Colonial history has long been written through the lens of imperial frameworks and state-centered logics. When historiography turned its attention to individual actors, it generally did so through a biographical approach and by tracing the circulation of key figures across the colonial world, whether naturalists, entrepreneurs, or missionaries (Schär 2015; Dejung 2013; Dejung 2018; Harries 2007; Ratschiller Nasim 2023).
Within a historiography shaped both by the study of political action and by actor-centered perspectives, one fundamental dimension of the dynamics that structured relations between European metropoles and the colonies, and, more broadly, colonial relations as a whole, remains underexplored: the interpersonal relationships that made possible, often indirectly, the formation, consolidation, and reproduction of global colonial structures. Colonial dynamics do not rest solely on administrations, markets, or mechanisms of coercion. Nor are they simply the result of the actions of particularly audacious actors with a keen sense of business. Rather, a web of familial, commercial, religious, political, and intellectual relationships (Purtschert & Fischer-Tiné 2015) facilitates the circulation of people, capital, knowledge, and forms of power. These relationships are at the heart of this conference.
To address these relationships more systematically, this conference seeks to explore and further develop the concept of “relational capital.” As we understand it, the concept derives from Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of social capital, which he defines as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition […] or in other words, to membership in a group” (Bourdieu 1986, 248).
By using the concept of relational capital, we focus more specifically on the nature of the relationships connecting actors, families, businesses, religious institutions, and organizations operating at different scales across the colonial world, as well as on the multiple ways in which these “lasting, useful relationships” (Bourdieu 1986, 249) are created, maintained, and mobilized. In management studies, relational capital forms part of a broader set of conceptual tools aimed at measuring the value created by a firm through the relationships it maintains (Edvinsson & Malone 1997). Here, however, the aim is not simply to identify relationships, but to understand the mechanisms through which certain relationships become resources, are converted into economic, social, or political advantage, and subsequently contribute to the reproduction of power relations over time and across space.
Framing the question in these terms seems promising at different scales. First, this perspective makes it possible to draw on insights from the many biographical, and even genealogical, studies of European elites involved in the colonial enterprise in order to develop a better understanding of the relationships among them.
Second, it invites us to examine moments and spaces of sociability. If, according to Bourdieu, the very existence of a network is “the product of an endless effort at institution […] which is necessary in order to produce and reproduce lasting, useful relationships” (Bourdieu 1986, 249), where and by whom are these relationships maintained? What role do businesses, churches and missionary organizations, philanthropic organizations, and educational and military institutions play? What role do brokers, correspondents, merchants, missionaries, local agents, translators, and cultural or financial intermediaries play, given that their mediating functions often constituted an essential condition for the operation of colonial networks while remaining largely invisible in historical narratives? What role did women play, given that within the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie they often underpinned durable transnational exchanges, particularly through correspondence?
Third, this focus on interpersonal relationships and networks makes it possible to examine colonization from a transnational and transimperial perspective. Developed within a research project devoted to the colonial past of Neuchâtel, a Swiss city, the conference invites participants to consider colonial relations beyond state-centered frameworks, with particular attention to the margins (Schär & Toivanen 2025).
Finally, this perspective seeks to contribute to discussions of the economic, social, cultural, and symbolic debts and legacies produced by these relational dynamics. Networks thus appear not only as vehicles of accumulation but also as mechanisms for the transmission, legitimation, and, at times, obscuring of historical experiences. They contribute to the production of collective memories, heritage institutions, and public narratives that continue to shape contemporary understandings of the colonial past. From this perspective, processes of historical silencing (Trouillot 1995), public uses of the past, and forms of contestation or reappropriation of colonial legacies are also essential subjects of analysis for understanding the persistence of inequalities and power relations inherited from the colonial era.
The conference thus seeks to explore, on the one hand, the connections among actors, family strategies, and institutions from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, a period of colonial expansion, intensifying capital flows, and the reconfiguration of relationships among money, power, and imperial spaces (Arrighi 1994). On the other hand, it examines the legacies and memory of these relationships and the ways in which they are addressed in the public sphere.
We welcome proposals addressing, for example, the following themes:
• Families, businesses, and networks of power: families, merchant dynasties, and businesses in colonial contexts; marriage strategies, family alliances and reproduction of elites, relationships among private actors, public institutions and imperial structures.
• Economic structures and actors: banks, trading houses, and insurance companies; the relational foundations of credit, debt, and the transnational circulation of capital; transnational financial flows and the participation of local actors in colonial economies; the intergenerational transmission of assets, inheritances and colonial fortunes.
• Intermediary actors: brokers, correspondents, missionaries, translators, commercial agents, and other mediating actors; intellectual, scientific, religious and cultural networks; overlooked dynamics, marginalized groups and alternative forms of circulation of resources, knowledge and practices.
• Cities, territories and spaces: local configurations and their integration into global colonial networks.
• Legacies, memory and uses of the past: memory institutions, foundations, heritage, and public narratives; colonial legacies, memory, heritage policies and their contestation.
• Methodological approaches: prosopography, digital humanities, network analysis and data visualization.
Submission Guidelines
Proposals of 300–500 words, accompanied by a short biographical note of approximately 100 words, should be submitted by October 31, 2026 to ilham.lachat@unine.ch. Proposals may be submitted in either French or English, and presentations may be given in either language. Please include an estimate of your travel expenses with your submission. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by December 15, 2026. Publication of the conference proceedings is planned; please indicate whether you would be interested in contributing.