Internationale Konferenz im Rahmen des SNF-Ambizione Projekts von Dr. Moritz von Brescius, durchgeführt an der Universität Bern.
Day 1
Monday, August 28, 2023
Mittelstrasse 43, Seminar Room 120
9:00–9:10 Welcome and Introduction: Moritz von Brescius (Bern/Harvard) & Christof Dejung (Bern)
9:10–10:30 KEYNOTE LECTURE
Corey Ross (Birmingham/Basel): Water Resources, Empire, and After: Reflections from the Water Faucet and Irrigation Canal
Chair: Sebastian de Pretto (Bern)
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
10:45–12:15 SCIENCE, MARKETING AND THE CONSUMPTION OF “NATURAL” RESOURCES
Chair: nn
Moritz von Brescius (Bern/Harvard): “Invading the World: Commodity ‘Research & Propaganda’ and the Global Expansion of Rubber Consumption, 1900–1980”
Robrecht Declercq (Ghent): “Material Worlds. Resource Institutes and the Making of Consumer Markets for Metals (1920-1970)”
Commentary: Heinzpeter Znoj (Bern)
12:15–13:30 LUNCH
13:30–15:00 LAND REGULATIONS AND TRADING INSURANCES
Chair: nn
Martin Lengwiler (Basel): “Global and Local Cultures of Risk: Non-Life Insurance and Natural Resources in a Global and Transepochal Perspective”
Tobias Haller (Bern): “Colonial Legacies of the Sustainable Development Goals: Why the SDGs could become the abbreviation of Sanctioning Disciplined Grabs”
Commentary: Judith Vitale (Zurich)
15:00–15:20 Coffee Break
15:20–16:50 MINING AND MINERALS
Chair: nn
Iva Pesa (Groningen): “Resource Extraction, Commodity Cycles, and Environmentalism in Africa”
Florence Hachez-Leroy (Université d'Artois): A Material History of Aluminum
Commentator: Martin Dusinberre (Zurich)
17:00 Mid-Conference Commentary & Discussion
Richard Drayton (King’s College)
18:30 Conference Dinner for Speakers
(Casa d’Italia, Bühlstrasse 57, 3012 Bern, joint walk from Hotel)
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Day 2
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Mittelstrasse 43, Seminar Room 324
9:00-10.25: ECONOMIC BOTANY
Chair: Rea Vogt (Bern)
Marine Bellégo (Paris): “‘Economic Botany in the Late-Nineteenth Century British Empire”
Arupjyoti Saikia (Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati): “Hardwoods and the British Empire in Assam: The Imperial Life of Sal and Teak, 1850s–1940s”
Commentator: Thomas Bartoletti (Zurich)
10:25-10:35 COFFEE BREAK
10:35-12:00 MARKETS AND COMMODITIES
Chair: David Rentsch
Marc Palen (Exeter): “Free Markets, Natural Resources, National Sovereignty, and Supranational Regulation: The Left-Wing Anti-Imperial Imagination and its Contradictions”
David Bell (HU Berlin): “Ralli Brothers – ‘The Golden Fibre,’ Portrait of a Specialist Commodity Trader”
Commentary: Christian Büschges (Bern)
12:00-13:15 LUNCH
13:15-14:30 FRONTIERS
Chair: nn
Gunnel Cederlöf (Linnaeus University): “Exceptional, Pragmatic and Provisional: Formation of British Imperial Governance in Asian Frontier Tracts”
Gareth Austin (Cambridge): “Ghana’s Cocoa Frontier and the Concept of ‘Forest Rent’”
Commentator: Christian Gerlach (Bern)
14:30-14:45 Coffee Break
14:45-16:00: LABOUR
Chair: Agnes Gehbald (Bern)
Anna Sailer (Göttingen): “Labor processes related to the production of timber and the associated appropriation and conversion of forests (primary to commercial) in colonial India in the late 19th/early 20th century”
Jelmer Vos (Glasgow): “The Labour of Coffee: Angolan Forced Labour in Comparative Perspective”
Commentary: Julia Tischler (Basel)
16:00-16:15 Coffee Break
16:15-17:30 COMMODITY FRONTIERS
Chair: Marius Fellinger (Bern)
David Rentsch (Bern): “Afterlives of a Colonial Concession: Cash Crops and Agronomic Research in Yangambi, DRC”
Ernst Langthaler (Linz): “Soy Frontier Expansions: Regional Arenas of Agro-Food Globalization in the Long Twentieth Century”
Commentator: Antoine Acker (Geneva)
17:30 Concluding Roundtable & Discussion
Sebastian Haumann (Salzburg) & Friedrich Lenger (Gießen)
Moderation: Christof Dejung
END OF CONFERENCE
Dinner for Speakers (Haus der Universität, Schlösslistrasse 5, 3008 Bern; joint walk from Hotel at 19:00)