Previous Congresses

The Fifth ENIUGH Congress took place in Budapest, hosted by both the Central European University (Department of History) and Corvinus University (Karl Polanyi Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology and Social Policy), supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Research Centre for Humanities. Under the overall theme “Ruptures, Empires, Revolutions” and on the occasion of the centennial of the Russian Revolution, we discussed the global context and repercussions of the revolution in particular while debating the role of revolutions in global history in general. Added to that we explored empires and imperial forms of organisation, especially in view of how they changed and ended, and which legacies they left. Violent transformations of societies, ruptures in world orders, and wars, as well as changing international relations were addressed from transnational and transregional angles. The location of the congress was a step in mobilising a pan-European community of scholars: We are glad that our call for contributions to comparative and global perspectives on South Eastern Europe and the Middle East has resonated with the research interest of many colleagues who came to Budapest to discover the connected histories of the Hungarian capital and the wider region. Download a PDF version of the complete conference programme here.

Under the theme “Encounters, Circulations and Conflicts” the next ENIUGH congress seeks to: – challenge the problematic opposition of centres and peripheries, which is still influential in historical research, – analyse the multitude of places and centres from where history is written and the plurality of the languages in which historical artefacts are conveyed, – stimulate a discussion on the meaning and relevance of relations, comparisons, transfers, and entanglements between states, peoples, communities, and individuals in a ‘long durée’ perspective – address the destructive effects of international and global connectivity, given the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, – and to integrate the historical interactions between man and environment, including cultural and economic processes as well as the various aspects of material and social life. Generally, our intention is to transcend the confines of national history writing. While the majority of the contributions deals with particular historical subjects, some concentrate on questions of theory and methodology. In addition to the panels in the thematic sessions, roundtables and special events offer room for joint discussions. We look forward to welcoming to Paris historians interested in transnational and global history, from European as well as from non-European countries, and representing various disciplines involved in the field, ranging from political science to archaeology, from economic to art history.   Download a PDF version of the complete conference programme here.

Recent decades have seen the re-emergence and, on an unprecedented scale, the further development of various interacting strands of world, global and transnational history, all shar­ing the common aim of transcending national historiographies. Central to these intellectual enterprises has been the study of connections and compari­sons. These perspectives provide for sustained re­flection on a great variety of themes and studies. Under the framework of “Connections and Comparisons” about 100 panels presented new findings on research topics, including the following:

• Entanglements between polities, societies, communities and individuals situated in, or spanning, different regions of the world
• Interactions between humanity and the environ­ment, including those which developed over the very long term, through the cultural and economic histories of material and social life
• Histories of empires, large-scale crises, interna­tional organisations, and the intercontinental sources and consequences of revolutions, whether political, technological, social or ideological
• Exchanges on oceans as spaces of sustained interaction between communities from different continents, the experience and consequences of migration, periods of ‘de-globalisation’ and ‘globalisation’

Not least, this included a critical reflection on the methodological and conceptual issues involved in comparative, transnational and entangled histories: both in general terms as well as in relation to specific areas of historical inquiry, from religions to real wages and from diasporas to epistemic communities. The common emphasis was a commitment to tran­scend national historiographies and explore different approaches to wide-ranging comparisons. The program of the congress can be downloaded here.

The second congress of European world and global historians took place in Dresden in 2008 and profited also from the large presence of world historians from Australia, China, Japan, Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa, and the US.  With this excellent excellent opportunity arose to compare the state of the art of world and global history in different world regions. This became especially relevant as shortly before the congress representatives of the North American-based World History Association (WHA), the then recently established Asian Association of World Historians (AAWHA), together with colleagues from Africa and Latin America and from ENIUGH launched a world-wide network of organisations focusing on world and global history (NOGWHISTO). The Dresden congress was organised under the title “World Orders”, a topic which had been largely dealt with in political science, and which is very prominent in the study of international relations, while historians had made only marginal contributions or at least had not used the term so prominently. The idea of “Global Governance”, which is challenged by the idea of only one remaining superpower after 1989, has inspired historians as well to revisit the category of empire, from Rome to Washington. Some have argued that there are lessons to be learnt from the Victorian Empire, while others dispute the continuity from old fashioned European imperialism to the contemporary world order. In late 19th century imperialism, World Order was guaranteed by a potent great power (or a couple of such powers) with the ambition to control world affairs by military means and by political pressure based in economic superiority. From a global historian’s point of view this raises such questions as what exactly was ‘controlled’? What did control mean with regard to territoriality, trade routes, major resources like energy and raw materials, markets, financial institutions and so forth? This raises the further issue of when in history it makes sense to speak of a world order. Or to formulate it differently: since when do great powers dispose of the technology to control essential parts of world economy and since when have world markets and world affairs been more important than domestic markets and domestic affairs for the chances to develop societies? The opening lectures were given by Anthony G. Hopkins (Walter Prescott Webb Chair of History and Ideas at the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin) dealing with historiography’s trajectory “From Postmodernism to Globalisation” and by Bénédicte Savoy (Institute for History and Art’s History at the Technical University Berlin) giving a lecture on transnational art history under the title “’Es gibt nichts schöneres auf dem ganzen sublunarischen Erdenrunde.’ Die Kunstsammlungen Dresdens in transnationaler Perspektive”. Both addressed the current debate on globalisation and history from their respective disciplinary perspectives as specialists of British imperial history and continental history of arts, thus focusing on transnational entanglements of and within Europe from different angles. In the closing discussion Peer Vries (Vienna), Patrick O’Brien (London), Barbara Lüthi (Basel), Katja Naumann (Leipzig) and Madeleine Herren (Heidelberg) targeted crucial themes arising from the panels and expressed their general impressions about what was gained during those three days: notably that an increasing number of younger scholars are entering and strengthening the field of world and global history writing and teaching. The opening lectures can be purchased here: http://www.univerlag-leipzig.de/article.html;article_id,1185 Reports on the session are available at history.transnational, a publication of the key notes is available. The program of the congress can be downloaded here.

The first congress was held in 2005 in Leipzig with about 300 participants from all over Europe and other parts of the world, meeting in almost 50 panels. Three purposes guided the three day conference:

• giving a broad overview of the numerous efforts in various European countries, not only with respect to research questions, but also with regard to how world and global history is or should be taught at schools and universities
• stimulating a discussion about the intellectual traditions of world history writing, which are viewed in various European countries as a positive reference or as the background for the current debates in world and global history
• addressing fundamental methodological questions of today’s global history writing since,  especially from a European perspective, world history has to confront the long tradition of Eurocentric thinking and to explore new ways of analysing the relationship between Europe and extra-European regions, as well as reflecting on the role of Europe or its nation states in international organizations and global networks.

The opening speeches were given by Prof. Michael Geyer (University of Chicago) and Prof. Patrick O’Brien (London School of Economics). The closing event was a round table discussion with William Clarence-Smith (SOAS London), Patrick Fridenson (EHESS Paris), Alexander Nützenadel (Universität zu Köln),  Hannes Siegrist (Universität Leipzig) and Peer Vries (Universiteit Leiden). Reports on most of the panel discussions are published in an issue of the journal “Historical Social Research” (May 2006) as well as in the online-forum ‘history.transnational’.The program and report of the congress can be downloaded here.