European Association for Urban History Conference, Stockholm, 30.8.-2.9. 2006
Specialist Session
Trade, Ethnicity and Urban Culture in European Port Cities (17th-20th centuries)

Because of their international trading links, port cities tended to attract human capital from relatively distant regions. They were often noted for the extent of long-distance immigration and during the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries an increasingly high proportion of their in-migrants came from distant locations. Immigrant groups played an important role in fostering and maintaining trading connections, but they also had a profound effect on the long-term process of social and cultural change in port-cities. Many ports accommodated different in-migrant ‘nations’ and ‘foreign’ elements often exercised a powerful function in shaping the character of individual cities.

This session will focus on the development of ethnic communities in a number of European port-cities between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. It will explore the growth and development of ethnic communities, their contribution to trade and commerce, and the extent to which they influenced the urban culture of European ports. It will assess the significance of ethnic settlement for trading networks, the mechanisms for maintaining national identity, the problems of assimilation, and the contribution of in-migrant communities to the development of cultural identity in terms of cultural traditions, confessional affiliation, language and community links.

By focusing on the experience of different immigrant groups within a specific port-city context, the session will extend existing knowledge of the migration process itself, provide an insight into the common aspects of the migrant experience, and offer a comparative framework for analysing the factors which determined the different contribution of in-migrants to modern urban culture in European port-cities. Trade, Ethnicity and Urban Culture in European Port Cities (17th-20th centuries)

General Information: If you want to present a paper at any of the sessions, please send a one-page outline to the appropriate session organisers (Prof. Lee / Prof. Vögele), as soon as possible and in any case before 1 October 2005. You will be notified of acceptance by the end of November 2005. Accepted paper-givers must send one copy of their final text – 6 pages or 2500 words – to the conference organiser and one copy to the session organisers. This should be done before 30 April 2006.

In order to ensure maximum effective discussion we intend to place all papers on the conference web site. Please, send your accepted paper as an e-mail attachment not later than 30 April 2006 to urbanhistory@historia.su.se. You must also register for the conference, see www. historia.su.se/urbanhistory/eauh, last date without surcharge is 1 June 2006.

Contact:
Jörg Vögele
Düsseldorf
e-mail: voegele@uni-duesseldorf.de

Robert Lee
Liverpool
e-mail: w.r.lee@liverpool.ac.uk