Call for papers
Revolutionary cosmopolitanism. Transnational migration and political activism, 1815-1848
Update 23 March 2020: deadline extended due to coronavirus pandemic
Because of the uncertainties relating to the coronavirus pandemic, it is far from sure that this conference can go forth as planned. A solution will be sought in the following weeks. Depending on the evolution of the situation, the conference will either be delayed or take place online.For now, the deadline for abstracts has been delayed until 3 April, midnight. After that date, the organizers will contact all selected applicants in order to discuss a solution.
12 June 2020, Queen Mary University of London
Organizer: Camille Creyghton (QMUL/University of Amsterdam)
Keynote Speaker: prof. Maurizio Isabella (QMUL)
Napoleon’s fall and the settlement of
the Vienna Congress in 1815 in no way represented the end of the era of
revolutions and political uprisings. To the contrary, several waves of
revolution would follow in the Atlantic world in the 1820s and 1830s, culminating
into the 1848 ‘springtime of the peoples’ in large parts of Europe and beyond.
These subsequent waves of revolution are increasingly studied from
transnational perspectives focussing on, for instance, Mediterranean
connections in the 1820s (Isabella and Zanou 2016), a ‘common European
revolutionary culture’ in 1848 (Freitag 2003) or the global context (Armitage
and Subrahmanyam 2007).
The same period saw large numbers of
people moving beyond state boundaries: tens of thousands of young German
craftsmen found employment in Paris and London; impoverished Germans and Irish
crossed the Atlantic in search for a better life in the United States; the
suppression of the Polish November Uprising in the beginning of 1831 led to what
is known as the Great Polish Emigration; and several thousand free Black
Americans settled on the coasts of West Africa creating new societies such as
Liberia. Apart from these large-scale movements, a couple of individual cases
are well-known, such as Garibaldi’s activities in Latin America or Robert
Owen’s attempts to create a self-sufficient community in Indiana. In addition,
expanding colonialism and increasing cross-boundary traffic led to the mobility
of ever larger numbers of seamen, soldiers, colonizers and colonized. Following
Jan and Leo Lucassen’s model for cross-cultural migration (2009), these
movements of people have to be considered genuine forms of migration too.
Although many of these migrant
movements can be associated with political uprisings, only few connections have
been made between the study of migration history and history of political
thought and practices. Migration history, with its roots in labour history, tends
to focus on social and economic aspects of migration and ignores how migration
informed the transfer of ideas. Research on revolutionary cosmopolitanism
concentrates on the eighteenth century and presumes that cosmopolitanism came
to an end after the 1789 French Revolution due to the rise of nationalism
(Palmer 1959; Polasky 2015). That this has hardly been contested so far is due
in part to the fact that nineteenth-century revolutionaries are still mostly
researched in national contexts, leaving aside their transnational connections,
the imperial geographies in which many of them operated, and their experiences
of migration (as is shown by Panter 2015).
This one-day conference aims to open
a conversation between these different strands of research. How did experiences
of migration and cross-boundary mobility contribute to the formation of common
revolutionary cultures in the period 1815-1848? To what extent did
revolutionary cosmopolitanism survive into the first half of the 19th
century? What forms of interplay existed between transnational migrations,
cosmopolitanism, the rise of nationalism and imperial reform movements? These
are the questions this conference intends to address.
We invite submissions from
researchers in the history of political thought, cultural history, migration
history and nationalism studies, working on different geographical areas in the
period 1815-1848. Postgraduate and early career researchers are especially
encouraged to apply.
Possible topics include:
- diasporic nationalism;
- transatlantic migrations and
political upheaval;
- abolitionism, black emancipation
and migration;
- diaspora and connected Mediterranean
revolutions;
- imperial reform movements, nationalism
and international order;
- exile and revolutionary activism;
- political activities of working-class
migrants;
- political practices in migrant
communities.
To submit a paper or propose a panel,
please email a short C.V. alongside an abstract to c.creyghton@qmul.ac.uk. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words for papers of 20 minutes in
length. The call for papers will close on 23 March 2020 23.59 GMT. Successful applicants
will be notified no later than 6 April.
This conference is part of the
project ‘Revolution in exile: Transfer of ideas among émigré intellectuals in
Paris and London, 1815-1848, funded by the Dutch Research Council. For
postgraduate, early career researchers and researchers without regular funding
coming from outside London, travel expenses will be subsidized up to an amount
of £ 70.
For any additional information or
queries, please contact: c.creyghton@qmul.ac.uk.
References:
Armitage, David, and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam (ed.), The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840,
Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Freitag, Sabine (ed.), Exiles from
European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England, New York: Berghahn
Books, 2003.
Isabella, Maurizio and Zanou,
Konstantina (ed.), Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long
19th Century, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Lucassen, Jan, and Leo Lucassen, “The
Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–1900: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to
Global History,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 3 (November 2009):
347–77.
Palmer, R. R. The Age of the
Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959.
Panter, Sarah (ed.), Mobility and
Biography. Jahrbuch Für Europäische Geschichte 16, Berlin, Boston: De
Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015.
Polasky, Janet L., Revolutions
without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 2015.