Exploiting Nature. Making an Empire: Natural Resource Extraction in Late Habsburg Empire

Exploiting Nature. Making an Empire: Natural Resource Extraction in Late Habsburg Empire

Organizer
Iva Lučić (University of Uppsala) and Jawad Daheur (Center for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies, Paris)
Location
Online
Country
France
From - Until
20.05.2021 - 21.05.2021
By
Connections Redaktion, Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics, Universität Leipzig

The conference aims at consolidating environmental history as part of the history of Habsburg Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century by exploring various forms of resource exploitation from multiple, but connected, perspectives including ecology, economy, governance and labor.

Exploiting Nature. Making an Empire: Natural Resource Extraction in Late Habsburg Empire

The contributions link environmental-historical concerns into the broader theoretical frame of imperial governance, subject-ruler relations and the expansion of capitalist structures under imperial rule. This is done by providing a platform of exchange for researchers who work on natural resource extraction in different parts of the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed diverse ecologies and positions in the world economy. The diversity of languages in which sources are available, their geographical dispersion and the differences between national historiographies make historical writing on an empire-wide scale a real challenge. For the first time, it will be possible to relate the different research results to each other and discuss them from a supra-regional perspective. Historians and environmental scientists working on the Habsburg Empire will explore multidisciplinary methods that combine environmental history of empire and human ecology. Their approaches will be discussed with Swedish scholars working on other imperial spaces. In that way the conference promotes cooperation among scholars working on imperial history and strengthens internationalization among Swedish academics.

Programm

Thursday, 20 May 2021

09:30 Introduction
Iva Lučić & Jawad Daheur

10:00 Keynote lecture
Manufacturing versus Resource Extraction. Unequal Division of Labour and Regional Shifts in Core-Periphery Relations in the Habsburg Monarchy (18/19th c.)
Andrea Komlosy – University of Vienna

11:00 Break

11:10 Panel I

Get Out of Our Forest! Rural Societies, National Mobilization, State-Building and Modern Forestry in Transylvania 1900-1940
Gábor Egry – Institute of Political History, Budapest

Imperial, Regional, and Local Regulation of Water and its Inter-Imperial Entanglements
Jana Osterkamp – Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Chair: Iva Lučić
Commentator: Margaret Hunt – University of Uppsala

12:40 Lunch Break

13:40 Panel II

The Establishment and Management of the Investment Fund of Croatian-Slavonian Military Border as an Example of the State Forest Management during the Reign of Franz Joseph I.
Robert Skenderović – History Institute, Slavonski Brod

Securing the Forests: A Relational Approach to Transborder Conflicts and Contestations in the Late Ottoman and Habsburg Empires
Selçuk Dursun – Middle East Technical University, Ankara

Chair: Jawad Daheur
Commentator: Ana Sekulić – European University Institute, Florence

15:10 Break

15:30 Panel III

Indian Mongooses in the Adriatic: Knowledge, Infrastructure and Improvement
Wolfgang Göderle – Karl Franzens University, Graz

Traditional and Innovative Agroforestry during the Late Habsburg Empire in Hungary
Anna Varga – Rachel Carson Centre, Munich

Chair: Iva Lučić
Commentator: Ségolène Plyer – University of Strasbourg

Friday, 21 May 2021

09:30 Panel IV

Was there an Interplay between Ethnic Composition, State Intervention and the Patterns of the Commodification of Timber in Forested Areas? Two Regional Examples from the Carpathians, 1890-1919
Róbert Balogh – University of Debrecen

Contested “Rights in Nature”: Practices of Forest Use Regulation in Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina on the Crossroad between Private Capital, Local Population, and the Imperial State
Iva Lučić – University of Uppsala

Chair: Jawad Daheur
Commentator: Pieter Judson – European University Institute, Florence

11:00 Break

11:10 Panel V

Bark Beetle and the Natural Resources Exploitation in the Böhmerwald Region (1868–1877)
Kristýna Kaucká – Masaryk Institute and Archives, Prague

Resource Governance in Time of Drought: The Struggle over Fodder Exports in Cisleithania at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century
Jawad Daheur – Center for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies, Paris

Chair: Iva Lučić
Commentator: Gunnel Cederlöf – Linnaeus University, Växjö

12:40 Lunch Break

13:40 Panel VI

State versus Peasants? The Forest Transition in Late Habsburg Austria
Simone Gingrich and Martin Schmid – University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Chair: Jawad Daheur

Commentator: Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist – University of Stockholm

14:40 Break

15:00 Roundtable discussion: Imperial Statehood, Nature, and Private Capital

Gunnel Cederlöf – Linnaeus University, Växjö
Per Högselius – KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Pieter Judson – European University Institute, Florence

Moderation: Iva Lučić & Jawad Daheur

16:00 End of the conference

Contact (announcement)

Iva Lučić
iva.lucic@edu.uu.se

Jawad Daheur
jawad.daheur@ehess.fr

Editors Information
Published on
07.05.2021
Classification
Regional Classification
Additional Informations
Country Event
Language(s) of event
English
Language of announcement