Recent research on the relationship between nations and empires have emphasized the need to rethink not only the very nature of this relationship, but also some of the standard paradigms in studies on nation-building, nationalism and the modern nation-state, from the late Middle Ages to the modern era. Scholarship on the late medieval and early modern period has drawn attention to early, avant la lettre occurrences of these phenomena, dating back as early as the 15^thcentury. Meanwhile, historians of the modern period hold that there was no clear transition from empire to nation-state: in fact, imperial and national narratives and practices often resemble each other (Judson 2006, Schenk 2013). Eventually, the concept of nation often comes entangled with notions of “race,” “religion,” “ethnicity” and “class,” as well as with other markers of collective identifications in the early modern and modern period (Berger and Lorenz 2008). The international conference “Nations and empires” aims to explore these relationships in all their conceptual and phenomenological complexity, through example from Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the early modern and modern periods.

Program

4 May 2021

14h30-15h :

Introduction - Volker Depkat (Univ. Regensburg), Mathieu Grenet (Univ. Albi), Susanne Lachenicht (Univ. Bayreuth) et Mathilde Monge (Univ. Toulouse)

15h00-17h30 :

Session 1 -Heritage, Continuation, and Reinvestments: (Re-)thinking the Transition to the Nation(State) and Its Interplay with Notions of Empire

Chair : Sébastien Rozeaux(Univ. Toulouse)

• Bartolomé Yun Casalilla (Univ. Seville) : Between the composite monarchy and the nation-state, 1492-1808: On the making of Spain, or how to explain a historical gap
• Aspasia Dimitriadi (EHESS) : Exploiter le passé, construire la nation : l'utilisation du passé impérial en Grèce au XIXe siècle

Pause

• Emmanuelle Pérez-Tisserant (Univ. Toulouse) : L’héritage impérial dans la construction nationale du Mexique au XIXe siècle
• Juliette Cadiot (EHESS) : Universalism versus/toward Diversity. Voices from the Russian Empire, June 1917: Nationalities in the Preparation of the Elections of Constituent Assembly

18h00-20h : Conférence keynote - Frederick Cooper (NYU) : Empire and Nation in Time Perspective

5 May 2021

13h30-17h30 :

Session 2 -Imagined Communities between Empires and Nations: Issues, Practices and Representations.

Chair : Volker Depkat (Univ. Regensburg)

• Wim Klooster (Clark Univ.) : The Imperial Self-Image of a Nascent Nation: Dutch Brazil as the New Rome
• Thomas Brisson (Univ. Paris8) : Building the Nation on Transnational Imaginaries: Global Cultures, Modernization and Intellectual Interventions in Post-imperial Singapore
• Etienne Bourdeu (CESR, Tours) : Servir sa nation ou l’empire ? Marc de Rye marquis de Varambon et la structuration de la monarchie hispanique à la fin du XVIe siècle

Pause

• Michel Martinez-Perez (Univ. Toulouse) : La construction de la nation aragonaise par le nationalisme aragonais (de 1917 à nos jours)
• Jasper Trautsch (Humboldt Univ. Berlin) : Union before State before Nation: Remarks on the Creation of American Nationalism

6 May 2021

13h30-17h :

Session 3 -Embeddedness, Compatibility, Competition: (Re-)thinking the Relationship between Empires and Nations beyond the “jeu d’échelles”

Chair : Mathilde Monge(Univ. Toulouse)

• Nicholas Canny (Univ. Galway) : Ireland, Irish Catholics, and European Overseas Empires, 1500-1900
• Mathias Leanza (Univ. Basel) : Disentangling the German Imperial Nation, 1871-1919

Pause

• Roisin Healy (Univ. Galway) : Anti-Imperialism in Irish Nationalist Discourse on Poland and India in the Nineteenth Century
• Balint Varga (Univ. Budapest) : An Empire Underneath an Empire: Concepts of a Hungarian Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century

17h30-19h : Conclusions - Jane Burbank (NYU)

Event format and registration

The event will be held Online

registration: mathieu.grenet@univ-jfc.fr