HomeWriting about 19th c. mid-size cities

Writing about 19th c. mid-size cities

Écrire sur les villes de rang intermédiaire au XIXe siècle

Schreiben über Mittelstädte im 19. Jahrhundert

Escribir sobre ciudades de rango medio en el siglo XIX

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Published on Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Abstract

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This conference looks at the many forms of writing that took medium-sized towns as their object of study during the long nineteenth century (1780-1914), and their role in the production of knowledge, the affirmation of identity, and social, economic, political and cultural transformations. 

Announcement

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This conference will be held at the University of Tours on 19 and 20 November 2026.

Argument

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the growth of cities led to irreversible changes in the balance of populations and power, particularly in relation to the emergence of the modern industrial state. These cities were dynamic places, structured by the social uses and practices of space, which in turn shaped the configurations of the groups that occupied them. The cities of Europe, with their own municipal governments, could operate as autonomous entities separate from central government (Weber, 1921).

The wide variety of ways in which writings on the city have been produced and used reflects various administrative, social, scientific and cultural practices. These have long been used and/or reinvented to assert the identities of mid-size towns in changing urban networks at various scales.

The production of administrative, antiquarian, archaeological, sociological, cultural and ordinary knowledges about the 19th-century city bears witness to the material forms, social organisation, cultural life and governance of these cities. It also indicates their role in the construction of the state and of memory. On a global scale, the richness and variety of national cultures in the 19th century were partly due to the tremendous growth of these mid-size towns, which had multiple facets: they were both laboratories for a municipalism that responded to economic, social and health problems, but also places conducive to the development of knowledge, political activism and the emergence of new cultural forms, (literary and artistic). The latter trend reveals new cultural practices that produced social identity: in a landscape that was radically altered by the political and civic consecration of the individual, the democratisation of new writing enabled new discursive procedures to justify speaking out --no longer in terms of predefined social groups, but in terms of an identity to be constructed and in relation to a changing community. The modern novel, for example, was above all a privileged place for the representation of individuality, which resulted from the emergence of the middle classes, economic individualism, and philosophical and technical innovations.

The aim of this conference is to focus on writings that take intermediate cities, which have been relatively less studied than the major capitals and the most dynamic metropolises, as their subject. The project covers a long period of the nineteenth century (from the 1780s to the eve of the First World War), with no exclusions as to geographical scope, so as to enable global and comparative approaches.

During this period, i.e., the long 19th century, these mid-size towns were multi-faceted: at once breeding grounds for new intellectual and for political currents and new cultural, literary and artistic forms, and producers of social identity. This urbanisation, which sometimes proceeded at a different pace, also raises questions about the relationship between these areas and their natural environments and the protection of their ancient architectural heritages (Geddes, 1915); the social effects of their spatial and economic transformations (Harvey, 2003); and the cultural, political and economic roles played by these intermediate towns in the national and global changes of the long nineteenth century (Osterhammel, 2017). Mid-size towns were thus able to nurture alternative projects and models to the ‘big city’ model. This conference will examine their ecological, aesthetic, social, collectivist and reformist developments.

Taking note of a rich historiography on: the writing of the city in the modern age (Histoire urbaine, 2023/1; Urban History, 2020/47, ‘Thinking spatially: new horizons for urban history"); the crossroads of the action of writing (GRIHL, 2016); the history of science and knowledge and urban history (Van Damme, 2012 ; Garnier, 2024); and cultural history (Revue d'Histoire Culturelle, XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), this interdisciplinary conference on writings about the city will endeavour to reveal the diversity of actors and modes of elaborating knowledge about mid-size towns and their mobilisation (or performativity) in the processes of (re)forming local, national, imperial and transnational identities on a global scale. The conference is open to all continents, while paying attention to colonial and comparative dynamics, in order to grasp this long 19th century in all its spatial and chronological extension. 

Among the types of writing that take the intermediary city as their object, and without presupposing watertight boundaries between these different fields, proposals for papers may cover:

  • administrative writings, in the broadest sense of the term (administrators' reports, grey literature, cartographic documents, statistical tables, surveys, communal monographs, travel accounts, etc.), whether produced by administrators, scholars, craftsmen, notables, teachers or ecclesiastics, etc.;
  • scholarly writings (antiquarian, archaeological, topographical, historical, etc.), at various stages of formalisation and institutionalisation;
  • the writing of myths and mysteries, aimed at exalting (or toning down) local particularities, in a variety of media that were flourishing at the time (the press, travel guides, travel logs, postcards and correspondence, literary and artistic productions, etc.); and
  • written documents produced by city dwellers (requests, petitions, addresses, grievances, etc.), more or less structured into groups (professional, religious, family, political, associative, artistic, literary, etc.) focused on their dealings with urban authorities, on the everyday life of the city, or as taken from the height of socio-political crises that challenged the harmony and social conventions of the established order.

Submission guidelines

Proposals of no more than 500 words, together with a one-page CV, should be sent to the following two addresses:

  • Tri Tran: tri.tran@univ-tours.fr
  • Stéphanie Sauget: stephanie.sauget@univ-tours.fr

by 15 January 2025. 

All proposals will receive a response from the organising committee by 15 March 2025.

Conference scientific committee

  • Pr. Philippe Chassaigne (CEMMC, Université de Bordeaux)
  • Pr. Aude Deruelle (POLEN, Université d’Orléans)
  • Pr. Stéphanie Sauget (CeTHiS, Université de Tours)
  • Pr. Tri Tran (ICD, Université de Tours)

Select bibliography 

  • AGULHON Maurice, ed., La Ville de l’âge industriel, Paris, Seuil, 1998.
  • ANDERSON Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin And Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1983.
  • BAYLY Christopher A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, Blackwell, 2004.
  • BAUBÉROT Arnaud and BOURILLON Florence (eds.), Urbaphobie. La détestation de la ville aux XIXe et XXe siècles, éditions Bière, 2009.
  • BIGET Jean-Louis, HERVÉ Jean-Claude, Panoramas urbains. Situation de l’histoire des villes, Lyon, ENS Éditions, 1995. 
  • CHARLE Christophe, Le Temps des capitales culturelles, Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2009.
  • CLARK Peter (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2013.
  • GARNIER Gautier, Capitales érudites. Ecrits et savoirs à Lisbonne et à Madrid (XIXe - XXe siècle), Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2024. 
  • GEDDES Patrick, Cities in Evolution, London, Williams, 1915.
  • GEORG Odile, HUETZ DE LEMPS Xavier, Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, t. 5, La ville coloniale xve-xxe siècle, Paris, Seuil, 2012.
  • GRIHL, Écriture et action. XVIIe - XIXe siècle, une enquête collective, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 2016.
  • HARVEY David, Paris, Capital of Modernity, London, Routledge, 2003.
  • HOBSBAWM Eric and RANGER Terence, The Invention of Tradition, London, Canto, 1983.
  • HOBSBAWM Eric, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, London, Abacus, 2002.
  • HOWARD Ebenezer, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, London, Swan, Sonnenschein, 1898.
  • KALIFA Dominique and THÉRENTY Marie-Ève (eds.), Les Mystères urbains au XIXe siècle : circulations, transferts, appropriations, Médias 19 – Littérature et culture médiatique, 2015,  https://www.medias19.org/publications/les-mysteres-urbains-au-xixe-siecle-circulations-transferts-appropriations, Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
  • LE GALÈS Patrick, Le Retour des villes européennes. Sociétés urbaines, mondialisation, gouvernement et gouvernance, Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 2011.
  • LEPETIT Bernard, Les Villes dans la France moderne (1740-1840), Paris, Albin Michel, 1988. 
  • LEPETIT Bernard, Les Formes de l’expérience. Une autre histoire sociale, Paris, Albin Michel, 1995. 
  • LEPETIT Bernard, PUMAIN Denise (eds.), Temporalités urbaines, Paris, Anthropos, 1993. 
  • OSTERHAMMEL Jürgen, The Transformation of the World. A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, Princeton UP, 2014. 
  • PINOL Jean-Luc (ed.), Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, t. 4 et 5, Paris, Seuil, 2003.
  • PLOUX François, “Une émulation à usage local. Les concours d’histoire des sociétés savantes de province au XIXe siècle”, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, n° 64, 2017/1, p. 32-62. 
  • POUSSOU Jean-Pierre and Philippe LOUPÈS, Les Petites villes du Moyen-Âge à nos jours, Éditions du CNRS, 1987.
  • POUSSOU Jean-Pierre and François-Joseph RUGGIU, Les Élites et les villes moyennes en France et en Angleterre (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle), Harmattan, 2000.
  • PROCHASSON Christophe, Paris 1900. Essai d’histoire culturelle, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1999.
  • ROBERT Marthe, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Paris, Grasset, 1972.
  • SINGARAVELOU Pierre and VENAYRE Sylvain (eds.), Histoire du monde au XIXe siècle, Paris, Fayard, 2017. [See chapter VII « Urbanisation et cultures urbaines » written by Dominique KALIFA, p. 109-121.]
  • VADELORGE Loïc, “Les villes moyennes ont une histoire”, L’Information géographique, vol. 77, 2013/3, p. 29-44. 
  • VAN DAMME Stéphane, Métropoles de papier. Naissance de l’archéologie urbaine à Paris et à Londres (XVIIe-XXe siècle), Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2012. 
  • WEBER Max, La Ville, translated by A. Berlan, Paris, La Découverte, [1921] 2014.
  • ZELDIN Theodore, Une Histoire du monde au XIXe siècle, Paris, Larousse, 2005.

Places

  • Université de Tours
    Tours, France (37)

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Contact(s)

  • Stéphanie Sauget
    courriel : sauget [at] univ-tours [dot] fr
  • Tri Tran
    courriel : tran [at] univ-tours [dot] fr

Information source

  • Paul Lecat
    courriel : paul [dot] lecat [at] univ-tours [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Writing about 19th c. mid-size cities », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, December 18, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/12y94

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