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- Convenors:
-
Fernando Clara
(FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Cláudia Ninhos (Instituto de história contemporânea-Faculdade de ciências sociais e humanas)
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- Location:
- Sala 43, Edifício B2, Piso 1
- Start time:
- 16 July, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 4
Short Abstract:
Focussing mainly on the second half of the 19th-century and on the first half of the 20th-century, the panel will discuss the internationalization of science, the nationalization of culture, as well as the tensions and dialectical interactions between both these movements during that period.
Long Abstract:
Eijkman's report on scientific Internationalism - L'internationalisme scientifique, 1911 - could well be considered the swan song of a globalization process that had been molding the world since the mid 19th-century. Three years later the Great War would put a strong brake on that process with a most significant and highly symbolical first act of war: Britain's cutting off the transatlantic cables that linked Germany to the western world.
The disruptions brought about by wars to the flow of communication, information and knowledge during the first half of the 20th-century were the obvious and visible results of the tensions between two contradictory movements that had been developing side by side since the mid 19th-century: on one hand, the scientific and technological Internationalism that provided the conditions for the "integration of the world through large flows of goods, capital, and people" (James, The creation and destruction of value, 2009); on the other hand, the Cultural Nationalism that was increasingly pervading the national public opinion of most European countries to the point of academic institutionalization (e.g. the epic foundation of some of the modern national philologies by the mid 19th-century).
Focussing mainly on the second half of the 19th-century and on the first half of the 20th-century, the panel seeks papers dealing with:
- the internationalization of science (building of international knowledge transfer networks);
- the nationalization of culture (development and institutionalization of cultural national movements);
- the tensions and dialectical interactions between these networks and the evolution of each of them.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Markus Krajewski (University of Basel)
Paper short abstract:
In my talk I will explore a selection of large-scale projects around 1900 that shared one goal: bringing order to the world by standardizing certain media as language (with an idiom like Esperanto, Ido, Volapük etc.), or even the basis of all thought with a globally standardized paper format.
Paper long abstract:
Before Google and globalization, big-thinking Germans tried to bring the world closer together: In my talk I will explore a neglected part in the history of globalization by examining a selection of large-scale projects that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, shared a grand yet unachievable goal: bringing order to the world. I will show how media, technological structures, and naked human ambition paved the way for global-scale ventures that created the first "world wide web."
I will discuss the late nineteenth-century networks of cables, routes, and shipping lines—of junctions, crossovers, and transfers—merged into a "multimedia system" that was both, a prerequisite and an inspiration for conceiving a project with a global range. By example of the German chemist and natural philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald, who spent years promoting a "world auxiliary language" (in advocating for Ido, together with Louis Couturat), a world currency, and a globally standardized paper format (nowadays known as DIN A 4) as the basis of all thought, I will show how Internationalism was conceived as a result of certain media networks.
Alberto Gabriele
Paper short abstract:
The papers highlights the activity of Brockhaus before and after the passing of copyright law to identify the shifting categories of the global and of the national in the history of the firm, by juxtaposing the book production of the 1850s-60s with the restructuring of its catalog in the 1870s.
Paper long abstract:
Book historians have often seen copyright law as the legal instrument that enabled the emergence of the modern figure of the author. Roger Chartier in 'Figure of the Author' has identified two lines of argument that scholars have alternatively used to define the notion of the modern author in the commercial marketplace. One, based in the discourse of eighteenth century subjectivity and private property. The other argument, retracing the Foucauldian notion of punishment and repression as a powerful mechanism of identity-formation, insists on the role of censorship in establishing the figure of the author. Not enough attention has been given to how the identity of the publisher has been shaped by the legal framework of the debate on international copyright in the course of the nineteenth century. The binational trade agreements of the 1840s and 1850s are important as they defined not only the figure of the author in the marketplace, but also the figure of the publisher that had undergone a more fluid development among practices in and out of the structures of power of the nation state. I shall focus on the the history of the publishing firm Brockaus in order to trace the discursive force of nationalism as an uneven development in the course of the nineteenth century, and to argue that copyright legislation reshaped the mediation of culture by publishers and book sellers by restructuring their commercial activities under the discursive power of the program of nation-building.
Franziska Hupfer (ETH Zürich)
Paper short abstract:
My paper examines the history of an ambitious project, the network for world-wide glacier monitoring launched in 1894. It will examine the connections between the development of global models, transnational cooperation, and the nationalization of science.
Paper long abstract:
When meeting in Zurich in 1894, the International Congress of Geology set up a committee to encourage observations on glaciers around the world. Scientists studying in Europe had detected astonishing simultaneities in retreat or advances of glaciers. Regular world-wide surveys should now provide answers to the questions of uniformity and causes of glacier changes on global level. The initiators of the global monitoring project pursued a commission composed of one representative per glacial country. However, the members finally were mostly European and North American scientists. Their task was to collect observations for annual international reports. No standard monitoring rules were defined, since the commission considered the established methods in various countries to be too different. This procedure resulted in nonuniformity, but it helped to recruit a large number of correspondents involved in diverse national monitoring systems. The project expanded until World War I that set an end to cross-border cooperation. Not a single international glacier report was published between 1915 and 1930.
The history of the International Glacier Commission provides an opportunity to discuss the complex relation between global knowledge production and cultural nationalism. Using the example of Switzerland, my paper analyzes how the nationalization and internationalization of science were inextricably intertwined. The involvement in the global network allowed Swiss scientists to gain international reputation and to promote glaciers as the nation's most prestigious object of scientific research. Looking at nationalization from the perspective of entanglements gives way to its reinterpretation as a process that partakes in globalization.
Jorrit Smit (Universiteit Leiden Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Paper short abstract:
Neutral chemists played an important role in the reconstruction of chemistry’s international knowledge network in the 1920’s. The presentation and impact of mediating efforts are compared. Neutrality, first a predicament, became an opportunity to harmonize national pride and internationalist ideals.
Paper long abstract:
From propaganda to poison gas, from fertilizer to fuel: the mobilization of scientists in the First World War manifested a concrete conflict between the alleged universality of scientific knowledge and the particularity of patriotic politics. International scientific communities, and the blooming knowledge network of chemistry in particular, were severely disrupted by the 'chemists' war'. The antagonism substantialized in the exclusion of Central Power chemists from international organizations and the publication of rivalling atomic weight tables.
Still, chemistry was the only scientific discipline to achieve full restoration of its international community before the 1930's. How were the 'poisonous clouds' of the war dissolved in the knowledge network of chemistry? The special importance of chemical 'mediators' from neutral nations is investigated in this paper. By comparing the approach, motivation and reception of Swedish (S.A. Arrhenius) and Dutch (E. Cohen) attempts it is clarified how 'neutrality' was fueled not only by internationalist ideals but also by cultural nationalism. Both mediators relied on the informal revival of pre-war personal networks of which Cohen's 'International Reunion of Chemists' (Smit, 2014) is an early example. The presentation and reception of such events was commonly larded with nationalistic rhetoric. It was the progression from a personal to a practical approach that distinguished the Dutch from the Swedish mediating mission. This proved more fruitful than the intellectual approach of e.g. the American chemist W.A. Noyes. The role of the neutral mediators in the successful rebuilding of international chemistry demonstrates the harmonization of internationalist endeavors with national pride.
Swen Steinberg (University of California, Los Angeles)
Paper short abstract:
Using models of network analysis and basic approaches of the modern history of knowledge the paper analyses the emergence as well as the social and transnational distribution and modification of the forestry and mining sciences. The paper is based on the current post-doc project at UCLA.
Paper long abstract:
As a result of the economic crisis after the Seven Years' War and the take-off of industrialization in Germany, new scientific disciplines were established: the modern forestry and the mining science. Both disciplines experienced rapid international expansion. Following the 'German' paragons, schools and colleges were founded - first in Europe and later in the U.S. - where the 'use' of nature as well as sustainability concepts were taught and disseminated. The paper aims to investigate these processes at three different levels: First, transfer and modification of knowledge on the use of nature between German-speaking countries and North America will be analyzed. In particular, the paper will analyze the effect of those individuals who deliberately transferred 'German' ideas about the use of nature and who put them to use. It will also be studied where the corresponding concepts were applied successfully. This exchange is seen as a two-way process. Second, the paper will investigate associated discourses on the use of and the knowledge on nature and natural resources in the 19/20th Century (e.g. notions of nature of German and British Romanticism. Third, the paper aims to compare different parties that were involved in the process: The development and implementation of academic concepts for the use of nature in forestry and mining academies entailed the formation of a functional elite (foresters, forest botanists, mining engineers). It is likely that such a professionalization caused conflicts, e.g. between academically qualified experts and practically active 'players'.
Cláudia Ninhos (Instituto de história contemporânea-Faculdade de ciências sociais e humanas)
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to address the transfer of knowledge from Germany to Portugal by focusing on the academic careers of Portuguese scientists in that country.
Paper long abstract:
In January 1929 the Portuguese Government founded the National Board of Education (Junta de Educação Nacional) in order to support the Portuguese research activities by sending scientists and academics "to foreign centres of the highest culture", so that they could take part in "the worldwide movement of intellectual cooperation". Since then, Germany became one of the most important destinations for Portuguese scholars.
This paper seeks to address the transfer of knowledge from Germany to Portugal by focusing on the academic careers of Portuguese scientists in that country.
João Pedro Rocha Joaquim (FCSH-UNL)
Paper short abstract:
The Estação Agronómica Nacional was an agricultural experiment station created in 1936, by the Estado Novo regime. It was intended to, through scientific means, modernise the Portuguese agriculture but its creation was the result of conflicting political, economic and academic visions.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 18th century Portugal's economic gap with the rest of Western Europe has been partially attributed to an inadequate agrarian structure and its inability of technical modernisation. By the late 19th century the creation of agronomic research institutions was part of several modernisation efforts attempted in order to exceed that perceived handicap. The Estado Novo (New State) regime, officially implemented in 1933, made renewed attempts to ameliorate this matter proposing further reforms. The Estação Agronómica Nacional (EAN / National Agronomic Station) was created in 1936 by initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture Rafael Duque, as part of a wide range of structural agro-economic reforms which emphasised the importance of scientific research. This initiative had both supporters who shared reformist ideas and detractors who opposed alterations to the status quo or considered the matter irrelevant.
Science, particularly experimental research, was seen as essential for the economic development of the country and an independent institute, solely dedicated to agronomic research, was deemed more capable of achieving good results than higher education institutions. The dichotomy between basic and applied science was also an important matter of debate, which the EAN's first director, Professor António Sousa Câmara, a keen writer of science communication to the general public, would explore frequently.
There was also a moral/ideological dimension of the work done at the experimental station where a determined set of values, as the importance of hard work or the dedication to the Nation, were encouraged.
Jaume Valentines-Álvarez (NOVA.ID.FCT NIF: 513 010 661) Ana Paula Silva (Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa) Maria Luísa Sousa (Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT), Nova)
Paper short abstract:
We aim at discussing the assumed contradiction between “scientific and technological internationalism” and “cultural nationalism” focusing on specific technological constructions (knowledge, practices, representations and other by-products), from the perspective of history of technology.
Paper long abstract:
Through the analysis of three case studies from the perspective of history of technology, we discuss the assumed contradiction between "scientific and technological internationalism" and "cultural nationalism" focusing on specific technological constructions (knowledge, practices, representations and other by-products).
Science and technology highly served to the symbolic and material constructions of the nation-states. This movement of state building through technology entangled both international and national dimensions.
Therefore, our argument is based on three Iberian cases illustrating different nuances of this entanglement: the case of the emergence of a "technological nationalism" within a broader cultural and political movement in Catalonia during the 1930s; and two cases on the role of technological networks in linking and delinking national and transnational spaces through telegraphs and roads in Portugal from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century.
Olga Osadtschy (University of Basel)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is focusing on the nationalization of the idea of a Jewish identity in the first half of the 20th century. Especially the conflicts that arise from the clash of a rural shtetl tradition and a globally operating network of Jewish scholars.
Paper long abstract:
The ethnographic expeditions of Salomon Ansky in 1912 and 1913 were quests for new foundations for Jewish life and Jewish art in the Russian Empire. Travelling the pale of settlement with photographer Salomon Iudovin and musicologist Michael Engel, Ansky sought to collect as many impressions, artefacts and folkloristic detail as possible to take back to St. Petersburg. Here, in the "laboratory of modernity" as Karl Schlögel puts it, the assimilated, cosmopolite Jews of the Empire were to be reminded of their religious and cultural roots. Preoccupied with the possibility of Jewish traditions disappearing due to assimilation, scholars worldwide engaged in similar endeavours.
The paper will be focusing on the photographic work of Salomon Iudovin and the tensions that arise from it. Human or not, the objects of ethnographic interest have to stay where they are in order to justify the ethnographer's endeavours. The use of modern technologies (photography and phonography) proves to be a pharmakon, means of conservation and of destruction at the same time. Just like the religious artefacts collected in the field, the inhabitants of the Shtetls were transformed into mobile objects. Their destination: The first Jewish Museum in St. Petersburg. They all became part of a 'nation-building' process that relied on contemporary media practices.
A close reading of the visual and textual archive material will show how Jewish identity figures as diasporic and therefore global issue and as highly normative 'dispositif' for national thought.
Fernando Clara (FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
The paper reconsiders Snow's "Two Cultures" thesis. It will focus (1) on the historical interactions between these two knowledge networks and (2) on Snow's view of the gap between a universal, international and progressive endeavour like Science, and a parochial, national and conservative Culture.
Paper long abstract:
C. P. Snow's bipolar thesis of the "Two Cultures", and above all his apology for a scientific turn in education, found a fertile ground to flourish in the Post-World War era. Not surprisingly, as World War II had been won in a Physics Lab, rather than in the classical battlefield.
The paper will reconsider Snow's thesis from a historical point of view. It will trace the tensions and dialectical interactions between these two networks of knowledge from the late-18th century to the mid-20th century focusing mainly on one of the premises that underlies Snow's arguments: the gap between a universal, international and progressive endeavour like Science, and a parochial, national and conservative Culture, which, according to Snow, is at the very base of the Humanities.
Christina Reimann (Humboldt-University, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
From an actors' perspective, I consider cultural nationalization, the creation of national education and the construction of “national-history narratives” as mutually entangled processes. The activity of the National Education Leagues shows that these processes had also a transnational dimension.
Paper long abstract:
This paper studies the nationalization of culture from an actors' perspective: It considers the National Education Leagues in France, Belgium and England as having promoted this process by their very foundation as well as by their stance taken in the debates on national education. Through an analysis of the Leagues' statements - the associations fought for national, public and secular education - I will analyse the relationship between cultural nationalization, the creation of national education systems and the discourse producing "national-history narratives". I want to show that the production of "national-history narratives" was a pillar of both cultural nationalization and national education which were also mutually entangled - and that the National Education Leagues as representatives of the bourgeois civil society took an active part in these processes. The Leagues mobilized and constructed the narratives of national history in two ways: first to support their arguments in favour of national education and against a privately or church based system; second by designing the curricular of national education including lessons on "national history". Analysing how the Leagues conceived "national history" and how they used this narrative to foster their claims for national education will elucidate how the dynamic of cultural nationalization was urged by organized social actors. However, taking into account that the Leagues were transnationally connected with each other and that they developed their argumentative strategies out of transnational transfers suggests that cultural nationalization as represented by national education and the narratives of "national history" was also the product of transnational transfers.
Jeane DeLaney (St. Olaf College)
Paper short abstract:
Examines the rise of cultural nationalism in early-20th-century Argentina, which represents a key example of how societies on the receiving end of 19th-century globalization responded to the challenges posed by an externally produced modernity.
Paper long abstract:
The rise of cultural nationalism in early 20th Argentina represents a fascinating example of how societies on the receiving end of 19th globalization responded to the challenges posed by an externally produced modernity. With the advent of new technologies that allowed for improved shipping and transatlantic communications, the country became Europe's foremost supplier of beef, grains and wool. The resulting export boom made Argentina a preferred destination for both British capital and millions of Europeans, and rapidly thrust the country into the modern age. These changes provoked a strong reaction from a new generation of Argentine intellectuals known as the cultural nationalists, who called for the defense of lo argentino and the protection of the country's supposedly authentic cultural values. In doing so, they launched a cultural movement that had a broad and enduring impact on how Argentines understood their nation's identity and its place in the international arena. This paper will explore the key tenets of early- twentieth-century cultural nationalism, including: the rejection of 19th positivism, which the cultural nationalists saw as an imported, scientifically-based philosophy at odds with the supposedly inherent idealism of the Argentine people; the celebration of the Argentine "folk," with a particular focus on the nineteenth-century creole "gaucho" or cowboy; the call for the cultivation of an authentically national literature and art that would reflect the supposedly unique character of the Argentine "soul;"the rejection of universalism and the Romantically-inspired belief that each nation formed a distinctive ethno-cultural community.