Recent investigations into globalisation during the long nineteenth century have stressed the centrality of mobility in creating global exchange networks. Yet, despite an efflorescence in transnational cooperation, the mobility of labour, ideas and capital was still often conceived as intrinsically linked to the fortunes of individual nation-states, who competed as well as cooperated in expanding their economic, political and military reach. Prior to 1871, this picture was complicated in the German states by the tensions that existed between nationalist and regional approaches to the question of a 'German' role in the world. Whether as close as partioned Poland or as far away as the Pacific Islands, Germans found it necessary to cooperate closely with other international powers but also to assert their own competitive national priorities while negotiating the regional priorities emphasised by different German states.
Recognising this interplay between the local, the national and the transnational, this conference will investigate German attempts to explore, settle and trade around the globe between 1848 and 1918. Papers focusing on themes related to exploration, trade and settlement emanating from German states, and Germany are welcome, with postgraduate papers particularly welcome. The conference organisers also intend to publish a selection of the papers given as a special edition of a peer reviewed scholarly journal or as an edited collection with an academic press.
Abstracts of no more than 250 words, plus a short biography of no more than 100 words should be addressed to either matthew.fitzpatrick@flinders.edu.au or peter.monteath@flinders.edu.au and received by 20th January 2012. Potential paper givers would also be reminded that the conference takes place on the Thursday and Friday immediately prior to the Australian Historical Association Annual Conference, which will also be held in Adelaide on the 9th-13th July, 2012. They might, that is, consider submitting a paper for that conference as well.