in nine Ibero-American countries between 1750 and 1850, Zermeño argued that the conceptual conditions that gave way to the experience of modernity in Western Europe –and that resulted in a dismantling and reshaping of classical relations of temporality-- can be detected in the Iberian-Atlantic. If the Ibero-American world can therefore be understood as being part of the transformations of political modernity, how then should we understand its relation with democratic institutions and stability?

During the second hour EReRe researcher Francisco Ortega presented a chapter of his monograph, provisionally titled “Born of the Same Womb, Different in Origin and Blood:  Social Fragmentation and the Making of the Gran Colombian Republics 1770-1870.” Ortega’s presentation explored the emergence of a discourse on “our Muisca antiquities” in mid nineteenth century New Granada as an important language by which white Creoles appropriated indigenous Chibcha pasts and incorporated it into the making of a national identity. This appropriation took place at the very same time that liberal legislation dismantled Muisca indigenous communal lands and thus deliberately contributed to the dispersal of indigenous communities and the forgetting of indigenous traditions and identity.

 

21 March
14-16
Planning for the Public Conclusion of the Project in June 2013 and the Announcement of Two New Working Groups and Three Additional Publications.

EReRe researchers met for the announcement of two new working groups, Ordering the World in the Nineteenth Century: Beyond Realism and Idealism and Property and Poverty: Perspectives on the Nineteenth-Century Social Question.  The first group, Ordering the World in the Nineteenth Century seeks to offer a fresh perspective on the emergence of novel ways of thinking about the international order in nineteenth-century Europe, with a particular emphasis on investigating the discursive landscape of legal and political theory. On the other hand, the second working group, Property and Poverty, investigates the rise of the nineteenth-century ‘Social Question’ and its decisive impact on European political, social and economic thought.  The aim of this group is to produce new perspectives on the conceptual dislocation produced by the transformative social changes of the age of industrialization. Both groups are coordinated by Thomas Hopkins and count with internationally leading scholars among their members. They will meet throughout the next two years and aim to have a book ready by the end of next year.  In addition, EReRe researchers decided on a final schedule for 2013 and agreed on a third additional publications showcasing in one volume the scope and diversity of the EReRe research group.

6 March
14-16 Peter Holquist, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, presents his monograph on "The Role of Russian in the Development of the Laws of War in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century"
Jukka Kekkonen will comment the text.
venue: Tieteiden Talo, room 313

How was it possible for an illiberal state such as the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to be at the forefront in advancing the cause of the international law in the European continent?  Presenting a substantial part of his research project ‘By right of War’, Peter Holquist drew attention in the seminar to a growing role of the Russian Empire in extending and codifying the international law of war. Of particular importance to Holquist’s assessment were the emergence of international law as a discipline in Imperial Russia and the notable influence of legal scholars in the actions of the Russian state both domestically and internationally.
Another crucial aspect of his project was to assess how these normative principles were used in particular historical cases, such as Bulgaria and Anatolia during the 1877-1878 Russo Turkish War, Manchuria during and in the aftermath of the 1900-1901 Boxer rebellion and others. For him these examples highlighted how international law became an ‘indispensable part of the mental furniture of statesmen and scholars,’ recognising also that the Russian government tried to circumvent the limits of the international law, as in the cases of expropriation of Jewish property in occupied Austrian Galicia and that of expulsion of Russian subjects of Muslim faith from Kars and Batumi regions.

The paradox, then, of an illiberal state, such as Imperial Russia, strongly making the case for the establishment of international law can be explained, first by doing way with the dichotomy of liberal versus illiberal states as guides in international law, and secondly, by recognising the historical contradiction in Imperial Russia whereby there was disregard for internal rule of law but great support for the idea that the relation between states should be regulated by law.     

5 March
14-16 Adrian Brisku presents the Russian part of his monograph project "The Illusory Politics of Change and Stability in the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1815-1914", with discussant, Peter Holquist University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Brisku presented the Russian side of his comparative study, following from his presentation at the EReRe Project’s Midstream Conference in October 2011, which focused on the Ottoman sections.   After describing the general framework for his revised text and his plans for completion, Brisku gave the floor to Peter Holquist for commentary. Holquist, a Russian specialist, gave a very nuanced, helpful response to Brisku’s draft manuscript, both in terms of sharpening its general comparative parameters and, more specifically, addressing those aspects of Russian history that would be most illuminating to emphasize within the context of an inquiry about the meaning of “empire” in the nineteenth century.   He suggested that the retrospective tendency to see Russia as somehow “apart” from Europe is historically misguided; rather, Russia was not only a part of Europe, but a very successful part, at least up until the mid-nineteenth century.   He raised the key comparative-analytic question of what it meant to forge a modernizing empire at that time, rather than a modernizing national “state,”and how this might bear on the Brisku’s overall project and the ways in which he characterizes similarities and differences between the two empires.

Brisku appreciated Holquist’s careful review of his work, and responded by describing how it would help in bringing his manuscript to completion.   The floor was then opened up for general discussion and debate, with Holquist and Brisku both fielding questions about the latter’s work and the issues it raised for the EReRe Project’s general aim of re-evaluating the “European Century.”  This very interesting and intellectually stimulating session concluded on a positive and encouraging note, with acknowledgment of the importance of Brisku’s study to the overall goals of the project.

15 Feb
14-16
Presentations of revised versions of monograph introductions. Liliana Obregon and Francisco Ortega

In this seminar Liliana Obregon and Francisco Ortega presented updated versions of their respective manuscripts’ introductions. Each of them drew attention to the significant changes they had introduced in their works in light also of the feedback received at the mid-stream conference. The ensuing discussion focused on these changes (in Liliana’s case they entailed a rather substantial rearrangement of the manuscript’s structure) and provided close comments on the texts – which are well on tract to provide valuable contributions to the overall project.

19 Jan
19-22 Planning for the phasing out stage,
CLOSED SESSION.

18 Jan
14-17Presentations by team members of revised versions of monograph introductions,
CLOSED SESSION.

17 Jan
13-15 Thomas Hippler and Milos Vec present the Introduction of the volume Paradoxes of Peace

The co-directors of the EReRe Project’s working group on ‘Paradoxes of Peace’ met with the core-group in Helsinki to present their plans for publishing the papers delivered over the course of the working groups two preceding meetings.   In the course of a fruitful two-hour meeting, there was discussion of the editors’ introduction, presented here as a work-in-progress, and of the overall structure of the proposed volume.