FEBRUARY 24-25, 2012

YALE UNIVERSITY

Co-Sponsored by the Yale Program in Economic History and Yale Environmental History

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

How do the characteristics and availability of natural resources shape political institutions? How have states mobilized resources to bolster their legitimacy and extend their influence? How have economic and environmental historians, political scientists, and others approached the concept of resources in the past and what are some directions for future work?

This two-day conference at Yale University will engage an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine these questions and others at the intersection of environmental change, economics, and political development.

As scholarship has become more transnational, the management and movement of human and natural resources, and the circulation of commodities and ideas, have all emerged as exigent research questions. Such broad empirical and methodological investigations invite comparative approaches across social science and humanistic disciplines and geographic and temporal distinctions. This conference therefore engages the Ancient Mediterranean to imperial China and the modern United States to understand the economics and histories of such problems and to provide perspective on current conflicts over natural resources and their implications for state development and geopolitical struggles.

Papers will be presented by Joe Manning (Yale University); Bin Wong (UCLA); Alan Mikhail (Yale University); Anne McCants (MIT); Richard White (Stanford University); R. Bruce Hitchner, (Tufts University); John Haldon (Princeton University); Ling Zhang (Yale Agrarian Studies Fellow/Boston College); Arupjyoti Saikia (Yale Agrarian Studies Fellow/ IIT Guwahati)

Richard White (Stanford University) will deliver a keynote address. A closing comparative panel will feature: Stephen Haber (Stanford University); Nancy Langston (University of Wisconsin); John McNeill (Georgetown University); Timothy Mitchell (Columbia University)