Archives par mot-clé : Empire britannique

Empire britannique

Ole Birk Laursen, “‘Exile has its privileges’: the Indian revolutionary movement in Europe, 1905–1918” (7 mai 2026)

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Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, de 17h à 18h30, salle D421
(La séance aura lieu en présentiel, un enregistrement sera ensuite publié sur la chaîne YouTube).

Jeudi 7 mai 2026: Ole Birk Laursen (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), “‘Exile has its privileges’: the Indian revolutionary movement in Europe, 1905–1918”

Based on my forthcoming book, The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe, 1905–1918: Exile, Internationalism, and Resistance to Empire (Liverpool UP, 2026), this talk explores the history of Indian revolutionary movement in Europe during the early twentieth century, focusing on activists who lived and operated in exile across European metropolitan centres. It highlights the extensive networks Indian revolutionaries forged with Egyptians, Irish, Russians, and European socialists, anarchists, and republicans. Rather than viewing Indian anticolonialism solely through the framework of territorial nationalism, in this talk I argue for a trans-regional approach that emphasizes mobility, exile, and political organizing within Europe itself. By tracing how revolutionaries moved across European cities, my book challenges rigid distinctions between metropole and colony and moves beyond a British-centred imperial narrative. It shows that European cities, while shaped by colonial power, were also crucial sites of anticolonial thought and activism.

 

Ole Birk Laursen is a Research Communicator at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. His research focuses on South Asian activists in exile, transnational anticolonialism, and global anarchism. He is the author of Anarchy or Chaos: M. P. T. Acharya and the Indian Struggle for Freedom (Hurst, 2023) and The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe, 1905–1918: Exile, Internationalism, and Resistance to Empire (Liverpool UP, 2026), and he has published widely on the intersections of anticolonialism, anarchism, and socialism.

Oscar Webber, “Negotiating relief and freedom: Responses to disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907” (18 déc.)

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Jeudi 18 décembre 2025 à 17h : Oscar Webber (University of Bradford), autour de son livre Negotiating relief and freedom: Responses to disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907 (Manchester University Press, 2023)

Maison de la Recherche de Sorbonne Université (28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, M° Odéon ou Saint-Michel), salle S001.

 

« Negotiating relief and freedom is an investigation of short- and long-term responses to disaster in the British Caribbean colonies during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. It explores how colonial environmental degradation made their inhabitants both more vulnerable to and expanded the impact of natural phenomena such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. It shows that British approaches to disaster ‘relief’ prioritised colonial control and ‘fiscal prudence’ ahead of the relief of suffering. In turn, that this pattern played out continuously in the long nineteenth century is a reminder that in the Caribbean the transition from slavery to waged labour was not a clean one. Times of crisis brought racial and social tensions to the fore and freedoms once granted, were often quickly curtailed. »

 

Catherine Hall, “Making White and Black: Edward Long, slave-owner and historian of Jamaica” (5 juin)

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Jeudi 5 juin à 17h, salle D223 à la Maison de la Recherche (28, rue Serpente, 75006 Paris)


Catherine Hall (University College London) présentera son dernier ouvrage, Lucky Valley. Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Résumé : Why does Edward Long’s History of Jamaica matter? Written in 1774, Long’s History, that most ‘civilised’ of documents, attempted to define White and Black as essentially different and unequal. Long deployed natural history and social theory, carefully mapping the island, and drawing on poetry and engravings, in his efforts to establish a clear and fixed racialized hierarchy. His White family sat at the heart of Jamaican planter society and the West India trade in sugar, which provided the economic bedrock of this eighteenth-century system of racial capitalism. Catherine Hall tells the story behind the History of a slave-owning family that prospered across generations together with the destruction of such possibilities for enslaved people. She unpicks the many contradictions in Long’s thinking, exposing the insidious myths and stereotypes that have poisoned social relations over generations and allowed reconfigured forms of racial difference and racial capitalism to live on in contemporary societies.

 

Catherine Hall is Emerita Professor of History at University College London and a prize-winning author. Her work focuses on Britain and empire, and includes Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (2002), Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (2012), and Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (co-authored with Nicholas Draper et al.; Cambridge, 2014). Between 2009 and 2015 she was the principal investigator on the ESRC/AHRC project ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’.

 

Simeon Koole: ‘Lines of Force: Bodies, Tides, and the Scales of Global History in London’s Docklands, c.1870-1928’ (10 avril)

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Jeudi 10 avril à 17h : Simeon Koole (Bristol): ‘Lines of Force: Bodies, Tides, and the Scales of Global History in London’s Docklands, c.1870-1928’.

 

Abstract : This paper examines changes in the bodies and environment of labourers carrying timber imported into London’s docks to provide a history of global capitalism from the ground up. Moving between London and Sweden between the 1860s and 1920s, it shows how microphysical changes in docker skeletons, the wood they carried, and rivers in both countries materialized and modified ‘macro’-level changes in tides, forestry, and shipping. Repurposing the concept ‘lines of force’ from nineteenth-century physics, the paper argues that lines—material, temporal, and spatial—reveal hidden relations between bodies and environments than those traced by global history’s typical focus on the movement of people and things. Lines etched into bones or running through tree grain show how humans and other-than-humans were exposed to one another across varying distances, and how this exposure accentuated under industrial capitalism. Second, they show how this mutual exposure operated over multiple timescales, from a worker’s lifetime to century-long changes in tree growth and river flows. Finally, such lines reveal how ‘the world’ was not simply a space which steamships crossed but a predicament, unique to and made by the relations living beings had with one another.

 

Simeon Koole est senior lecturer en Histoire à l’université de Bristol. Il est l’auteur de Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press 2024)

Michael Brown : “Britain’s Bystander Society, and the Argument for Abolition in the late Eighteenth Century” (20 mars)

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Jeudi 20 mars 2025 à 17h

Michael Brown (University of Aberdeen) : “Britain’s Bystander Society, and the Argument for Abolition in the late Eighteenth Century“

This paper argues that eighteenth-century Britain can effectively be understood as a bystander society to the cruelties of its empire. Many Britons had elective affinities with those in the empire; engaging in a form of banal imperialism in their everyday lives through a politics of consumption. Moreover, they employed rhetorical tactics such as feigning ignorance, asserting impotence, and displaying casual indifference to the reports of spectacular suffering they saw in their newspapers and elsewhere. The abolitionist movement, in particular, faced the challenge of breaking down these rhetorical barricades in its pursuit of imperial reform. The paper opens and closes with comments on the changing opinions of one such bystander, the novelist, playwright and bluestocking Frances Burney.

Michael Brown est historien des cultures politiques en Irlande, Écosse et plus largement en Grande-Bretagne au siècle des Lumières. Il est directeur du Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. On lui doit notamment Adam Ferguson and the Politics of Virtue (Aberdeen University Press, 2023),  The Irish Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2016), A Political Biography of John Toland (Routledge, 2011).

 

Amélie Bonney et Christelle Gomis: “Standardizing Deficiency: Eugenic theories and the shaping of race, class and gender dynamics in Britain (1880-1970s)” (13 fév.)

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Jeudi 13 février à 17h : Amélie Bonney et Christelle Gomis: “Standardizing Deficiency: Eugenic theories and the shaping of race, class and gender dynamics in Britain (1880-1970s)”

This panel investigates the long-lasting effects of theories of race and social hierarchy which developed during the nineteenth century in Britain. Focusing on educational and working environments, it shows how these theories contributed to shaping power dynamics in Britain from the late 1880s to the 1970s, focusing specifically on the ways it intersected with race and gender dynamics as well as with debates about the family. Améie Bonney’s paper explores the rise of occupational medicine as a field at the turn of the twentieth century, and shows how eugenic thought contributed to shaping the ways in which some of the symptoms of white lead poisoning were understood and addressed, focusing particularly on female workers. Christelle Gomis’s paper examines the influence of eugenic ideologies on the British education system during the post-war period, specifically in the context of Caribbean migration during the Windrush Era (1948-1971). It explores how these ideologies shaped the categorization and treatment of Caribbean children within the subnormal school system, highlighting the racial biases embedded within educational policies. By analyzing archival materials from the Inner London Education Authority and the Black Parents Movements, the project sheds light on the social and economic ramifications of such segregation and the advocacy efforts by parents, educators, and activists to push for educational reforms and challenge these injustices.

“The rise of occupational medicine, eugenics and debates over the risks of lead poisoning in Britain”

Amélie Bonney, D.Phil History of Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Oxford, UK / PRAG, Faculté des Sciences, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France – amelie.bonney@gmail.com

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, debates surrounding the legislation of workmen’s compensation made it necessary to better define thresholds of acceptable levels of toxicity in order to decide who could claim compensation. This renewed interest in occupational diseases fuelled new publications focusing specifically on the ‘diseases of occupations’ in Britain. While this raised hopes for a specialized study of dangerous work environments and the toxic substances that affected workers, in reality, the approaches of occupational physicians and industrial hygienists were also shaped by contemporary debates on eugenics and fears over the degeneration of the race. Racial theories developing in the second half of the nineteenth century – at a time of economic depression, rising social tensions and challenges to Britain’s imperial rule – significantly affected the ways in which occupational diseases were explained. In 1857, Bénédict Morel’s work on degenerescence investigated the effects of poisons such as white lead on the physiognomy of workers, an approach which subsequently persisted in the work of British experts. The standardisation of occupational medicine as a field cannot be dissociated from eugenic theories developed in the aftermath of Francis Galton’s publication of Hereditary Work on Genius (1869). Prominent figures in the field of occupational medicine such as Thomas Oliver and Thomas Arlidge approached some of the effects of lead poisoning through this lens. In particular, one major source of concern was the effect on motherhood and on the fitness of future generations, which was an argument promoted to further regulate some trades, however establishing distinctions based on gendered lines. The concerns of medical practitioners contrast with working-class women’s use of white lead as an abortive, which shows that far from being only victims of the substance, they also used it with an understanding of some of its effects.

Far from being ignorant of the toxic effects of white lead, workers also had an understanding of the risks they were subjected to. A history from below of workers’ knowledge of risks thus allows us to argue that there also existed an alternative form of knowledge of risks to the one developed by official ‘experts’.

“Eugenics, Postcolonial Migration, and the Fight for Meritocratic Education in Post-War Britain (1920s-1970s)”

Christelle Gomis, Ph.D, EUI, Florence, Italy – christelle.gomis@eui.eu

In the aftermath of World War II, the UK’s educational system faced significant challenges as it grappled with the consequences of eugenic ideologies and the impact of Caribbean migration. This paper examines how eugenics influenced the development of the subnormal school system, particularly in the context of post-war immigration. The placement of Caribbean children in these schools highlights the racial biases embedded within educational policies of the time. The legacy of eugenics in Britain, deeply intertwined with the educational policies of the 20th century, cannot be overlooked. Prominent eugenic theories that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries continued to shape societal views on intelligence and disability. These theories, which emphasized heredity and the prevention of “racial degeneration,” significantly impacted the categorization and treatment of children deemed “subnormal.” The interwar period (1918-1939) played a crucial role in embedding eugenic ideas within the British educational and social systems. During this time, the eugenics movement gained substantial traction, influencing public policies and educational practices. Reports and studies from this period, such as the Wood Report of 1929, reinforced the exclusion of mostly lower-class children based on perceived intellectual deficiencies, often informed by eugenic principles. This era also saw the establishment of special schools and classes for children deemed mentally defective, which laid the groundwork for the subnormal schools that proliferated in the post-war years. The arrival of Caribbean migrants during the Windrush era (1948-1971) added a new dimension to these issues, as many children from these communities were unjustly placed in subnormal schools. This placement was influenced by eugenic beliefs that linked race with intellectual capability and by a broader socio-political context that viewed these children through a lens of deficiency. Key legislative frameworks, such as the 1944 Education Act, and critical reports like the 1978 Warnock Report, played pivotal roles in shaping and eventually challenging these discriminatory practices. The experiences of Caribbean children in London subnormal schools are critical for understanding the broader impact of eugenics on British education. Education reports from the Inner London Education Authority reveal the ambivalences of an institution caught between an emerging anti-racist awareness and fears of overcrowding. Archives from the Black Parents Movement shed light on the experiences of those affected, detailing the social and economic ramifications of such segregation. They also highlight the advocacy and resistance efforts by parents, educators, and activists, who played a crucial role in pushing for educational reforms and exposing the injustices faced by these communities.

Camille Martinerie : “The same knowledge under different stars?” – Cross-examining history teaching in the South African university under apartheid from the other side of power (30/01/2025)

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Jeudi 30 janvier: Camille Martinerie (Sorbonne Paris Nord), “The same knowledge under different stars?” – Cross-examining history teaching in the South African university under apartheid from the other side of power”

This paper is interested in the political and epistemological understandings of decolonisation – that is, the psycho-cultural dimensions of colonialism, which outlived itself notably through the production of “colonial knowledge” as a means of conquest within institutions, and more specifically universities. My point of entry is a a long-standing debate in South African historiography about the decolonisation of history resulting from the erosion white settler minority’s dominant stronghold on academic norms, appointments and traditions in South Africa in the 1990s. This retrospective study of academic history proposes to capture the different dimensions and layers of “colonial knowledge” as a discursive formation using the University of Cape Town (UCT) – a historically white English-speaking institution –  as a case study. Based a detailed discursive analysis of history examination questions triangulated with oral testimonies from black university students, the study exposes the ideological and epistemological biases that have influenced historical education and narrative construction within this prominent academic institution, internationally known for its opposition to the regime.

Camille Martinerie is a course convener and researcher at University Sorbonne Paris Nord (France) where she teaches British and Commonwealth history. She holds a joint PhD degree in African and Anglophone Studies from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and Aix-Marseille Université (France). Her research interests revolve around African Studies, intellectual histories of decolonisation, historiography and higher education in (post)colonial contexts. Her next project looks at the social and intellectual trajectories of black South African scholars in exile as part of a wider seminar project on South-North political, intellectual and artistic circulations in the post-Bandung era. More information available here: https://calenda.org/1122619  

Eleonore Chanlat-Bernard, « La mise à l’agenda du problème des famines par l’État colonial britannique au Bengale en 1866 » (7 nov.)

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Jeudi 7 novembre à 17h : Eleonore Chanlat-Bernard, « La mise à l’agenda du problème des famines par l’État colonial britannique au Bengale en 1866 »

 

En 1865-1866 une grave famine frappe l’Orissa, une région située au sud des territoires relevant du gouvernement britannique du Bengale. Près d’un siècle après la famine de 1770, qui marqua les débuts de la domination coloniale britannique au Bengale, et près de quinze ans après la fin de la grande famine irlandaise, plus d’un million d’Indiens meurent de faim. La gestion désastreuse de la famine par les autorités coloniales britanniques suscite un scandale public dans la capitale coloniale et en métropole. En réponse à cette mise en cause, en particulier par les élites de Calcutta, la capitale coloniale, les autorités impériales nomment une commission d’enquête chargée d’analyser les échecs et de proposer des recommandations pour lutter contre la famine. La famine devient donc un problème public au Bengale, dont les administrateurs rendent compte.

L’intervention se fera en deux temps. Elle présentera d’abord l’émergence d’un scandale public autour de la gestion désastreuse de la famine par les autorités coloniales. Comment l’inaction publique est-elle mise en cause dans un contexte de domination coloniale ? Par quels acteurs ? Avec quels enjeux ? Puis l’intervention abordera le travail de la commission d’enquête en revenant sur la genèse de la commission, sur les différentes catégories d’acteurs qui s’en emparent, sur ses principales conclusions, sur sa réception politique à Calcutta et à Londres, mais aussi sur ses limites. Une de ses principales conséquences est cependant le développement et l’organisation des savoirs d’État sur la pénurie.

 

 

Eléonore Chanlat-Bernard travaille sur un projet doctoral qui porte sur les politiques de la pénurie dans l’empire britannique au XIXe siècle, à partir du cas des famines au Bengale sous domination coloniale. Elle a publié plusieurs articles sur le sujet. Ancienne élève de l’ENS Ulm, agrégée d’histoire, elle enseigne l’histoire contemporaine et la géographie au lycée.

Elisabeth Davin-Mortier (Lausanne), « L’eau en Palestine : l’émergence d’un problème public et sa gestion par l’administration mandataire britannique (1922-1948) » (24 oct.)

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Jeudi 24 octobre à 17h : Elisabeth Davin-Mortier (Lausanne), « L’eau en Palestine : l’émergence d’un problème public et sa gestion par l’administration mandataire britannique (1922-1948) »

Après la conquête de la Palestine ottomane en 1917, les Britanniques mettent en place une administration civile, à partir de 1920, à laquelle succède l’administration du Mandat confié par la Société des Nations en 1922. Jusqu’à la fin des années 1920, le Gouvernement de Palestine ne comptait ni département ni administrateur chargé de l’évaluation et du contrôle des ressources en eau du pays. La répartition des eaux demeure ainsi mal connue des Britanniques dans les premières années du Mandat. Il faut attendre que l’eau devienne un problème public pour que l’administration mandataire s’y intéresse avec la mise en place de diverses réponses. À la fin des années 1920, de premières inquiétudes émergent autour de la pérennité de l’eau souterraine de la plaine côtière utilisée pour l’agrumiculture. À l’échelle de la Palestine, les craintes qui entourent les ressources en eau résultent également de la confrontation de deux projets politiques concurrents : le projet sioniste d’un Foyer national juif et le nationalisme arabe. Reconnu par la Déclaration Balfour du 2 novembre 1917, le projet d’un Foyer national juif, porté par l’Organisation sioniste, entraîne une colonisation agricole où la maîtrise de l’eau est vitale. La colonisation sioniste, en créant des tensions démographique, économique, et politique entre la population juive et la population arabe, participe à faire de l’eau un sujet politique, technique et juridique majeur de la Palestine mandataire.

Perçue progressivement comme un problème public, la gestion de l’eau est prise en main par l’administration mandataire qui cherche à localiser et évaluer cette ressource et à établir un nouvel arsenal juridique pour la contrôler. Je mettrai en lumière la genèse de la mise sous tension des ressources en eau en Palestine et je présenterai également les réponses apportées par l’administration mandataire britannique et leur réception par les populations arabe et juive.

 

 

Elisabeth Davin-Mortier est post-doctorante au Laboratory for the History of Science and Technology à l’École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. Sa thèse intitulée « Les territoires de l’eau en Palestine rurale : une histoire environnementale, sociale et politique durant la domination britannique (1917-1947) », soutenue en 2022 à Sorbonne Université, sera publiée prochainement aux Presses des mines. 

Emma Griffin, ‘Empire and the Origins of Global Capitalism’ (16 mai)

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Jeudi 16 mai à 17h : Emma Griffin (Queen Mary University of London), ‘Empire and the Origins of Global Capitalism’

The British industrial revolution has long, and rightly, been regarded as a turning point in world history, and the question of why it all began in Britain has produced a large and lively literature.

In the past twenty years, our understanding has been considerably enhanced by the repositioning of events in eighteenth-century Britain within global history frameworks. Yet this has resulted in some unwieldy comparisons between Britain, a small island, on the one hand; and very large, continental land masses – India, China, and North America – on the other. Not only do these comparisons involve a significant switch in scale, there is the added complication that some of these regions were themselves bound in complex colonial relationships with Britain.  By looking at European nations, similar in size, existing outside Britain’s empire, and indeed in some instances with imperial holdings and ambitions of their own, it is possible to shed new light on the complex and contested relationship between empire and industrialisation, and offer new answers as to why Britain industrialised first.

Emma Griffin  est professor of Modern British History à Queen Mary University of London et présidente de la Royal Historical Society. Elle a publié cinq ouvrages, dont Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale University Press, 2020) et elle prépare une histoire globale de l’industrialisation.

Programme 2023-2024

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Les séances ont lieu, sauf indication contraire, le jeudi de 17h à 18h30 à la Maison de la Recherche de Sorbonne Université (28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e), salle D421

Jeudi 5 octobre 2023 : Séance pédagogique sur les ressources en ligne en histoire britannique (Fabrice Bensimon, Stéphane Jettot et Frédérique Lachaud)

Jeudi 19 octobre : Louise Jackson (Edimbourg), ‘Gender equalities at work: writing an interdisciplinary history of feminist campaigning in the UK c. 1970-2020’

Jeudi 9 novembre : Ophélie Siméon (Sorbonne Nouvelle), « Anna Doyle Wheeler (1785-1848): itinéraire politique et militant d’une pionnière du féminisme » (cette séance remplace celle avec John Tolan, initialement prévue).

Jeudi 23 novembre : William Ashworth (Liverpool) : ‘The Early Chemical Industry in North West England and Its Legacy’

Jeudi 7 décembre : Emily Ward (Edimbourg), ‘”I witness this myself”: adolescent rulers and political “belonging” in Britain and France, c. 1150 –c. 1260’

Jeudi 21 décembre : Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq (Nanterre), sur son livre La République de Harrington dans la France des Lumières et de la Révolution (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2023)

Jeudi 1er février 2024 : Alison Cathcart (Stirling) : ‘James VI & I and his empire of islands’

Jeudi 8 février : Luke Blaxill (Oxford), ‘Text Mining and Political History: challenges and opportunities in the age of Big Data’

Jeudi 15 février : Thomas Stammers (Durham): ‘Philippe, comte de Paris and the Orleans family in Exile after 1848: Liberalism, Collecting and Empire’  (la séance est annulée)

Jeudi 29 février: Béatrice Robic (Nanterre) : « Le travail des enfants en Angleterre et au pays de Galles entre 1870 et 1914 »

Jeudi 14 mars : Perry Gauci (Oxford) : ‘Friends and Countrymen: The London Private Banker in Eighteenth-Century Society’

Jeudi 28 mars : Lauriane Simony (Cergy) : « Diplomatie culturelle, stratégies d’influence et propagande : le British Council en Birmanie après l’indépendance »

Jeudi 4 avril : Sophie Scott-Brown (East Anglia), ‘The Impolitics of Internationalism: Claude Bourdet, G. D. H. Cole, and the International Society for Socialist Studies’

Jeudi 25 avril : James Fisher (Exeter), autour de son ouvrage The Enclosure of Knowledge. Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2022)

Jeudi 16 mai : Emma Griffin (Queen Mary University of London), ‘Empire and the Origins of Global Capitalism’

 

Le séminaire est ouvert aux étudiants de master et doctorat, ainsi qu’à toutes les personnes intéressées. Les enregistrements de la plupart des communications sont ensuite disponibles sur la chaine YouTube du séminaire :  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCveumFeGDtmJP8GTG3S8DOQ

Quentin Gasteuil : « Les travaillistes britanniques face aux questions coloniales durant l’entre-deux-guerres » (10 nov.)

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Jeudi 10 novembre 2022 à 17h  : attention, séance sur Zoom uniquement (veuillez contacter l’équipe organisatrice pour le lien de connexion)

 

 

Quentin Gasteuil : « Les travaillistes britanniques face aux questions coloniales durant l’entre-deux-guerres »

 

Tout au long de l’entre-deux-guerres, les travaillistes britanniques sont confrontés aux questions liées à la domination coloniale exercée par le Royaume-Uni outre-mer : tentatives de gestion de l’Empire qui succèdent à sa phase d’expansion, projets de réformes ou encore contestations par les populations colonisées du sort qui leur est fait. Les occasions ne manquent pas pour que les membres du Labour Party, dont la place sur l’échiquier britannique a pris une importance nouvelle au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale, s’expriment et agissent vis-à-vis de ces enjeux. Selon quelles modalités le font-ils ? Qui sont ceux qui prennent ces sujets en main, personnellement et pour leur parti ? Par quelle pensée coloniale sont-ils guidés ? Durant cette intervention, c’est à un éclairage particulier de l’appréhension métropolitaine des questions coloniales qu’inviteront de tels questionnements, en même temps qu’ils donneront la possibilité de saisir certaines des spécificités du mouvement travailliste britannique.

Julia Laite, ‘Finding Lydia Harvey: reflections on global microhistory, creative non-fiction, and playing with scales in the The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey’ (27 oct.)

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Jeudi 27 octobre 2022 à 17h (salle D421 à Serpente) :

 

Julia Laite (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Finding Lydia Harvey: reflections on global microhistory, creative non-fiction, and playing with scales in the The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey ‘

 

Lydia Harvey boarded a steamship in Wellington, New Zealand in January of 1910 bound for Argentina, where she was forced to sell sex in Buenos Aires by the people who had trafficked her there. They later brought her to London, where she was discovered by the Metropolitan Police and became the star witness in their case.  The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey traces this story, chases Lydia through the archive, and reveals the entangled lives of her traffickers, their prosecutors, and those who sold and used Lydia’s story for their own ends.

In this talk, Julia Laite will examine the digital methodologies that made this global microhistory possibly, explore the potential of creative non-fiction and storytelling in historical scholarship, and discuss the ethics and practicalities of rescuing someone from ‘the condescension of posterity’.

 

Julia Laite is Professor of History at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. She researches and teaches on the history of women, crime, sexuality and migration in the nineteenth and twentieth century British world. Her latest book, The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: A true story of sex, crime, and the meaning of justice (Profile, 2021) won the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and the Bert Roth Award for New Zealand Labour History.

Elise Smith: “Skulls, Nation and Empire: The Rise and Fall of British Craniology, 1800-1939” (07/11)

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Elise Smith, Assistant Professor en histoire de la médecine à l’Université de Warwick, présentera son ouvrage à paraître chez Cambridge University Press, Skulls, Nation and Empire: The Rise and Fall of British Craniology, 1800-1939, le jeudi 7 novembre 2019 de 17h à 18h30. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, salle D421

Abstract :

“In the nineteenth century, craniometry, the study of skull measurements, became one of the most commonly employed tools of anthropologists, anatomists, biologists and statisticians as they investigated human racial variation and development. This paper charts the mature development of craniometry as a quantitative enterprise in Victorian Britain, examining efforts to transform racial anthropology into an objective ‘science of man.’ In the process, it reveals how the collection and measurement of skulls operated as a complementary enterprise, requiring an advanced infrastructure of specimen collection, instrumentation, and institutional support. Although craniometry was employed both a basis for classification and a means by which peoples could be ranked according to their perceived cognitive abilities, its ostensible neutrality was undermined by an internal lack of standardization and increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques that challenged its core assumptions. The history of craniometry’s ‘rise and fall’ thus shows how shifting criteria for scientific acceptance shaped understandings of human difference against a backdrop of imperial expansion and professional anxieties”.

Helen Berry: “Problems with philanthropy in eighteenth-century Britain: industry, empire and the fate of London’s foundlings” (18/04)

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Helen Berry (Université de Newcastle), “Problems with philanthropy in eighteenth-century Britain: industry, empire and the fate of London’s foundlings”. Jeudi 18 avril 2019 de 17h30 à 19h. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421

«  Helen Berry’s new book Orphans of Empire: the Fate of London’s Foundlings (Oxford: OUP, 2019) tells the story of what happened to the thousands of children who were raised at the London Foundling Hospital, Coram’s brainchild, which opened in 1741 and grew to become the most famous charity in Georgian England. It provides vivid insights into the lives and fortunes of London’s poorest children, from the earliest days of the Foundling Hospital to the mid-Victorian era, when Charles Dickens was moved by his observations of the charity’s work to campaign on behalf of orphans. Through the lives of London’s foundlings, this book provides readers with a street-level insight into the wider global history of a period of monumental change in British history as the nation grew into the world’s leading superpower. Some foundling children were destined for Britain’s ‘outer Empire’ overseas, but many more toiled in the ‘inner Empire’, labouring in the cotton mills and factories of northern England at the dawn of the new industrial age.

Through extensive archival research, Helen Berry uncovers previously untold stories of what happened to former foundlings, including the suffering and small triumphs they experienced as child workers during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. Sometimes, using many different fragments of evidence, the voices of the children themselves emerge. Extracts from George King’s autobiography, the only surviving first-hand account written by a Foundling Hospital child born in the eighteenth century, published here for the first time, provide touching insights into how he came to terms with his upbringing. Remarkably he played a part in Trafalgar, one of the most iconic battles in British Naval history. His personal courage and resilience in overcoming the disadvantages of his birth form a lasting testimony to the strength of the human spirit. »   

Répondant : Isabelle Robin, Sorbonne Université