Category: Posts

Date: Sept. 30-Oct. 02 2015

Location: Collège de France, Salle Claude Lévi-Strauss

Presentation

This workshop starts from the hypothesis that warfare and labor are strongly connected in Empire building and their evolution, to start with the major importance of war captives in early modern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas and to proceed with the various forms of recruitment in land and maritime empires in all those areas. Captives as well as local peasants were soldiers, seamen, and often colonists as well.
Vice versa, like soldiers and seamen, since the seventeenth century, immigrants were under strong coercive, military-inspired rules and the word deserter and fugitive was applied to all this wide range of conditions. Soldiers and ordinary population took part to collective work leaded by the village, the state, private companies, landlords, together with recruited and soldiers.
Forms of forced recruitment are still important in the 19th century (the press system in Britain and its variations in the Empire, recruitments in Russia) and continue in the 20th century, in Europe during the wars, outside of Europe during and after colonization and decolonization up through nowadays children soldiers.
Again, the connection between forced recruitment and forced migration is important, but it takes a new departure in the twentieth century with massive displacement of populations in the Soviet Empire as well as in several Asian and African areas. The boundary between refugees-workers-recruited is fragile.

Program (pdf format)

Appel à projet : étudiants

Travail libre/travail forcé Contraintes locales et dynamiques globales. Afrique, Europe, Asie, du XVe siècle à nos jours

heSam Université a décidé de soutenir et de financer le programme de recherche NEXT « Travail libre / Travail forcé » pour la période 2014-2015. Le programme « Travail libre / Travail forcé » accorde notamment des aides pour des étudiants de seconde année de master et des doctorants travaillant sur ces thématiques et inscrits auprès d’un établissement de la Comue heSam. Le résumé et les axes principales du projet sont disponibles sur le site :

http://www.hesam.eu/blog/category/recherche/programme-next/

et plus particulièrement :

http://www.hesam.eu/blog/2014/04/02/projet-travail-libretravail-force-contraintes-locales-etdynamiques-globales-afrique-europe-asie-du-xve-siecle-nos-jours/

Deux types d’aide sont proposés :

• Bourses d’accès au terrain : une aide d’un montant limité à 3 000 € destinée à permettre à un étudiant de master ou un doctorant de financer une mission, un séjour sur le terrain, dans une bibliothèque ou dans un centre d’archive. Les fonds engagés doivent être justifiés par l’activité de formation et/ou de recherche.

• Contrat de fin de thèse : un contrat de travail d’une durée maximum de 3 mois et d’un montant ne pouvant pas dépasser 10 000 € permettant à un(e) doctorant(e) d’achever la rédaction de son doctorat dans des conditions favorables à une soutenance dans les trois mois après la fin du contrat de fin de thèse.

Les sujets de thèse doivent porter sur des questions concernant les tensions entre travail libre et travail forcé, du 16e siècle à nos jours, tels qu’ils sont présentés sur le site cité.

Les dossiers de candidature comportent les pièces suivantes :

Aides au terrain :

• • Une lettre de l’étudiant
• • Une lettre du directeur de thèse ou mémoire
• • Un budget prévisionnel du projet de terrain
• • Un projet de terrain détaillé et calendrier
• • Le projet de thèse (présenté lors de la première inscription)
• • Les justificatifs de revenus et de charges (avis d’imposition, dernière fiche de paie, quittance de loyer, charges particulières….)
• • Un curriculum vitae
• • Une copie de la carte d’étudiant.

Bourses de fin de thèse :

• • Une lettre de l’étudiant
• • Une lettre du directeur de thèse ou mémoire précisant l’état d’avancement de la thèse et le calendrier de soutenance prévu.
• • Le projet de thèse (présenté lors de la première inscription)
• • Au moins un chapitre déjà rédigé de la thèse.
• • Articles éventuels déjà publiés ; textes présentés à des conférences et journées d’étude.
• • Les justificatifs de revenus et de charges (avis d’imposition, dernière fiche de paie, quittance de loyer, charges particulières….)
• • Un curriculum vitae
• • Une copie de la carte d’étudiant.

Les candidatures sont à envoyer par courriel avant le 30 avril à : tralibre-traforce@ehess.fr Résultats : 15 mai

Indian Ocean World Centre / Winter 2015 Speaker Series, Thursdays, 5:45-7:30pm

116 Peterson Hall, McGill University, 3460 McTavish Street, Montréal, Québec, H3A 0E6

Each talk is followed by a reception

15 January: Giancarlo Casale (Professor of History, McGill University), “The Eunuch’s Galleons: Cultural Exchange, Technology Transfer, and Warfare at Sea between the Early Modern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean World”

22 January: Rashed Chowdhury (IOWC Postdoctoral Fellow, McGill University), “Miklouho-Maclay and the Maclay Coast of New Guinea”

29 January: Erin Bell (IOWC PhD Student, McGill University), “Girls in Moral Danger: Juvenile Prostitution in Late Colonial Nairobi”

5 February: Peter Hynd (IOWC PhD Student, McGill University), “Bureaucrats, Smugglers, Peons and Preachers – Regulating the Liquor Trade in Late Nineteenth Century India: Local Policy and Global Politics'”

12 February: Veysel Simsek (PhD Student in History, McMaster University / IOWC Research Assistant, McGill University), “Uneasy Friends in Calm Waters: Anglo-Ottoman competition in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, 1860-80”

19 February: Gwen Bennett (Professor of Anthropology, McGill University), “Cities on a Sea of Grass: Urbanism on the North Asian Steppe”

26 February: Nikolas Gardner (Professor of History, Royal Military College of Canada), “The Experience of Indian Soldiers in Mesopotamia, 1915–1916”

5 March: No talk (study break)

12 March: Junko Takeda (Professor of History, Syracuse University), “They don’t have a word for entrepreneur? French mercantilism and the Asia Trade, 1650-1700”

19 March: Prashant Keshavmurty (Professor of Islamic Studies, McGill University), “Translating Rāma as a Proto-Muhammadan Prophet: Masih’s Masnavi-ye Rām va Sitā”

26 March: Wilson Chacko Jacob (Professor of History, Concordia University), “Oceans Apart: Discovering Sovereignty in the Life of Sayyid Fadl b. Alawi”

2 April: Banu Kaygusuz Tezel (PhD Student in East Asian Studies, University of Toronto), “Contra-images of Empires’ Identities: Collectivity and Incongruity in the Commemorative Photography Albums Circulated in the Japanese and the Ottoman Empires at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”

9 April: Julie Laplante (Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa), “Indian Ocean Worlds: Tracing Anthropological Fluidities between South African Muti and Javanese Jamu Medicine”

16 April: Omri Bassewitch Frenkel (IOWC PhD Student, McGill University), “Ginger, Pepper and Prestige: Spice Transplantation, the Philippine Project and Spanish Ideals of Chivalry”

23 April: Keynote Speech of the IOWC International Conference “Currencies of Commerce in the Greater Indian Ocean World”
(speaker and title TBA)

30 April: Andrew Ivaska (Professor of History, Concordia University), “Leftwing Political Networking in a Global 1960s: Dar es Salaam at a Crossroads”

7 May: Tyler Yank (IOWC PhD Student, McGill University), “Exploring the Slavery Amelioration Project in Colonial Mauritius, c. 1826-1835”

Bureaucrats, Smugglers, Peons and Preachers – Regulating the Liquor Trade in Late Nineteenth Century India: Local Policy and Global Politics

By PeterHynd, IOWC PhD Student, McGill University

Thursday, 5 February 2015, 5:45 pm, Peterson Hall Rm 116 | 3460 McTavish Street | McGill University

*Reception to follow*

‘The Drink Question’ was a major political issue in Britain and throughout the British Empire during the second half of the nineteenth century. Colonial governments were often forced to shape their policies towards alcohol in response to concerns raised in Britain. In order to safeguard the revenue derived from the abkari (excise taxes) without offending domestic sensibilities, the Government of India adopted ‘maximum revenue from minimum consumption’ as their official guiding principle in regards to alcohol regulation. In execution these regulations, designed from the top down to promote state revenue without offending public opinion, often failed dramatically when faced with local idiosyncrasies and particular problems. Colonial bureaucrats in charge of the abkari, operating with limited resources, were regularly forced to modify and make local exceptions to their own rules and regulations when faced with problems beyond their ability to control. From smugglers and other criminals to religious leaders, from the weather to their own employees, abkari bureaucrats were constantly forced to adapt their policies to fit local circumstances, even if that occasionally meant violating higher principles. This talk will focus on a number of such examples, and explain how and why they are important to histories of colonial governance in late nineteenth century India.

***Announcing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa starting Jan 2015.***

Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA), Faculty of the Humanities, the University of the Witwatersrand

Postdoctoral Fellowship

The Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (established in 2010) announces a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship starting January 2015 and funded by the Government of India’s Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and located in CISA and affiliated to the most dynamic School of Social Sciences on the African continent.

The award will be R 250,000 per year, including medical aid and with an additional R 50,000 per year for research expenses. Candidates need to have a PhD by the time the fellowship commences, in any relevant discipline. In addition to being active in research and participating in the scholarly life of the centre, the candidate is required to do some supervision of MA and PhD dissertation research for a small group of students engaged in research on the theme of ‘the migration of labour and capital from India to Africa and emerging notions of global responsibility.’

The postdoctoral scholar’s research might be on a range of topics concerning movements of labour and capital, work regimes, recompositions of caste and community, the political economy and politics of land and resources, trajectories of Indian business, or finance capital in various parts of Africa, but with a contemporary focus that connects Indian capital and labour to African research sites. Candidates with research experience on capital and labour and with familiarity with African research contexts who can supervise work in these fields are encouraged to apply. There will also be an opportunity to participate in conference and seminar planning at CISA, as well as in the vibrant intellectual life at the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Applicants should send their CVs; a covering letter stating how their training intersects with the interests of CISA and with the Indian Government project; and three references.

Complete applications to the fellowship should be emailed to Reshmi.Singh@wits.ac.za on or before October 15 or posted to the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, 36 Jorissen Street, Braamfontein, Private Bag 3 Wits 2050 Johannesburg South Africa. — with Isabel Hofmeyr and Dilip Menon.

www.cisa-wits.org.za
Dilip Menon
Mellon Chair in Indian Studies
Director, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa
36 Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
University of the Witwatersrand Pvt Bag 3 PO Wits 2050
Johannesburg South Africa
tel: (011) 717 4127 cell: (27)763983407

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

A Regional Symposium on: Extreme Weather, Disasters, and Indigenous Practices in South Asia

A day-long symposium sponsored by the American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) (AIBS, AIIS, AIPS, AISLS, ANHS)

Hosted by the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS)
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Thursday, October 16, 2014.

Dr. Golam M. Mathbor, AIBS President

Email: info@aibs.net

The International Insititute of Social History is announcing a new book series entitled Work around the Globe :

Work around the Globe: Historical Comparisons and Connections
Most human beings work, and are exposed to labour markets. These markets are increasingly globally competitive and cause both capital and labour to move around the world. Understanding these developments and their consequences in the world of work and labour relations requires sound historical research, based on the experiences of different groups of workers in different parts of the world at different moments in time, throughout human history. This new series offers a high-quality, peer-reviewed publication platform for the results of research in this topical field. Published by Amsterdam University Press. For optimal availability for readers all over the world, volumes in this series are published online in open access. See series titles

Webpage here

1. Free and unfree labour in colonial Southeast Asia

Challenging Hegel’s famous dictum that only the ruler is free in oriental societies, historians and anthropologists have catalogued a bewildering variety of conceptions of freedom and bondedness throughout Asia. The existing levels of social differentiation and the concomitant constraints on labour were rather inconvenient for colonial administrations who aimed at simplifying this diversity for revenue purposes and ‘freeing up’ labour for global commodity production. Both civil servants and European plantation owners spoke of free labour, an objective that they expected to accomplish by curbing the claims on labour by local patrimonial structures. It has often been observed that this was just replacing one system of unfreedom by another: tributary labour was quite often just replaced by regimes of colonial coerced labour on construction sites or plantations. Or to mention another example, the same colonial powers who combated different types of slavery including debt-slavery legalized migratory labour under coerced circumstances by establishing the institution of so-called indentured migrations. Cases from the Netherlands Indies, the Malay states, and the Philippines will be discussed within the wider framework of debates on what free and unfree labour might mean in different historical contexts.

2. Global sugar and local taste in India

Before oil became the world’s prime commodity, sugar was the most valuable bulk. In the nineteenth century, the emergence of industrial beet sugar complexes in Europe and the industrialisation of cane sugar production in its colonies brought refined sugar within reach, first of European and later of American and Asian masses. From the 1860s onwards, Asian producers and consumers increasingly began to play a role in the world market for industrial sugar. Java, Mauritius, the Philippines and Taiwan became important sites of production, whereas Japan, India and China were opened up as markets for industrially manufactured white crystalline sugar. Urban middle classes throughout the world became consumers of massive quantities of these sugars, but local sugars did not entirely disappear. As this lecture will detail, this was particularly not the case in India, which has been the largest producer of sugar for most of human history. In this country raw sugar, so-called gur, continues to be extremely popular until today not just for its price but even more so for its taste. This item has even become part of a global discourse against refined industrial sugar as unhealthy and devoid of any nutrients beyond sucrose.

3. Commodity production and transforming village production: comparing Madras and Java

In the early years of the nineteenth century, colonial administrators of British India and the Netherlands Indies were mulling over the question how to raise agricultural productivity in their newly acquired territorial possessions to strengthen the economic basis for their emerging colonial apparatuses. The combination of securing property rights (giving the peasants a legal and registered title on their land) and raising a moderate land rent were considered as the most appropriate means to enhance agricultural output both for local and global markets. These principles were put in practice through the so-called ryotwari land rent system, which Thomas Munro introduced in Madras, a model that was also followed by Thomas Stamford Raffles in Java. Things turned out less favourably for local rural societies in the two areas, however. Whereas large groups of peasants did become increasingly reliant on cash crops, it was not thanks to the attractions of the global market, but as a result of indebtedness and pressure from wealthier and more powerful farmers. This lecture aims to discuss different social configurations at the village levels that emerged in the course of colonial commodity production.

4. From colonial to global knowledge: circuits of botanists

In the era of colonial monopolies of precious items like spices, plant knowledge was usually acquired through espionage and species were obtained through smuggling. This began to change by around 1800, when knowledge was spread through the increasing mobility of planters across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean spaces. Planters from the Caribbean started indigo and sugar plantations in South and Southeast Asia for example. But even more than these individuals the scientific rules of knowledge dissemination and publication began to cut through colonial boundaries in the course of the nineteenth century. While ‘classical colonial history’ would point out the importance of the imperial experimental stations in Pasuruan, Bogor, Coimbatore, Barbados and so on, backed up by their metropolitan institutions like Kew Gardens and Wageningen Agricultural University, colonial boundaries hardly existed for botanical knowledge. On the basis of concrete examples of circulations of plant species and botanical knowledge, planters’ mobility and the dissemination of knowledge by experimental stations, this lecture aims at exploring how we should define these circuits vis-à-vis existing literature on colonial structures of knowledge production.

Dates and places:

1 Free and unfree labour in colonial Southeast Asia , séminaire de Maurice Aymard, Jean-Yves Grenier, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Alessandro Stanziani, le lundi 10 mars, salle 1, 105 bd Raspail, 17-20 heures

2 Global sugar and local taste in India dans le cadre du séminaire de Françoise Sabban,
Caroline Bodolec, Frédéric Obringer jeudi 13 mars, salle 681, 190 avenue de France, 11-13 heures.

3 Commodity production and transforming village production: comparing Madras and Java , séminaire de Laurent Berger le lundi 17 mars, salle 1, 105 bd Raspail, 11-13 heures

4 From colonial to global knowledge: circuits of botanists, Séminaire central du Case, le 27 mars : 10-12 heures, Maison de l’Asie, 22 avenue du Président Wilson, 75016 Paris
M° Iéna ou Trocadéro

1. Peasant Society in Industrializing Economy : Labour Allocation, Migration and Occupational Structure

It is now becoming clear that the agrarian household did not simply react passively to the impact of industrialization, but strategically allocated its family labour to industrial and agricultural work executed within the household, as well as releasing members to the outer labour market. This lecture discusses the factors that determined the pattern and volume of labour mobility, in the light of the household economy and the nature of industrial occupations.

6 mars 2014 (salle 2, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris)

Séminaire de Histoire du Japon moderne et contemporain : permanences et ruptures.
• Patrick Beillevaire, directeur de recherche au CNRS (TH)
• Guillaume Carré, maître de conférences à l’EHESS
• Arnaud Nanta, chargé de recherche au CNRS

 [Date du séminaire modifiée – consulter les plannings sur le site de l’EHESS]

2. The Role of Labour-intensive Industrialization in the Economic Development

This lecture explores how the notion of labour-intensive industrialization, based as it originally on agrarian setting, could be extended to the non-agrarian sphere by analyzing the foundation of small scale industries in 19th and 20th century Japan, with special reference to a dispersed production system developed and operated in the metropolis.

Discipline au travail : histoire du marché du travail et protection sociale
• Mathieu Arnoux, directeur d’études à l’EHESS, professeur à l’Université Paris-Diderot (Paris-VII) (TH)
• Jérôme Bourdieu, directeur d’études à l’EHESS, directeur de recherche à l’INRA (TH)
• Alain Dewerpe, directeur d’études à l’EHESS (TH)
• Jean-Yves Grenier, directeur d’études à l’EHESS (TH)
• Gilles Postel-Vinay, directeur d’études à l’EHESS (TH)

13 mars 2014. 16,30-19 :30, ENS, Campus Paris-Jourdan, salle E 101, 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

3. The Provision of Public Goods in Transitional Economy: The Role of Regional Society in 19th Century Japan

The sustainability and reproduction of economic lives of ordinary people has been based not only on goods and services obtained from market activities but also those provided as public goods in a broad sense. Though national state can be nominated as a main provider, other actors might have played significant roles specifically before 20th century. The lecture shows to what extent the regional society played a role in providing public goods, and discusses the autonomy of regional economy in transitional Japan.

Maurice Aymard, Jean-Yves Grenier, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Alessandro Stanziani, Critique de l’économie historique

24 mars 2014, salle 1, 105 Bd Raspail, 17-20 heures

http://crh.ehess.fr/index.php?3654

Recently published at Washington University Press :

SIROK SORAJJAKOOL, Human Trafficking in Thailand. Current Issues, Trends, and the Role of the Thai Government.

“Few subjects elicit greater moral outrage than human trafficking. Media reports of dehumanizing practices such as slavery, abduction, child prostitution, and torture, along with shocking statistics, form the basis of public knowledge.

With sensitivity and candor, this book addresses the reality of human trafficking in Thailand, dissecting studies, presenting facts, and dismissing stereotypes. It focuses on the areas of fishing, agriculture, domestic work, sex work, and the trafficking of children, weaving individual narratives and official studies into the wider history of Thailand’s changing economy and labor situation.

Siroj Sorajjakool is professor of religion, psychology, and counseling at Loma Linda University, California.”

Publisher’s webpage