CfP: The Great War and the Azores: from naval strategy to trench warfare

Organisation: Institute of Contemporary History FCSH/NOVA; University of the Azores
Venue: Azores Military Museum, Ponta Delgada (Azores Islands)
Dates: 13 to 16 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 1 April 2017

The Atlantic Ocean connects the western civilization in its banks, having in its center the archipelago of the Azores. Intensely contested since the discoveries, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, with the mechanical propulsion and the economic and political rise of the USA, this ocean would know a commercial increase, based on a powerful market economy and a strong power of the financial capital, reinforcing even more its paper as a way of supplying the colonial raw materials, to the metropolises. The presence of powerful marines of war as merchants, with a modern naval industry of great capacity of production, becomes more and more its background scene, namely during World War I. By this view, the role of the Atlantic during the Great War would include the importance of maritime commerce and the need to protect commercial traffic from a Europe at war, taking the consequences of disturbing the enemy, as well as the use of a network of submarine cables with branches all over the world. The entry of the United States in World War I marked the end of the world’s hegemony by the European continent, which lasted three centuries, changing the symmetries in the center of the Atlantic.

The organizing committee calls for proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

– The maritime and terrestrial dimension of the Azores, in World War I;
– Naval and submarine warfare;
– The Atlantic and the communications during the Great War;
– Maritime connections in the Trench Wars, or in the colonies;
– The internal front: the impact of World War I in the Azores;
– War and Memory;
– Museology and Military heritage.

Submission process: Please send your identification (name, institutional affiliation and mail address), Paper title, Abstract (maximum 700 words), and academic CV (1 page) via mail to: azoreswar@gmail.com

Working languages: English, Portuguese (no simultaneous interpretation is available).

Further information here.
Download call for papers: 2017-07-13_Great-War-Azores_EN