On the EUI Chair in contemporary history, Bo Stråth’s research focused on European integration; see, for instance, The Modernity of Europe. A Comparative-historical and Politico-philosophical Reassessment. A particular focus was on the tension between market integration and social disintegration and the question with a normative underpinning whether Market Europe was also conceivable as Social Europe. In the seminar series Europe’s Modernity and Cultural Heritage Reconsidered: Rupture and Continuity in European Cultural Orientations and The Modernity of Europe and the Economy as a Polity, he developed with Peter Wagner in the Social and Political Science Department a longer perspective on Europe in its external rather than internal relations, Europe in the world. The close cooperation between them also involved Christian Joerges in the Law Department with the question of the normative dimension of Europe in the world.
With this intellectual luggage, Stråth was appointed to a Finnish Academy Distinguished Professor (FiDiPro) at the Helsinki University, where he, with Martti Koskenniemi, in the law faculty there, developed a co-directed project on the European century 1815-1914, which in 2009 was rewarded with an ERC advanced grant for the period September 2009-Aug 2014 Europe 1815-1914: Creating Community and Ordering the World. The work on this project began with seminars and workshops in the autumn of 2007. At the same time, Stråth initiated a project on the Eurasian and Eurafrican semantics of the social and the economic, Conceptual History and Global Translations. The projects were based at the Centre for Nordic Studies of the Helsinki University and the ERC project at the Erik Castrén Institute, too. At the CENS base, Norden was seen in its European and global connections under lively support by the CENS director Henrik Stenius, who provided excellent intellectual and logistic support.
Below are listed the seminars and workshops from the autumn of 2007 and 2008 that wove together these two projects. They constituted the backbone of fact-finding missions into the past with normative questions about the future in the back of the mind, questions about a better world, whatever that means, which then got precision in the project work. At the end is also an account of the last concluding meeting of the Europe 1815-1914 project in June 2013.
Global Translations Seminar Programme for the Autumn Term 2007
The seminar assembles at 3 pm – 5 pm in the Russian Room at the Renvall Institute. The Wednesday session is held in Auditorium IX in the University Main Building. The Tuesday session on 11th December is exceptionally held at
5 pm – 7 pm.
Wednesday 17th October
Introduction
Bo Stråth
Tuesday 4th December
Is it possible to develop a “meta-language” to enable us to “compare” concepts within and beyond Europe?
Christoph Harbsmeier, University of Oslo
Tuesday 11th December
Modernity and Representation of China
Qing Cao, Liverpool John Moores University
Speakers
Dr Qing Cao is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His current research interests centre around mutual perceptions and representations between China and the West. His publications appeared in a wide range of international refereed journals and as book chapters published by University of Oxford Press, Routledge, Palgrave, and University of Hong Kong Press.
Professor Christoph Harbsmeier is a Professor of Chinese in the University of Oslo, Norway. He has read Chinese in Oxford and taken his PhD in the University of Copenhagen. His publications include Social Realism With A Buddhist Face, The Cartoonist Feng Zikai (1984), Aspects of Classical Chinese Syntax (1981) and Language and Logic in Ancient China (Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 7.1) (1998).
Europe 1815-1914. Constitutions and Geopolitics in Post-Napoleonic Europe.
Seminar Programme for the Autumn Term 2007
A series of seminars organised by the Centre for Nordic Studies and the research project Constitutions and Geopolitics – Social Protest and Search for Stability: An Alternative Historical Perspective on Europe.
Convener: Dr Bo Stråth, Professor in Nordic, European and Global History
The colloquium is open for researchers in the field. Registration is, however required. Frequent and active participation is appreciated.
For more information and registration, contact Veera Nisonen, coordinator (tel. +358-40-7382817, E-mail: veera.nisonen@helsinki.fi)
The seminar assembles on Tuesdays at 3 pm – 5 pm in the Russian Room at the Renvall Institute (Unioninkatu 38A). On Thursday 8th November the seminar will be held at 10 am – 12 am in the Collegium seminar room (Fabianinkatu 24, 1st floor).
Tuesday 9th October – Introduction
Bo Stråth
Tuesday 23rd October
Reception, Transformation and Re-creation of European Political Economy in the Nordic Periphery (1756-1815): A Formative Period for Nordic European Political Culture?
Koen Stapelbroek, Erasmus University, Rotterdam
Thursday 8th November
Today’s Europe in Historical Perspective
Chair: Juha Sihvola, University of Helsinki
Today’s Europe from a Constitutional and Republican Historical Perspective
Martin van Gelderen, European University Institute, Florence
Today’s Europe from a Comparative Historical Perspective
Gerhard Haupt, European University Institute, Florence
Tuesday 20th November
Post-Napoleonic Constitutionalism. The ‘Model’ of the French Charte Constitutionnelle and its European Implications
Markus Prutsch, European University Institute, Florence
Tuesday 27th November
Einar Maseng: A 19th Century North European Geopolitical Perspective
Lars Mjøseth, University of OslEurope 1815-1914
Europe 1815-1914. Constitutions and Geopolitics – Social Protest and Search for Stability: An Alternative Historical Perspective on Europe. Seminars Spring 2008
The project started in the autumn of 2007 with a series of seminars at the Renvall Institute organized by Bo Stråth. It became the preparatory framework for elaborating the application to the European Research Council for the project that became Europe 1815-1914, EReRe.
Outline of the project
Constitutions became the instrument to define political power and provide guidelines on how to control it. The early nineteenth century can be described as the starting point for the constitutionalisation of Europe. Sweden 1809, Spain 1812, Norway 1814, France (Charte constitutionally) 1814, the South German states of Bavaria, Baden and Würtemberg 1818/19, the constitution of the Deutsche Bund 1815, the Netherlands and Congress Poland 1815, all got constitutions. This was the constitutional moment in Europe. Also, Russian reform plans were part of this European pattern in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, but they were never implemented, which provoked protests and revolt after the death of Alexander I (1825). Without getting a constitution in the proper sense, Finland was in 1809 guaranteed considerable autonomy as a grand duchy within the Russian empire. The Finnish constitutional debate has so far been viewed basically in its connection to the Russian debate and to its Swedish legal heritage, which in many respects was left intact after 1809, and much less so to the West European debate.
The constitutionalisation of Europe has often been seen as the first step towards the final breakthrough of democracy, understood as parliamentarianism and popular sovereignty. The beginning was marked by the French Revolution, which has been seen as a European prototype for the establishment of popular sovereignty, and the American Revolution, arguably with the first written constitution in the world (1789). England with the Glorious Revolution (1688/89) and without any written constitution, has been seen as an exceptional case rather than a European standard.
The question of the philosophical and theoretical underpinning of the European constitutions has been central. Enlightenment philosophy has been seen as the most prominent source of inspiration. Enlightenment philosophy/political revolution – the constitution – parliamentarianism are the decisive links in a chain that has been outlined in this long-term teleological and progressive development towards parliamentarianism and democracy.
In the cases of the Swedish (1809) and the Norwegian (1814) constitutions, the question about the precise mix between Enlightenment philosophy and influences from the French and American Revolutions on the one side and domestic historical heritages on the other has been central in the academic debate. However, also those who have emphasised the specific domestic cultural heritage have underlined the political progression. A long history of free peasants was outlined and seen as the provider of immanent forces for change towards popular power. Norwegian nineteenth-century historian Ernst Saars is, with his sketch of Norwegian history from medieval times until 1814, exemplary in this respect. In Sweden, Fredrik Lagerroth and Pontus Fahlbeck developed corresponding views in the early twentieth century.
Some problems have not been considered in the academic and political elaboration of this historical teleology towards sovereignty and freedom. The most evident problem is the fact that Europe after Vienna 1815 was a conservative, not to say reactionary continent with the Holy Alliance as the key instrument of political control to prevent full expressions of popular power as they had reemerged in the French Revolution. Napoleon provoked a reaction and search for stability. The peace in Vienna in 1815 imposed a power check upon Europe in geopolitical and military-political terms. As Reinhart Koselleck argued in works in the 1960s, there was a strong connection between geopolitical power and domestic political control of popular power. This connection has to a considerable extent, been ignored in the historical debate. The more precise relationships in this connection remain to be elaborated, however. The key question that we want to put is to what extent the constitutions reflect this development of a conservative/reactionary Europe and how, more precisely, the connections between revolution, reform and restoration looked like.1 Our scenario also makes the (failed) European revolution of 1848 and its predecessor in 1830 more understandable. Why this revolution, if everything went smoothly with the constitutionalisation of Europe around 1815? The revolutions in Europe in 1830 do as little fit in the conventional view of liberal progression but should be seen in terms of liberal containment and crisis after Vienna.
The project wants to map out a more complex Europe – and the place of the North in it – where the key issue is the legitimisation of power and the search for stability in an unstable world. Economic, social, administrative, political and cultural processes were entangled in various patterns, which provoked what Koselleck called the Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen, spatial differences in terms of development stages between various parts of Europe, and differences and tensions between unsynchronised economic, social and political processes.2The tensions, demarcations, overlappings and spillovers in these processes of simultaneous lack of simultaneity suggest a European pattern of muddling through with progressive steps and setbacks, revolution, reform, and reaction in great complexity and great variety. Liberalism was far from permanently established with the French Revolution but permanently challenged and in a continuous state of fragility and crisis.
1. For the thematic complex Vienna Congress-constitutions-legitimacy see Wolfgang Mager, „Das Problem der landständischen Verfassungen auf dem Winer Kongress 1814/1815“ inHistorischer Zeitschrift Vol 217 1974 pp 296-346 and Volker Sellin, „Heute ist die Revolution monarchisch. Legitimität und Legitimierungspolitik im Zeitalter des Wiener Kongresses“ in:Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken Vol 76 1996 pp 335-361. In this context attention should also be drawn to Volker Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution. Der Sturz Napoleons und die Restauration in Europa. Göttingen 2001, which is of great relevance for the project in general.
2. Reinhart Koselleck, „8. Die agrarische Grundverfassung Europas zu Beginn der Industrialisierung“ in Louis Bergeron, François Furet and Reinhart Koselleck, Fischer Weltgeschichte. Band 26. Das Zeitalter der europäischen Revolutuion 1780-1848. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1969 pp 230-261, here 258.
Programme
The seminar assembles on Tuesdays in the meeting room 10 in Metsätalo (Unionkatu 40, 3rd floor).
Tuesday 5th February
15.00 – 17.00
The North in the Post-Napoleonic Restauration
Bo Stråth, University of Helsinki
Jussi Kurunmäki, University of Stockholm
Tuesday 12th February
13.00 – 17.00
Meternicht’s European Concert and Alexander’s Holy Alliance: the Post-Napoleonic heritage and the Deutsche Bund
Volker Sellin, Univeristy of Heidelberg
Finland and Norway. Small States in the Period of the Holy Alliance
Max Engman, Åbo Akademi
Tuesday 26th February
13.00-17.00
Political Radicalism and Constitutions: Russia and Congress-Poland
Johannes Remy, University of Helsinki
The Finnish Constitutional Debate
Jani Marjanen, University of Helsinki
Tuesday 11th March
14.00 – 17.00
The Myth of 1648 as Foundation of Europe
Benno Teschke, University of Sussex
Discussants:
Risto Alapuro, University of Helsinki
Peter Haldén, University of Stockholm
Tuesday 8th April
11.00 – 17.00 (lunch break 13.00-14.00)
(please note that the time has changed)
Mazzini’s Young Europe and 1848
Hagen Schulz-Forsberg, Århus University
The European Peace Congress 1843-1879
Thomas Hippler, University of Lyon
The Nordic Peace Activists and Their European Connections
Norbert Götz, University of Helsinki
Tuesday 22nd April
10.00-17.00 (lunch break 13.00-14.00)
Geopolitical Thoughts: Some Introductory Remarks
Bo Stråth, University of Helsinki
Article: Mitteleuropa, From List to Naumann
Geopolitical Balance or International Law: two Alternatives
Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki
Norway 1814. Between Popular Sovereignty and Monarchical Power
Dag Michalsen, University of Oslo
Liberalism and constitutionalism in nineteenth-century Spain: the
relevance of 1812
Jose Portillo, Universidad del Pais Vasco and Universidad de Santiago de
Compostela
Europe 1815-1914. The World and the Nations. New Methodological and Theoretical ApproachesThree seminars at the Helsinki University, Renvall Institute (CENS) 8, 10 and 11 December 2008
Political, social and economic processes increasingly involve the whole world. The globalisation narrative that emerged with convincing power in the early 1990s described a world beyond nation-states. Today it has lost mobilising power. The assumption of the disappearance of nation-states has proved to be premature. Today’s key questions deal with the connections between the world and the nations and the position and role of Europe in these relationships. Another key issue is the role of the social, which disappeared in the globalisation rhetoric in the 1990s, although it had been a core dimension of the 19th and 20th-century construction of the nation states and today is reappearing as a counter-narrative to the globalisation language. Nationalism and protectionism flourish in the framework of economic globalisation. A third issue deals with historical analogies to the global entanglement of the world under concepts like empire, colony and civilisation.
The crucial question is how academic work can conceptualise these contradictory trends in the wake of the erosion of the globalisation narrative and, simultaneously transgress methodological nationalism, which has determined social and human sciences since the 19th century.
The Centre for Nordic Studies (CENS) will organise three seminars at the Renvall Institute on 8, 10 and 11 December 2008 to address this question. We are not thinking of one conceptualisation or counter-alternative to the globalisation theory but of a plurality of methodological and theoretical approaches.
Programme
8 December 10-16 with a buffet lunch
Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6, Lecture Room 405
Historical Sociology in New Ways: World History from a Civilisational Perspective
Co-organised with Risto Alapuro, Professor of Sociology, University of Helsinki.
Johann Arnason – Locating civilizations in history – how to avoid the Spenglerian fallacy
Almut Höfert – Europe and the Near East: The Transcultural Comparison in the Premodern Time and the Master Narrative on Islam
Mikako Iwatake – The Postcolonial Turn in Japan in the 1990s
Willfried Spohn – Historical and Comparative Sociology in a Globalizing World
10 December 10-16 with a buffet lunch
Tieteidentalo, Kirkkokatu 6, Lecture Room 401
New Approaches to the Conceptualisation of the Nation
Miroslav Hroch – The European Diversity of Nations and Nationalism
Mikako Iwatake – Monster Called Nation; Nagao Nishikawa’s Critique of the Nation-State
Willfried Spohn – Europeanization. Religion and Nationalism – Report on a Volkswagen Research Project at University of Göttingen
11 December 10-15 with a buffet lunch
Tieteidentalo, Kirkkokatu 6, Lecture Room 401
Social History as World History. Alternatives to the Globalisation Theory. Preliminary Thoughts for a Panel at the World History Congress in Amsterdam in 2010
Co-organised with Pauli Kettunen, Professor of Social Science History, University of Helsinki
Hartmut Kaelble – European History in a Global Perspective
Hans-Jürgen Puhle – Towards a World History? Social Policies and Politics in a Globalised World
Constitutions and Geopolitics in Post-Napoleonic Europe
A series of seminars organised by the Centre for Nordic Studies and the research project Constitutions and Geopolitics – Social Protest and Search for Stability: An Alternative Historical Perspective on Europe.
Convener: Dr Bo Stråth, Professor in Nordic, European and Global History
The colloquium is open for researchers in the field. Registration is, however, required. Frequent and active participation is appreciated.
For more information and registration, contact Veera Nisonen, coordinator (tel. +358-40-7382817, E-mail: veera.nisonen@helsinki.fi)
Seminar Programme for the Spring Term 2008
The seminar assembles on Tuesdays in meeting room 10 in Metsätalo (Unionkatu 40, 3rd floor).
Tuesday 5th February
15.00 – 17.00
The North in the Post-Napoleonic Restauration
Bo Stråth, University of Helsinki
Jussi Kurunmäki, University of Stockholm
Tuesday 12th February
13.00 – 17.00
Meternicht’s European Concert and Alexander’s Holy Alliance: the Post-Napoleonic heritage and the Deutsche Bund
Volker Sellin, Univeristy of Heidelberg
Finland and Norway. Small States in the Period of the Holy Alliance
Max Engman, Åbo Akademi
Tuesday 26th February
13.00-17.00
Political Radicalism and Constitutions: Russia and Congress-Poland
Johannes Remy, University of Helsinki
The Finnish Constitutional Debate
Jani Marjanen, University of Helsinki
Tuesday 11th March
14.00 – 17.00
The Myth of 1648 as the Foundation of Europe
Benno Teschke, University of Sussex
Discussants:
Risto Alapuro, University of Helsinki
Peter Haldén, University of Stockholm
Tuesday 8th April
11.00 – 17.00 (lunch break 13.00-14.00)
(please note that the time has changed)
Mazzini’s Young Europe and 1848
Hagen Schulz-Forsberg, Århus University
The European Peace Congress 1843-1879
Thomas Hippler, University of Lyon
The Nordic Peace Activists and Their European Connections
Norbert Götz, University of Helsinki
Tuesday 22nd April
10.00-17.00 (lunch break 13.00-14.00)
Geopolitical Thoughts: Some Introductory Remarks
Bo Stråth, University of Helsinki
Article: Mitteleuropa, From List to Naumann
Geopolitical Balance or International Law: two Alternatives
Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki
Norway 1814. Between Popular Sovereignty and Monarchical Power
Dag Michalsen, University of Oslo
Liberalism and constitutionalism in nineteenth-century Spain: the
relevance of 1812
Jose Portillo, Universidad del Pais Vasco and Universidad de Santiago de
Compostela
Conceptual History and Global Translations:
The Euro-Asian and African Semantics of the Social and the Economic Seminars 2008
A series of seminars organised by the Centre for Nordic Studies and the research project Conceptual History and Global Translations:The Euro-Asian and African Semantics of the Social and the Economic
Convener: Dr Bo Stråth, Professor in Nordic, European and Global History
The colloquium is open for researchers in the field. Registration is, however, required. Frequent and active participation is appreciated.
For more information and registration, contact Veera Nisonen, coordinator (tel. +358-40-7382817, veera.nisonen@helsinki.fi)
Seminar Programme for the Spring Term 2008
The seminar assembles in the Russian Room at the Renvall Institute (Unioninkatu 38 A).
Tuesday 4th March
3 pm – 5 pm
The Conceptualisation of the Social in Norden
Pauli Kettunen, University of Helsinki
Cancelled
Tuesday 1st April
3 pm – 6 pm
New Discourses in Contemporary China: The Conceptualisation of the Social
Hailong Tian, University of Lancaster
Abstract
Colonial Modernity and the Social in Japan
Mikako Iwatake, University of Helsinki
Tuesday 15th April
3 pm – 5 pm
World Histories and Cosmopolitan Perspectives
Gerard Delanty, University of Sussex
Paper: Cosmopolitan Perspectives on European and Asian Transnationalism
Gerard Delanty and Baogang He (PDF)
Tuesday 29th April
3 pm – 5 pm Please note that the time has been changed.
Creating a language for global history – conceptual history’s contribution
Margrit Pernau, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
The presentation of Professor Arnason is cancelled.
3.-4.10.2008 Workshop on Conceptual History and Global Translations:
The Euro-Asian and African Semantics of the Social and the Economic
Europe 1815-1914 last meeting 2013
9-10 June 2013
Final Concluding Meeting of the Project
The final conference of the project took place in the banquet hall of the Finnish Literature Society with some 50 participants: the team members, the chairs of the five working groups of the project, some fifteen invited discussants, several of the members of the working group on teleology, and friends and interested from the University of Helsinki. It was the 99th smaller or larger meeting (from seminars in the project premises in Metsätalo with one or few invitees to workshops and larger conferences) since the beginning of the project on 1 September 2009, in addition to all internal team seminars and meetings.
On 9 June, after a brief welcome address by Bo Stråth, Etienne Balibar opened the conference with a rich and perspectivist keynote with the title „The Rise and Fall of the European Union: Temporalities and Teleologies.“ The talk connected the present predicament of the European Union to the longer historical view of the project. The Rector’s reception followed the keynote in the University’s Main Building.
The presentations and discussions on 10 June were organized in three panels representing the thematic orientations of the project: „Ordering the World“ (Chair Lauren Benton), „Securing Welfare and Creating Political Community“ (Chair Jan-Werner Müller) and „Confronting Teleologies“ (Chair Willibald Steinmetz). As a point of departure for the project’s discussions before the conference, the manuscript of a final report edited by Martti Koskenniemi and Bo Stråth Creating Community and Ordering the World. The European Shadow of the Past and Future of the Present was distributed. The panel presentations were clear and concise, and the discussions touched on big issues about Europe in the past and present. The comments gave valuable feedback for the final fine-tuning of the results. A final panel with Lauren Benton, Mark Mazower, Ann Orford, and Anthony Pagden, chaired by Martti Koskenniemi sorted in a critical way out the main arguments and innovations of the project.
The final conference was the last public event of the project. A final report was published in 2014. The remaining work, until it expired at the end of August 2014, dealt with individual writing and editing of monographs, articles and edited volumes.
11-13 June 2013
The sixth and final meeting with the working group on Teleology and History
The Working Group „Teleology and History“held its sixth and final meeting at Lake Saimaa in Karelia, 11-13 June 2013. The meeting was a finishing workshop to discuss the pre-circulated papers for the group’s volume, Historical Teleologies in the Modern World.
The volume, coedited by Henning Trüper, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, explores teleology’s complicated combination with history as a heritage of enlightenment natural philosophy in the long nineteenth century. The contributions focus on the fragmentation and multiplication of teleology after 1800. This exploration requires covering multiple concrete contexts in various broader areas – especially theoretical discourse, textuality, ontology and epistemic techné, and political thought and practice – in which historical teleologies manifested themselves. Neither purely a history of ideas nor purely a history of literary or political culture, the methodological make-up of the volume is hybrid, and by necessity so.
The broader aim is to advance a revision of the history of historicity in the 19th century. In Walter Benjamin’s view, in the period after 1800, the philosophies of history and the practice of historical writing colluded in the creation of a “homogenous and empty time“coinciding with linear and secular physical time, to be understood as a unified and universal frame of meaning for the experience of the world and the determination of the politically possible. This and cognate views of historical time, mostly dating from the interwar period, continue to exert great influence on the understanding of European modernity as achieved in the 19th century. The correlated assumption that the modern regime of historicity possessed genealogical and constitutional unity continues to be widely held.
Our volume, by contrast, casts doubt that a single, if powerful, conception of time could function as the unifying principle of all modern historicity. It presents an argument about the underlying features of modern European historical discourse. It provides an additive empirical pluralization of historicities and a structural explanation of the plurality at hand.
