The Roots of Global Civil Society. From the Rise of the Press to the Fall of the Wall 1-3 October 2009
This two and a half day conference, organised by the World History graduate workshop and supported by the Centre, took place in the Winstanley Lecture Hall in Trinity College. The concept of global civil society has gained currency in recent years among social scientists and public policy practitioners. However, it is often seen as a contemporary phenomenon -- a by-product of the wellspring of popular sentiment leading to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or of the increasingly integrated global system emerging in its wake. The conference brought together both senior and junior scholars working across a broad range of periods and geographical areas to explore the idea of 'global society' from a variety of perspectives in an attempt to find common ground. By examining historical lineages of global civil society, the conference sought a critical understanding of the ideals of a deeply entangled global community and the possibilities of a cosmopolitan world. Click here for theprogramme and the conference poster.
July 2009
Réinterpréter l’Ancien Régime 1 July 2009 A meeting organised by David Todd and Pierre Singaravelou took place at the Collège de France on 1 July 2009. Participants included Christophe Charle, Jacques Revel, Daniel Roche, Emma Rothschild and Gareth Stedman Jones. For further information, visit the meeting web site.
June 2009
History of Economic Ideas in South Asia 13 June 2009
An informal half-day meeting took place in King's College on 13 June 2009. The meeting considered the History of Economic Ideas in South Asia and was the first in a series of meetings in connection with a new project being planned by the Centre for History and Economics at Cambridge and at Harvard. Click here for the meeting agenda and the list of participants.
Apocalypse in the stacks? 10 June 2009 Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
Centre for History and Economics seminar, Trinity Hall, Trinity Lane.
May 2009
Re-thinking the 1820s: Europe, Latin America, and the Persistence of Mutual Influence in a Decade of Transformation 29-30 May 2009
Gabriel Paquette (Cambridge) and Michael Brown (Bristol) organised a Joint Centre supported symposium, that took place in Trinity College on 29-30 May 2009. The aim of the symposium was to bring together historians interested in the connections between Europe and Latin America during the tumultuous 1820s, a decade better known for an ever-widening chasm between the Old World and the New than for their convergence. For further information, visitthe conference web site.
Some Indian views on land-rights in eighteenth century Bengal: petitions as political thought 13 May 2009 Robert Travers, Cornell University.
Centre for History and Economics seminar, Trinity Hall, Trinity Lane.
April 2009
Protectionism and Nationalism in 19th-century France 30 April 2009 David Todd (Centre for History and Economics and Trinity Hall, Cambridge) spoke on Protectionism and Nationalism in 19th-century France at a meeting of the History and Economics Seminar held at the Harvard Center for History and Economics.
Two Subjects of Empire: Race, Nation, and the Law from Jamaica to London, 1823-30 16 April 2009 Caitlin Anderson (Trinity College, Cambridge) presented a paper on Race, Nation, and the Law from Jamaica to London, 1823-30 at a meeting of the History and Economics Seminar held at the Harvard Center for History and Economics.
February 2009
Religion and the Law Workshop 23 February 2009 A workshop was organized by the Harvard Center for History and Economics and the South Asia Initiative. The papers presented engaged the problem of religious belief and its relationship to the law, in different times and places. The purpose of the workshop was to combine a discussion of the specific work of scholars doing innovative work in the fields of law and religion with a broader discussion of shared theoretical and methodological concerns.
History and the Archives of the Future: How Digitization Changes Everything 20 February 2009 Leigh Denault presented a talk on 'History and the Archives of the Future: How Digitization Changes Everything' at the EHumanities workshop, The Archive in the Digital Age, on Friday 20 February at CRASSH (full programme).
Resurrecting Universal Empire: Spain, Europe and the Americas, 1680-1780 4 February 2009 William O'Reilly (Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge, and Visiting
Scholar, Harvard University)
presented a paper to a meeting of the International History Seminar at Harvard University. He spoke about Resurrecting Universal Empire: Spain, Europe and the Americas, 1680-1780
August 2008
Digital resources for historical research - 3 11 August 2008
The third in a series of meetings to discuss the opportunities, shortcomings, and future development of new digital resources. The meeting was set up in part to introduce the new steering group of the project on Digitization of History and took place in the Computer Laboratory.
June 2008
Instruments of Empire: Science, Information, and French Colonization in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 9 June 2008
This workshop discussed the various means that were used to foster French colonial/imperial expansion and to maintain colonial possessions in the 17th and 18th centuries. It investigated “instruments of empire” in the broadest sense; this could include instruments such as forms of bureaucracy, government information networks, the sciences associated with navigation, cartographic practices, trade policies, or even human beings. Click here for the programme and the list of participants.
The Bhagavad Gita and Modern Indian Thought 6-7 June 2008
Shruti Kapila and Faisal Devji organised a workshop, supported by the Centre, which aimed to bring together an international group of major intellectual and social historians to discuss modern interpretations of the ‘Gita’ as a philosophical and ethical text both within South Asia and also on its ‘outward journey’ into western political debate. The workshop took place on 6-7 June in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and a second meeting is scheduled to take place in early 2009 at the New School University, New York. The resulting volume, provisionally entitled Politics in Action: Gita and Indian Modernity, will interrogate the relationship between political thought, religion and modernity. Participants included Chris Bayly, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sunil Khilnani, Aishwary Kumar, Rochona Majumdar, Uday Mehta, Polly O'Hanlon and Andrew Sartori. For further information, please contact Shruti Kapila at sk555@cam.ac.uk. Click here for the programme/list of participants.
L’internationalisation de l’histoire de France / The Internationalization of the history of France, 1750-2000 3 June 2008 A workshop, co-organised by the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po and the Centre for History and Economics, was held in Paris at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques on 3 June 2008. The workshop examined the implications of recent trends in global, imperial and transnational history on the history of France. It highlighted the international dimension of three aspects of modern French history: the end of the Old Regime in the late 18th century; the ideological origins of the Second French Colonial Empire in the 19th century; and intellectual exchanges within the French postcolonial world since 1950. Participants included Robert Aldrich (Sydney), Christophe Charle, Richard Drayton (Cambridge), Marcel Dorigny (Paris VIII), and Robert Tombs (Cambridge). Click here for the programme and the list of participants.
May 2008
Research in a digital age - experience from The National Archives 28 May 2008, 5.00pm, B-Dining Room, Trinity Hall Natalie Ceeney (Chief Executive, The National Archives) and David Thomas (Director of Technology and Chief Information Officer, The National Archives) presented a seminar on the challenges and opportunities of research in the digital age, organised with the Digitization of History project.
April 2008
Digitization of the Robert Hart Collection at Queen's University Belfast 29 April 2008, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University Deirdre Wildy (Senior Subject Librarian, Arts and Humanities, Queen’s University Belfast) and Jennifer Regan (Visiting Research Fellow 2007-08, Queen’s University Belfast) presented a seminar outlining their experience digitizing the Robert Hart Collection at Queen's University.
December 2007
Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies, c.1750-1830 12-14 December 2007, Cambridge University
The workshop, organised by Gabriel Paquette, sought to broaden and reinvigorate the debate about the connections between enlightenment thought and government reform in Southern Europe and its overseas empires. The participants, drawn from universities in Britain, Latin America, Continental Europe, and North America compared and contrasted the varieties of enlightened reform in Italy, Portugal, France, Spain, Brazil, and Spanish America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Emphasis was placed on the exchanges of ideas about reform across states and empires, and between the Old World and the New. The workshop took place in the Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and Trinity College.
November 2007
Informal Conversations on the Historian's Craft 20 November 2007, Harvard University
The next in the series of conversations organised by the Cambridge-Harvard Mellon Program on Exchanges of Economic and Political ideas since 1760 was with Professor Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library. Earlier conversations were with Professor C.A.Bayly (October 25 2005), Professor Bernard Bailyn (November 22 2005), and Professor Drew Gilpin Faust (November 1 2006).
October 2007
Slavery and the Law 30 October 2007, Harvard University
Roundtable Discussion with Professor Megan Vaughan, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, and author of Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius, Professor Walter Johnson, and Professor Emma Rothschild.
August 2007
French Empires 1 August 2007
An informal meeting was held on French empires, in connection
with the Exchanges of Economic and Political Ideas since 1760 project. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
June 2007
Digital resources for historical research - 2 8 June 2007
The second in a series of meetings to discuss the opportunities, shortcomings, and future development of new digital resources was held at King’s College on 8 June 2007. These conversations have been initiated and encouraged through the Centre’s work in connection with the Cambridge-Harvard Mellon programme on exchanges of economic and political ideas.
Places as Scenes and Symbols: Revisiting the Longue Durée 8 June 2007
A one day workshop, organised by Catherine Merridale, took place at King's College on Friday 8 June 2007. In this, the first of two meetings, the aims were to discuss ways of looking at monuments which have persisted over very long periods of time (this will involve exploring the kinds of monument or site that we wish to consider as a group) and also to investigate what new historical insights can be gained by adopting a 'long' approach to the study of iconic sites and buildings. A second meeting, at which more formal papers prepared in the light of the first discussion will be presented, is scheduled for 2008. Participants included Caroline Humphrey, Maurizio Isabella, Emma Rothschild, Ananya Kabir, Rana Mitter, Nicolai Ssorin-Chaikov and William St Clair.
May 2007
Citizenship and the Law in Historical Perspective 22 May 2007
There was a one-day workshop at King’s College organised by Caitlin Anderson on Citizenship and the Law in Historical Perspective. The meeting brought together historians of different periods and regional specialisations to consider citizenship as a legal and historical phenomenon. Participants in the meeting included Caitlin Anderson, John Cairns, David Feldman, Caroline Humfress, Tamar Herzog, William O’Reilly, and Emma Rothschild. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
Digital resources for historical research - 1 8 May 2007
The first in a series of meetings to discuss the opportunities, shortcomings, and future development of new digital resources took place in Trinity Hall on 8 May 2007. The object of the meeting was to begin a conversation about the role of electronic archives in historical research, to identify important issues for future consideration (for example, new possibilities, technical limitations, cost and inequality of access, ease of use, concerns about future availability, access to resources in languages other than English), and to reflect on how we might think about these challenges as a scholarly community.
April 2007
Global Capitalism 27 April 2007
An informal one-day meeting on Global Capitalism, organised by the Centre for History and Economics, took place in King's College on Friday 27 April 2007. In the first session, on Capitalism and Security, there were presentations by Emma Rothschild, Harold James, and Gareth Stedman Jones. The second session was on Asia and Globalization, with presentations by Chris Bayly and Claude Markovits. The final session was on Capitalism and Globalization, with presentations by Eric Hobsbawm and Amartya Sen. Other participants included the Provost, John Dunn, Istvan Hont, Michael Bordo and E.A.Wrigley. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
February 2007
The Celebration of the Bicentennial of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade February-June 2007
A series of events was organised by the Centre of African Studies as part of Cambridge’s celebration of the bicentenary of the Act of Abolition. They aimed to raise the public’s awareness of this region’s history of radical political activism. It aims also to illuminate contemporary social and economic inequalities, in order to call a new generation of activists to duty.
The Internationalization of the History of France 6 February 2007
Emma Rothschild spoke on 'The Internationalization of the History of France' in the Hexagonal Forum on Tuesday 6 February 2007. She talked about whether French history was "autistic," and also about her own current work on Saint-Domingue in the 1770s, Turgot's ideas about the slave trade, and the colonial/commercial origins of the French Revolution. The seminar met in the Boys Smith Room, Fisher Building, St John's College. The Hegaxonal Forum is organised by Miranda Gill (MML and Jesus), Sarah Howard, (History and Christ's), David Todd (History and Trinity Hall), Sylvana Tomaselli (SPS and St John's), and Robert Tombs (History and St John's).
November 2006
Biblical Exchanges: The Hebrew Republic in Early Modern Europe 9 November 2006
The Cambridge-Harvard Mellon Program on Exchanges of Economic and Political held a colloqium on Biblical Exchanges: The Hebrew Republic in Early Modern Europe on Thursday November 9 from 4.00pm to 6.00pm, in the Political Theory Seminar Room, CGIS N401. There were presentations by Fania Oz-Salzberger (Haifa University) and Eric Nelson (Harvard University).
Fania Oz-Salzberger spoke on "Seventeenth-Century Political Hebraism: Mapping the Field". Background reading »
Eric Nelson spoke on "'Talmudical Commonwealthsmen' and the Rise of Republican Exclusivism". For a copy of his paper, please contact him at enelson@fas.harvard.edu.
Graduate Workshop on the Political Economy of Empire 4 November 2006
Pernille Røge and Sophus Reinert organised a one-day graduate workshop which took place in King's College, Cambridge on 4 November 2006. Imperial studies is currently one of the most thriving subfields of the historical profession, integrating economic and political history with the history of science, of exploration, and of cultural encounters. The eighteenth century saw a conflux of these themes in the parallel formalisation and institutionalisation of political economy on the one hand, and the expansion of European dominion overseas on the other; political economy was in many ways the midwife of modern imperialism. The workshop explored the intellectual origins and theoretical manifestations of political economy as well as its actual implementation. For further details, see the workshop web site.
Conversation with Drew Gilpin Faust(Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) 1 November 2006
The series of informal conversations in which historians discuss their research experiences and sources with graduate students continued this semester. The meetings are organized by the Harvard-Cambridge Mellon Program on Exchanges of Economic and Political Ideas since 1760, and past events have included informal teas with C. A. Bayly and Bernard Bailyn. At 4:00pm on Wednesday, November 1, in Robinson Lower Library, Harvard University, the program hosted a conversation with Drew Gilpin Faust, Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and author of, among other books, 'Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War', 'Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War, and 'A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South'. Graduate students in all departments were invited and encouraged to attend. For further information, please contact Angus Burgin (burgin@fas.harvard.edu) or Emma Rothschild (rothsch@fas.harvard.edu).
October 2006
The Exchange of Ideas and Culture between South Asia and Central Europe 27-28 October 2006
The Heidelberg Session of the "Exchange of Ideas and Culture between South Asia and Central Europe" Conference took place in the Department of History, South Asia Institute (SAI) at the University of Heidelberg between 27 and 28 October 2006. Papers were given by Sudipta Kaviraj, Ayesha Jalal, Manu Goswami, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Ben Zachariah, Dilip Menon, Reba Som, Amit Das Gupta, Doug McGetchin, Kate O’Malley, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Stanislava Vavrouskova, Claude Markovits, and Joachim Oesterheld. Click for the programme.
The Harvard Session of the "Exchange of Ideas and Culture between South Asia and Central Europe" Conference took place October 28-29, 2005. The schedule can be found here.
July 2006
28 July: Bentham and Benthamism
An informal meeting about Bentham and Benthamism, as part of the Cambridge-Harvard Mellon Program on Exchanges of Political and Economic Ideas since 1760, took place on Friday 28 July 2006 in King's College, Cambridge. There were remarks by Fred Rosen, Richard Tuck, Emma Rothschild and Chris Bayly, and amongst other participants were Yusuke Dan, Richard Drayton, John Dunn, Biancamaria Fontana, Ross Harrison, Istvan Hont, William O'Reilly, David Palfrey, and Robert Travers. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
25 July: A New History of Ideas for India
A one-day colloquium, organised by Chris Bayly and Shruti Kapila and following an earlier one at Tufts University in April 2005, took place in the Saltmarsh Rooms in King’s College on 25 July 2006. Papers were given by Michael Dodson, Andrew Sartori, Jon Wilson, Faisal Devji and Javed Majeed and were the focus of the conference. The papers are intended for a special issue of the Modern Intellectual History journal. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
June 2006
5 June: Bentham in the World(I)
A one-day workshop, organised by Caitlin Anderson, took place at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University on 5 June 2006. The workshop looked at the ideas and influence of Jeremy Bentham across the world. David Armitage, Chris Bayly and David Todd gave papers and other participants included Karuna Mantena, Uday Mehta, Jennifer Pitts, Emma Rothschild and Richard Tuck. Attendance and participation in the discussion was open to the academic community. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
March 2006
27 March: Exchanges of Ideas
A roundtable meeting in connection with the research project on Antiquarianism and International Exchange and the more recent research programme on Exchanges of Economic and Political Ideas since 1760 was held in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Edinburgh on 27 March 2006. The meeting was organised by Susan Manning and Emma Rothschild. Click for a list of participants.
November 2005
22 November:
Informal tea on the historian's craft
Bernard Bailyn spoke about his work in one of a series of informal teas designed to bring together graduate students and distinguished historians. Lower Library, Robinson Hall.
July 4: Exchanges of Ideas: 19th Century Political Thought
An informal meeting in connection with the new research programme on Exchanges of Economic and Political Ideas since 1760 was held in King's College on 4 July and was concerned with extra-European and inter-disciplinary aspects of 19th century political thought. Chris Bayly, Daniel Pick and Emma Rothschild introduced their draft chapters in the Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Political Thought, currently being edited by Gareth Stedman Jones and Greg Claeys.
May 2005
May 21: Taxonomies, Translations, Exchanges: Race, 1760-1980
William O'Reilly and Daniel Matlin organised a one-day workshop which took place in King's College on 21 May 2005. The discussion focussed on the concept and application of race and examined questions of negotiation, coexistence and toleration in Europe, the Atlantic World, Africa and Asia. This was the first in a series of workshops and conferences exploring various historical aspects of race. View:
+ Workshop report: MS Word | PDF
+ Workshop programme: MS Word | PDF
April 2005
April 16: Atlantic Legalities, 1500-1825
A workshop of the Atlantic History Seminar, organised by Caitlin Anderson in collaboration with the Centre for History and Economics, took place at Harvard University on 16 April 2005. The workshop concentrated on the roles of law in Atlantic history. Attendance and participation in the discussion was open to the academic community. Historians at the beginning of their career were especially encouraged to attend.
See: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic/legal.html
