 |
 |
The Economy of Privileges in Western Europe, 16th to 19th centuries
| Location: | Germany |
| Call for Papers Date: | 2010-12-31 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2010-10-06 |
| Announcement ID: |
179510 |
|
The French Institute of German History (IFHA, Frankfurt), the Goethe University of Frankfurt, the research laboratory Institutions and Historical Dynamics of Economics (IDHE) and the University of Paris VII announce a conference on the Economy of the Privilege in Western Europe, 16th to 19th century, to take place in Frankfurt, 30 June--2 July 2011.
The aim of the conference is to explore the place, status and role of the privilege in the strategies of economic agents in Ancien Regime Europe. By privilege we understand a temporary award by public authorities to an agent (individual or collective) of a space to act in the economic sphere. In so doing, the perspective adopted is situated at the intersection of economic history and legal or administrative history, and is centred on the practices and expectations of economic actors. In other words, it is a matter of starting with the actors in order to understand their motivations in seeking a grant of privilege and the way in which they employed it in practice.
From the point of view of the actors, the privilege is thus perceived in a number of situations as a tool that permits them to deal with various constraints that were integral to the economy of the Ancien Regime: volatility of labour supply, scarcity and cost of raw materials, etc. in so far as privileges often modified the configuration of supply – for example, when they created situations of monopoly or oligopoly – but also of demand when a particular manufacture or factory was awarded important prerogatives concerning the collection of raw materials. More generally, it is an opportunity to test the hypothesis that the privilege permits the actors involved to reduce the uncertainty characteristic of their activities, for example by increasing their capacity for anticipation. Moreover, the authorities have often regarded the privilege as a means of resolving certain difficulties, relating for example to the mobilisation of capital. It will therefore be a matter of advancing beyond the level of the representations, or the mental models, etc of these actors, to examine their actual economic practices and shed light on the significance that they attached to privileges.
To the extent that the privilege engages historical actors in the economy, it acts as a prism that allows us to view and understand the dynamics of capitalism’s development together with the role of the state. Following Braudel, economic history has sometimes opposed the free market (identified by transparency and relatively strong competition) and a type of capitalism characterised by the pursuit of hegemony or monopoly, in particular by means of privileges. Under the Ancien Regime, economic activities very often needed a precisely defined legal status, which the privilege again would furnish. That the privilege should be the legal basis of a certain form of economic liberty (for example to by-pass corporative prerogatives) is therefore not as contradictory as it might seem.
There is a further reason for revisiting the opposition between the free market and privilege: the Ancien Regime economy was characterised by a very strong segmentation, with regard to spaces, product, actors (on which weighed for example the interdictions concerning the exercise of a particular activity). In the absence of a unified or homogeneous economic or commercial right, the same segmentation was established in the legal and institutional basis of economic activity: our hypothesis is that the privilege was an instrument of this segmentation, but it could also attenuate its effects, for example when an actor requested the grant of a privilege to assume a competitive position with regard to others who already held privileges. Depending on the particular case (which needs to be precisely specified) the privilege could thus be either a brake on or a catalyst to the achievement of a free market.
These hypotheses account for the chronological frame chosen, which starts in the 16th and 17th centuries – a period that witnessed the strengthening of state authority in much of Europe – and extends to the second half of the 19th century, when privileges gave way to other legal instruments (concessions, monopolies). As to the geographic extent – western Europe and its colonial peripheries – it reflects our concern to grasp the spatial configurations in which occurred the economic dynamics under study (of capitalism/the free market), and above all to differentiate the scale of these configurations. To study Italy or the Holy Roman Empire on one side, France and Britain on the other allows us to explore these entities at the level of very different territorial spaces. According to our hypothesis, privileges produced spatial effects, on the local, regional, national scale right up to the ‘global’ scale: a comparison with non-European spaces, especially with the Far East (China, Japan) would be invaluable.
Proposed themes:
- Requesting, negotiating, registering, confirming privileges
- The economic sectors concerned: manufactures and factories, commerce
- Privileges and competition: how historical actors attempted to use privileges to position themselves with respect to configurations of supply and demand
- The goals pursued (protection of innovation/invention), the legal guarantee of a form of liberty, rent-seeking, etc.
- 1750-1870: reasons for decline of the privileges
- The extra-European world
Please send proposals for 25-minute papers in French, English or German (2500 characters max) with a brief CV, by 31 Dec 2010 to:
Guillaume Garner
Institut français d’histoire en Allemagne
Senckenberganlage 31
Hauspostfach 141
D- 60 325 Frankfurt am Main
guillaume.garner@institut-francais.fr
Also, for further information, please contact:
Guillaume Garner
Institut français d’histoire en Allemagne
Senckenberganlage 31
Hauspostfach 141
D- 60 325 Frankfurt am Main
guillaume.garner@institut-francais.fr
|
Didn't find what you're looking for?
Try our power search! |
Return to the top of this page
Return to announcements home
|
Send comments and questions to H-Net
Webstaff. H-Net reproduces announcements that have been submitted to us as a
free service to the academic community. If you are interested in an announcement
listed here, please contact the organizers or patrons directly. Though we strive
to provide accurate information, H-Net cannot accept responsibility for the text of
announcements appearing in this service. (Administration)
|
|
