CALL FOR PAPERS: Colonial violence beyond the borders of empires: dis/connections, transfers, and mobilities, ca. 1850–1954
Date: 08.12.2022–09.12.2022
Venue: Munich, Germany
Host institution: Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich; University of Cologne, Cologne
Organisers:
Dominique Biehl (University of Basel, Basel)
Ulrike Lindner (University of Cologne, Cologne)
Tom Menger (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich)
Markus Wurzer (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale)
In recent years, historians have increasingly sought to write imperial history beyond the borders of individual, ‘national’ empires.1 The term ‘transimperial history’ is gaining traction for such approaches, with dedicated conferences, a scholarly network, and a first attempt at definition.2 Transimperial history, according to Daniel Hedinger and Nadin Heé, seeks to go beyond the dichotomy of cooperation and competition between empires, and has a particular focus on connections between them. A systematic transimperial approach, they hold, enables us to identify the density and variety of the connections between empires and thereby underscores colonial expansion as a shared project.3 Furthermore, as Bernhard Schär has remarked, if ‘networked’ or ‘webbed’ (Tony Ballantyne) conceptions of empire are to reach their full analytical potential, they should not stop at national-imperial borders.4
Transimperial history has had an impact on research fields such as the history of imperial science.5 However, its approach has been far less applied to one crucial aspect of colonial rule: violence. Violence was ubiquitous in colonialism, but generally peaked in contexts of warfare and occupation, as well as in resistance against these twofold processes. It is these instances of the use of violence that this workshop will explore from a transimperial perspective. Already more than a decade ago, Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski postulated a common ‘Western’ ‘colonial archive’ on violence.6 We still know little about the . . .