CfP: From the “New Republic” to the Spanish Flu: the Azores and the Armistice

World War 1 Congress
Faial Theatre, Horta, Faial, Azores, 18-20 October 2018
Azores Military Museum, Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Azores, 15-17 November 2018

Sidónio Pais died on December 14, 1918, murdered in Lisbon. As a republican, he would successively occupy the positions of deputy, senator, minister and ambassador, returning to Portugal when the First World War was already predicted. In power by the conspiracy that established the “New Republic” (1917-18), he would lead a confederation of disgruntled republicans, monarchists, clericals and anti-war forces, and legitimize the presidency by elections, exercising a mixed power of authoritarianism and populism. His homicide left the country in great political, economic and social instability, aggravated by the Spanish flu, the Influenza A virus.

In the Azores, the year of 1918 was marked by the war in the sea; the Spanish Flu; the Azores Detachment of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and the High Commissar of the Republic, General Simas Machado, was sent by the President of the Republic to control the civil, military and diplomatic areas in the archipelago. To this scenario were added the war in the sea, the TSF and submarine cables and the communication of the Armistice to North America; a German POW in Terceira island and a deep trade crisis, with big social misery, promoted in many cases by the action of hoarders.

This meeting aims to analyze the last year of World War I, with particular emphasis on the Azores in its relationship with the Atlantic, belligerence, economic crisis, communications and Atlantic ports, and international affairs with Sidonism and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Likewise, 1918 also marks a year of profound reflection about the hygienic-sanitary conditions, and is even a starting point for the study of war traumas or morpho-functional sciences / biomedical engineering, to which we can ally the relevance of the female activism, with some echoes in the Azores.

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

The maritime and terrestrial dimension of the involvement of the Azores in World War I;
The naval and submarine war;
The Atlantic and telecommunications during the Great War;
The maritime connections in the Trenches War, or in the colonies;
The Sidonism and the High Commissioner of the Republic for the Azores;
Health services, health conditions and the Spanish Flu;
The Armistice and the return to normality;
Women’s Emancipation.

Submission deadline: 17 July 2018
Further information here.
Download CfP: 2018-10-18_Azores-Armistice_CFP

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

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

Organising committee:
Ana Paula Pires (IHC – NOVA FCSH and Stanford University)
Rita Nunes (Comité Olímpico de Portugal and IHC – NOVA FCSH)
Sérgio Rezendes (IHC – NOVA FCSH)
Manuel Marchã (Museu Militar dos Açores)
Carlos Lobão (Escola Secundária Manuel de Arriaga /CHAM Açores)

Scientific committee:
António Paulo Duarte (IDN and IHC – NOVA FCSH)
Carolina Garcìa Sanz (Universidad de Sevilha)
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (University of Maynooth)
Luís Manuel Vieira de Andrade (Universidade dos Açores)
Maria Inès Tato (CONICET and Universidad de Buenos Aires)

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