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The Congress of Vienna and its global dimension On the occasion
of its 40th anniversary, the Association of Latin American and Caribbean
Historians (ADHILAC) is delighted to celebrate its 11th international meeting
in Vienna, Austria. It is the second international ADHILAC conference taking
place outside of Latin America and the first ADHILAC meeting in a
non-Spanish- and non-Portuguese-speaking country. Entitled “The Congress of
Vienna and its Global Dimension”, the conference is kindly hosted by the
Institute of History and the Historical Studies Library at the University of
Vienna, and takes place from Thursday 18th to Monday 22nd September 2014. The
conference languages are English and Spanish. This
conference features a stimulating programme of individual papers and
roundtable discussions as well as keynote lectures and plenary panels by
scholars and researchers from all over the world. It will provide a forum for
multi- and interdisciplinary, national, international, transnational, local,
regional, inter-regional, inter-hemispherical, and global research and wide
ranging cultural perspectives. Graduate students are invited to apply to
participate in the >> doctoral seminar
“The Global Dimension in History and Historiography” taking
place from 17-18 September 2014. All delegates are encouraged to bring their
families and friends. This
gathering of scholars, students, and other interested persons is designed to
further stimulate mobility and intellectual exchange between the continents,
promote the building of academic networks and contribute to the production of
global scientific capital. While the historic Congress of Vienna 1814-15
would have excluded the world “beyond” its contemporary European borders and
frontiers, the present “Congress of Vienna” emphatically wants to include
scholars from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Oceanic World. 200 years
after the historic congress we are eager to acquire knowledge about what
transpire in the different parts of the world at that time and how the wider
global community has been affected and even the way they impacted the
congress. We want to learn about new sources and consider new insights into
the history of the Congress of Vienna and its epoch. The intention is to
broaden both European and Austrian history and that of the Non-European world
with the new understandings and analysis our age has to offer. This is of
urgent importance as traditional conceptualization - Eurocentric to the core
- led to the neglect of the global dimension of the Congress of Vienna, and
produced an (historical) picture significantly divergent from reality at many
levels. If one looks back at the political and territorial situation at the
time of the Congress, it becomes clear that the principal European empires of
the time defined themselves considerably in terms of the possession of
colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia. In other words: without colonies
these great powers or empires may not have existed. Colonies were and in some
instances still are elemental to the continued existence of some of these
empires. Beginning in 1808, the Portuguese crown governed its empire from its
extra-European colony Brazil, making the latter the only non-European country
to participate in this mega-event. Last but not least, the beginning of “New
Age Imperialism” in 1815 was not a coincidence. The
importance of colonies becomes evident even when one examines Austria, a
great power that was not linked traditionally with the possession of overseas
colonies. Possessing trading posts in Asia and Africa only temporarily,
Austria was always eager to establish a colonial empire. Its last remarkable
stab in this direction was made when the Austrian statesman Metternich sought
to extend Austria’s politically motivated intermarriage policy to Brazil.
This policy was effected two years after the end of the Congress of Vienna
with the marriage between Archduchess Leopoldine and Pedro, the Portuguese
heir and later first Emperor of Brazil. When Archduke Maximilian (a cousin of
Leopoldine’s and Pedro’s son Emperor Pedro II) became Emperor of Mexico in
1864, he sought unsuccessfully to pursuit a similar agenda with a view to
annexing for the houses of Habsburg and Bragança all the countries between
the Empires of Mexico and Brazil. This
year’s ADHILAC meeting is dedicated to the German historian Manfred Kossok
(1930-1993), who was the first to address significantly the Latin American
dimension of the Congress of Vienna. Kossok´s former students such as the
current ADHILAC president Sergio Guerra Vilaboy (Havana University), the
president of this conference Michael Zeuske (University of Cologne), as well
as the keynote speakers Mathias Middell (Leipzig University) and Ulrike
Schmieder (Hanover University), will perpetuate the heritage of Kossok’s
comparative research on revolutions through this conference and beyond. |
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Secretariat ADHILAC Conference c/o Centre for Continental American and Caribbean Studies KonaK Wien |
Address Arthaberplatz 4 1100 Vienna Austria Europe |
Contact T/F: +43-1-941-08-78 F: +43-1-602-374-85 |
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