Decades of Reconstruction. Postwar Societies, Economies, and International Relations, from the 18th to the 20th Century

Decades of Reconstruction. Postwar Societies, Economies, and International Relations, from the 18th to the 20th Century

Organisatoren
Ute Planert (Universität Wuppertal/University of Toronto); James Retallack (University of Toronto)
Ort
Toronto
Land
Canada
Vom - Bis
03.05.2013 - 04.05.2013
Url der Konferenzwebsite
Von
Gavin Wiens/Rebecca Carter-Chand, University of Toronto

This conference was held at the University of Toronto on May 3-4, 2013 and was convened by UTE PLANERT (Universität Wuppertal / University of Toronto) and JAMES RETALLACK (University of Toronto). Co-sponsors of this conference included the German Historical Institute (GHI), Washington, D.C., the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), New York, and the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES) in the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.

This conference was designed to stimulate discussion of the complex relationship between war and postwar. The central goal was the conceptualization of periods of transition between wartime objectives and reconstruction efforts. To aid this conceptualization, and to emphasize that Europe after 1945 experienced just one postwar era among many in world history, the conveners wanted to transcend national and chronological boundaries that still constrain scholarship on the subject. This meeting therefore addressed the histories of war and postwar reconstruction in Europe and North America over a period of two centuries.

The discussions provided new insights on a wide range of issues, of which four deserve special mention. 1. To determine when wars begin or end is a difficulty not easily overcome, either by contemporaries or later scholars. 2. Transnational and comparative perspectives reveal the complexity and variety of transitions from war to peace. 3. Domestic politics, foreign policy, and economic concerns in postwar decades are tightly interwoven and cannot be neatly separated. 4. A long timeframe helps to illuminate important continuities and discontinuities: how wars are experienced, peace is negotiated, nations are conceived, states are built. Longer chronological frameworks are already encouraging new research into less well-researched periods of reconstruction, including those that followed the Seven Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Austro-Prussian and Franco-German Wars.

The conference opened with greetings from WERNER WNENDT, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Canada, and from RANDALL HANSEN, Director of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. The first session, which included a comment by MARGARET LAVINIA ANDERSON (University of California, Berkeley), explored postwar reconstruction in Central Europe between the ancien régime and the Congress of Vienna in 1815. CHARLES INGRAO (Purdue University) considered the actions of the Habsburg Monarchy after the Peace of Hubertusburg in 1763 and after 1815. The period following defeat in 1763 was characterized by Maria Theresa’s gradual reforms, largely successful, whereas political inertia reasserted itself after victory over Napoleon. ROBERT BEACHY (Goucher College) discussed Saxony’s Rétablissement after 1763 and the efforts of Thomas von Fritsch to restore fiscal order to Saxony’s prostrate economy. He argued that 1763 marked a break with the excesses of Saxony’s self-styled absolutist rulers. CHRISTOPHER CLARK (University of Cambridge) used three moments in Prussian history to compare continuities and discontinuities in prewar, wartime, and postwar settings. He warned against understanding war exclusively as a driver of change and creativity. Wars, he argued, do not determine the character of reform; they merely provide the occasion or opportunity for reforms that might otherwise be implemented in peacetime. KATHERINE AASLESTAD (West Virginia University) made a case for understanding the years between 1814 and 1830 as a postwar period. Focusing on the Hanseatic cities, she argued that civilian relief organizations and military authorities renegotiated stability and security through public discussion and commemoration. In the subsequent discussion, it became apparent that reconstruction often depended on what group or organization would provide security for cities in Central Europe: the German Confederation or city fathers themselves? Discussion also arose on the issue of later weakness or dissolution being projected onto earlier periods: Charles Ingrao wondered why “Austria wins the war and loses the narrative.”

The second session, with a comment by Ute Planert, illuminated the outlook of Great Britain and France as colonial powers but added a novel North American perspective. The session began with a study by JULIA ANGSTER (Universität Mannheim) of Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world after the Seven Years War. Changes wrought by that war allowed the British to become global naval masters, not through military means but through something less tangible—a global maritime space regulated by a British legal and economic order. The following paper, presented by ULRIKE KIRCHBERGER (Universität Bayreuth), questioned the view of 1763 as a major break in Anglo-American history that introduced a “globalizing decade.” By turning her attention to Native Americans she demonstrated that alleged turning points and the conclusion of peace were understood very differently by different groups at the time. SVEN EXTERNBRINK (Universität Heidelberg / Universität Innsbruck) argued that the Seven Years War was a truly global war. His paper focused on France after its defeat in 1763 and outlined the many reform efforts it undertook before it “re-entered the stage” in the American War of Independence. REINHARD STAUBER (Universität Klagenfurt) examined the high diplomacy of the Congress of Vienna, illustrating how the Congress was a turning point in European history.

The third session, for which ROGER CHICKERING (Georgetown University) provided a comment, ranged from the 1860s to the 1940s and focused on civil wars and humanitarian assistance. CHRISTOPHER WILKINS (William Jewell College) challenged traditional explanations of American efforts after the Civil War to acquire Caribbean territory. Wilkins argued that American advocates of expansion sought to incorporate the Caribbean islands as states, not colonies: Reconstruction served as the ideological prism through which this project was seen. In her paper on postwar reconstruction in Alsace-Lorraine in the 1870s, ELIZABETH VLOSSAK (Brock University) examined the resettlement of populations, the reconfiguration of geographic borders, and the reassertion of traditional gender roles. She questioned the degree to which France’s decade of reconstruction was characterized by the nature of its defeat: certain features of the reconstruction were the result of modern war more generally. KIMBERLY LOWE (Yale University) then presented a paper on international humanitarian assistance after the First World War which examined the actions of the International Red Cross, the League of Nations, and other humanitarian assistance regimes. She demonstrated the extent to which nineteenth-century traditions of sympathy for wounded soldiers remained the predominant framework in which international humanitarian action took place in the postwar period. That framework proved catastrophic for European Jews, who did not fit within this convention and were denied such assistance. ADRIAN SHUBERT (York University) outlined Franco’s reconstruction efforts after the Spanish Civil War, drawing attention to the many ways in which the Spanish case is exceptional. He characterized reconstruction there as a “comprehensive vision for change” that included political, economic, social, and cultural elements and was imposed with violence.

JAMES J. SHEEHAN (Stanford University) provided the keynote address on Friday evening. Sheehan discussed five postwar periods: those that followed the Seven Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, and the two world wars of the twentieth century. In his wide-ranging analysis, he explored the turning points that characterized each postwar era and the kinds of postwar orders that were established—or at least seeded—in those decades. Of these five periods, Sheehan expressed skepticism as to whether the wars of the 1860s and 1870s had such a fundamental influence on the following decades as historians ascribe to them, especially when they are viewed from social, political, and geo-strategic perspectives.

Session Four, including a comment by DORIS BERGEN (University of Toronto), opened with an examination by JESSE KAUFFMAN (Eastern Michigan University) of German occupation polices in Poland—not after but during the First World War. The Germans who administered the occupation were primarily concerned with establishing a postwar Polish satellite state; such a state, they hoped, might counterbalance future Russian military strength. MARK JONES (University College Dublin) shifted attention to the still under-researched German Revolution of 1918-19. Although militarily defeated, Germany was not among the “shatterzones” in eastern and southeastern Europe after 1918. Nevertheless, the perceived threat of political revolution resulted in state-supported “performance violence.” Two papers then examined German reconstruction in the aftermath of the Second World War. JÖRG ECHTERNKAMP (Potsdam / Universität Halle-Wittenberg) proposed a rethinking of the chronological demarcation between wartime and peacetime. The final months of the Second World War were more significant for the transformation of attitudes among the German civilian population than historians have tended to believe. JEREMY DEWAAL (Vanderbilt University) considered the renegotiation between national, regional, and local identities in a single West German city after 1945. Even though Cologne was almost completely destroyed, its citizens embraced policies of reconstruction that highlighted local traditions: they transformed the rebuilt urban spaces into a “world-open bridge” to Western Europe and a symbol of democracy and tolerance.

The fifth session focused on the economic and political consequences of the two world wars from an international angle. JÖRN LEONHARD (Universität Freiburg / Harvard University) challenged the traditional views of the First World War’s aftermath. He questioned the orthodoxy that the Treaty of Versailles represented a rupture with the international system of the nineteenth century and, in the process, transformed antiquated multinational empires into modern nation states. Instead, Leonhard argued, international relations after 1918 reflected both continuities and discontinuities, including new ways in which the pursuit of national self-determination resulted in ethnic violence. Focusing on French Equatorial Africa and Cameroon, ERIC T. JENNINGS (University of Toronto) examined the colonial contribution to the French war effort during and following the Second World War. Although the decisions taken at the Brazzaville Conference in January 1944 dramatically transformed official attitudes toward forced labor and trade unions, colonial reform produced violent responses from French settlers. Postwar interpretations of metropolitan resistance and of African sacrifice also became bitterly contested. Lastly, SIMONE SELVA (GHI Washington) examined American efforts to stabilize Western European economies and the encouragement of European domestic manufacturing through large American armament orders. These, he argued, were intended not only to stimulate international trade between the United States and Europe but also to buttress Western European defense capabilities in the early Cold War period. A comment was provided by JENNIFER JENKINS (University of Toronto).

The conference concluded with a roundtable discussion launched by James Retallack, Katharine Aaslestad, Roger Chickering, Jörn Leonhard, and James J. Sheehan. The five participants agreed on the difficulty of defining postwar periods precisely: When does a war end? When does a postwar begin? Which events, attitudes, and trends should be considered significant in helping answer either question? They noted that different groups of people, particularly when considered in a global perspective, have different ways of defining war itself. First Nations peoples in North America or natives in European colonies were in continual war with the colonizers, without their conflicts being characterized as times of war. The Great Powers pressed their own interests when they defined colonial, continental, or civil conflicts as wars—or as something else. In Eastern Europe after 1918, wars continued for years, despite official pronouncements that they were over. The panelists and the audience reiterated a point that was raised often over the two days: Victory or defeat in a war has a tremendous influence on the politics of reform and the commemoration of war after peace returns. Yet the list of common characteristics shared by all victories or all defeats is not as long as scholars sometimes imagine. As the discussion expanded, it became clearer that it is not the “objective” situation of war on which current and future research will focus. Instead, scholars will explore the experience of war, the multiple interpretations of war’s consequences—benevolent or “unnatural,” legitimizing or destabilizing—and the continual reshaping of those interpretations up to the present day.

Conference overview:

Welcome

James Retallack (University of Toronto)

Werner Wnendt, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Canada, Ottawa

Randall Hansen, Director, Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (University of Toronto)

Introduction

Ute Planert (University of Wuppertal / University of Toronto)

I A World in Upheaval, from the 1760s to the 1820s: The Germanies

Moderator: Ute Planert (Universität Wuppertal / University of Toronto)

Charles Ingrao (Purdue University): The Habsburg Empire after 1763 and 1815: Restoration or Reconstruction?

Robert Beachy (Goucher College): Saxony’s Rétablissement after 1763

Christopher Clark (University of Cambridge): Eras of Postwar Reconstruction in Prussian History, 1648-1815

Katherine Aaslestad (West Virginia University): Identifying a Post-War Period and the German Confederation: Case Studies from the Hanseatic Cities, 1814-1830

Comment: Margaret Lavinia Anderson (Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley)

II A World in Upheaval, 1760s to the 1820s: Europe, Britain, North America

Moderator: Adrian Shubert (York University)

Julia Angster (Universität Mannheim): Great Britain and the World after the Seven Years’ War

Ulrike Kirchberger (Universität Bayreuth): North America after 1763: Indigenous Perspectives

Sven Externbrink (Universität Heidelberg / Universität Innsbruck): Losing an Empire, Re-Entering the Stage: France

Reinhard Stauber (Universität Klagenfurt): The Congress of Vienna: The Reorganization of Europe as a “Subject of Domestic Policy”

Comment: Ute Planert (Universität Wuppertal / University of Toronto)

III Civil and Uncivil Wars: From the 1860s to the 1940s

Moderator: Deborah Neill (York University)

Christopher Wilkins (William Jewell College): U.S. Reconstruction, Republicanism and Imperial Rivalries in the Caribbean after 1865

Elizabeth Vlossak (Brock University): The Civil War in France, Alsace-Lorraine, and Postwar Reconstruction in the 1870s

Kimberly Lowe (Yale University): The International Red Cross, the League of Nations, and Humanitarian Assistance Regimes, 1918-1939

Adrian Shubert (York University): After Civil War: Francoism and the Reconstruction of Spain

Comment: Roger Chickering (Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University)

Keynote Address

James J. Sheehan, (Professor Emeritus, Stanford University): “Five Postwar Orders, 1763-1945”

IV Central Europe and its Borderlands

Moderator: Eric T. Jennings (University of Toronto)

Jesse Kauffman (Eastern Michigan University): German State-Building in Occupied Poland: An Episode in Postwar Reconstruction, 1915-1918

Mark Jones (University College Dublin): Foundation Massacres and Shatterzones: Violence and the Foundation of the Weimar Republic

Jeremy DeWaal (Vanderbilt University): Local Worlds and Reconstruction: The Case of Cologne after 1945

Jörg Echternkamp (Potsdam / Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg): Reconstruction and Representation: Democratizing Postwar Germany after 1945

Comment: Doris Bergen (University of Toronto)

V Empires and Economies: A New International Order After Total War?

Moderator: Ute Planert (University of Wuppertal / University of Toronto)

Jörn Leonhard (Universität Freiburg / Harvard University): The End of Empires and the Triumph of the Nation State? 1918 and the New International Order

Eric T. Jennings (University of Toronto): The Making and Undoing of the French Union: The Impact of the Second World War on France’s Empire

Simone Selva (German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.): Domestic Growth and External Equilibrium: The Early Years of Transatlantic Economic Integration

Comment: Jennifer Jenkins (University of Toronto)

VI Closing Roundtable

James Retallack (Moderator)

Katherine Aaslestad

Roger Chickering

Jörn Leonhard

James J. Sheehan