Imperial Legacies in the Interwar Period

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WORKSHOP

3–4 November, 2022

Badia Fiesolana – European University Institute
(Fiesola, Italy)

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Organized by: Christopher Wendt, Minja Bujaković, Oliver Pejić (Interwar Histories WG), in cooperation with the ERC project NEPOTRANS (Negotiating Post-Imperial Transitions)

 

November 2022 marks the centenary of the opening of the Lausanne Conference, the last among several peace negotiations that reshaped the European and global political map in the aftermath of the Great War. The resulting treaty set the borders of the new Turkish nation-state and attempted to resolve the contradictions inherent to this project through the Greco-Turkish population exchange. The treaty’s traumatic consequences are emblematic of the wider difficulties of establishing a new post-imperial international order on the ruins of Europe’s vanquished contiguous empires.
Over the last decade, historians have drawn increased attention to the multifaceted character of the imperial legacies that defined interwar Europe. By investigating the social, legal, international-political, and economic aspects of the collapse of empires and the formation of new states, we aim to shed new light on the implications of Europe’s intersecting imperial, national, and international pasts.

 

Day 1 (Nov. 3)

Badia Fiesolana, Seminar Room 3

 

11:00
Workshop Opening
 
11:00–12:45
Session 1: Local Action and its Limits
Chair: Julià Gómez Reig

  • Alejandro S. Rodriguez (EUI) – An Anti-Colonial Revolutionary Movement: The Rif Republic (1921–1926)
  • Ivan Jeličić (NEPOSTRANS) – When a Free State was an (Un)Realistic Option: Political Struggles in Post-Imperial Fiume
  • Eoghan Hussey (EUI) – Fragile Empire: Negotiating a Return to Equilibrium after Global Crisis in Ireland, Egypt, and the British Empire, 1918–22
  • Christopher Wendt (EUI) – Between Local, Provincial, and National Futures: Charting a Post-Imperial Course in Austrian Tyrol

 

12:45–14:00
Lunch (Badia Canteen)

 

14:00–15:45
Session 2: Lived Experiences Between Orders
Chair: Minja Bujaković

  • Anna Ross (Warwick) – Life between Imperial Collapse and Internationalisation, 1919–23
  • Elisabeth Haid-Lener (NEPOSTRANS) – Navigating Competing State Building Projects: The Experience of Galician Jews  
  • Thomas Dumont (EUI) – Refugees from Asia Minor and their Music in Interwar Greece
  • Sven Mörsdorf (EUI) – Consuls into Austrians? Pathways of Ex-Imperial Foreign-Policy Bureaucrats in Vienna ca. 1918–25

 

15:45–16:00
Break (Sala Rossa)

 

16:00–17:30
Session 3: Radical Politics on the Rise
Chair: Sandra Ricker

  • Julià Gómez Reig (EUI) – The Fasci italiani all’Estero and the Making of Fascism Abroad: Space, Generational Shift and Expansionist Practices
  • Minja Bujaković (EUI) – Communist Women’s Networks and the Internationalization of Radical Politics
  • Lewis Driver (EUI) – Forging Imperialist Women: The Fascist Colonial Institute’s Program to Prepare Women for the Colonies


 17:30
Concluding Reflections on Day 1

 

Evening Dinner

 

 

Day 2 (Nov. 4)

Badia Fiesolana, Seminar Room 3

 

9:30–11:00
Session 4: Echoes of Imperial Collapse
Chair: Oliver Pejić

  • Natasha Wheatley (Princeton) – Thinking Like a New State: The Collapse of Austria-Hungary in the History of International Law
  • Sandra Ricker (EUI) – The League of Nations as a Site for German (Post-)Imperial Reconstruction
  • Georgios Giannakopoulos (City, Univ. of London) – Debates on the “Minority Question” in the 1920s and the Centrality of the Asia Minor Population Exchange


 
11:00–11:15
Break (Sala Rossa)

 

11:15–12:45
Session 5: Doing Business After Empire
Chair: Christopher Wendt

  • Gábor Egry (NEPOSTRANS) – Post-Imperial Business Networks in Greater Romania
  • Oliver Pejić (EUI) - Local Authorities, Businesspeople, and Economic Nationalism under Empire and Nation-State: Experiences from Post-Habsburg Yugoslavia 
  • Ségolène Plyer (NEPOSTRANS) – Northeast Bohemian Textile in the Aftermath of the First World War: Buying from Revolutionary Russia, Selling to America, Doing Business in the New Central Europe 

 

 12:45–14:00
Lunch (Badia Canteen)

 

14:00–15:00
Roundtable with Invited Guests

 

15:00–15:20
Concluding Reflections – Pieter M. Judson & Glenda Sluga (EUI)