Venue: Freie Universität Berlin, September 15-16, 2017

Organizers: Daniel Hedinger (LMU Munich), Nadin Heé (FU Berlin and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) and Satoshi Mizutani (Doshisha University)

By focusing on spaces “in-between” empires – their connectivity, cooperation, and competition – this workshop aims at establishing a trans-imperial approach to the history of empires.

Many studies have focussed on entanglements between colonies and metropoles, but much less is known about trans-imperial dimensions of the game. On an empirical basis, inter-imperial perspectives, which compare several empires or consider competition between them, have become more important lately. Yet, such studies are scattered and this kind of research remains in its infancy. We still lack an overarching theoretical-methodological framework with which to address the spaces in-between empires. In other words: whereas national history has been transnationalized in the past decades, the same does not hold true for the history of empires. Thus, we would like to address the current state of research and at the same time ask how a future trans-imperial history could look.

The workshop, to be held in Berlin in September 2017, will bring together an international group of scholars who have focused on one or more imperial dimensions of one of the following empires: British, French, Russian, Austria-Hungary, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Ottoman, Chinese, as well as the US-American empire. Their contributions should discuss how transcending perspectives can change the perception of the empires they are specialized in, but also discuss possibilities and limits of a trans-imperial approach for the historiography per se. The focus will be on the years between 1850 and 1945.

Please note that we conceive of the Berlin workshop in September to be a ‘publication workshop’ – a workshop with relatively few but high-profile experts that enables not only in-depth discussion, but that will also result in a publication. More precisely, we intend to publish contributions based on papers (6000-7000 words) presented at the workshop in an edited volume in near future.

Travel and accommodation expenses of all participants will be paid by the organizers.

Please submit abstracts (250-300 words) by March 15 by emailing the organizers:
Daniel Hedinger hedinger.daniel@gmail.com
Nadin Heé nadin.hee@fu-berlin.de
Satoshi Mizutani mizutanis0606@gmail.com

Further information here.