In a past European research project, many of the speakers at this workshop gathered to explore how different actors in 16^th-20^th century East Asia conceptualized historical time. We mostly focused on representations of history and periodicity, particularly how different actors used topoi from the “European” historical past to shape their own perceptions of “East Asian” history. While discussing these questions, we realized that we could not think of time without thinking of space. What were the representations and uses of space underlying different intellectual activities and social practices, and to what extent did those representations shape the actor’s relation to history and time?

Argument

In a past European research project*, many of the speakers at this workshop gathered to explore how different actors in 16^th-20^th century East Asia conceptualized historical time. We mostly focused on representations of history and periodicity, particularly how different actors used topoi from the “European” historical past to shape their own perceptions of “East Asian” history. We examined how people in East Asia defined the relevance of past events by comparing them to European ones, how they circumscribed a “Middle Age” or a “Modernity” or wondered about the “age” they lived in. While discussing these questions, we realized that we could not think of time without thinking of space. Did the world have a single “present” or did each place –a group, a polity– have a time of its own? And if each “place” had its own time, what was the extent of this place? From the relation between history and territorial sovereignty to reflections on the “site” of historical time (“the Pacific Age”, the “Age of Empire”), we repeatedly encountered the same problem: how representations of time were intimately related to the perception and organization of space.

After the publication of a journal issue in the Historical Journal**, our discussions were disrupted by the COVID 19 pandemic. This year we would like to resume our project. Focusing on different case studies between the 16^th and the 20^th centuries, this workshop will address the following questions: what were the representations and uses of space underlying different intellectual activities and social practices, and to what extent did those representations shape the actor’s relation to history and time? Our focus on space is not in itself new. It builds on a range of discussions, including the so-called “spatial turn”, Christian Jacob’s lieux de savoir, our previous work on the “sites of knowledge” in East Asia***, a long tradition of urban and architectural history, and the works of historians and legal scholars on the political and legal organization of the world space. Drawing on this previous research, we will focus on how ideas of space were used to interpret or frame human action—from a historian’s narrative to state-building, from a geopolitical strategy to a territorial conflict, from legal norms to architectural devices. We will also trace the different paths of ideas, from travelers (including businessmen, missionaries, ship passengers, or diplomats) to textbooks, philosophical works and legal texts. All of this will prompt us to reflect on how different combinations of history and space could be used to produce normative devices, shape political actions or direct social and economic behaviors.

Programm

9h30 : Accueil

9h45: Introduction

• 10h-10h30 Birgit Tremml-Werner (Stockholm University) Negotiating Imperial Spaces - Murakami Naojirō’s Archival Diplomacy
• 10h45-11h15 Moe Omiya (University of Zurich) Palimpsest Colonies: Representation of Qingdao and Micronesia by the German and Japanese architects (late 19th to early 20th century)
• 11h30-12h Martin Dusinberre (University of Zurich) Japanese Uses and Abuses of European Space in Northern Australia

12h15 Lunch

• 14h-14h30 David Mervart (Autonomous University of Madrid) From the Tridentine Catholic Cosmopolis to the Eurasian Republic of Letters: Usable Pasts Turned into Visions of Space
• 14h45-15h Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics) The Spaces of Folksong: Public, Private and Other Voices in Late Ming China

15h15 Pause

• 15h30-16h Egas Moniz Bandeira (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) Uses of History in Chinese Constitutional Law (late 19th-early 20th century)
• 16h15-16h45 Joachim Kurtz (Heidelberg University) When the World is Not Enough: Kang Youwei’s Complete Books on True Principles and Universal Laws (ca. 1891)
• 17h-17h30 Pablo Blitstein (CRH-EHESS) Shaping the Pacific Ocean. Nation, Corporations, and the Organizational Power of Money between East Asia and Latin America (late 19th - early 20th centuries)
• 17h45-18h00 General discussion : Antonella Romano (CAK-EHESS)

Notes

*https://eautbc.hypotheses.org/

**“Uses of the Past between Europe and East Asia” : https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/issue/542DFE5A84BCACF35891C6B99E82474B

***https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/titel_7372.ahtml