A half decade of global crisis and rupture, 1903-1908

The half decade from 1903 to 1908 transformed societies and politics on a global scale. Revolutionary events, uprisings, assassinations, electoral shocks, and a series of profound cultural shifts — often studied in geographical or national isolation — reverberated across the world: for example, the ‘May Coup’ in Serbia in 1903, the Russo-Japanese War alongside the 1905 Russian Revolution, the ‘Maji Maji Rebellion’ in German East Africa, the Romanian peasants revolt in 1907, the end of the Hungarian Liberal Party in 1905/6, and the ‘Young Turk’ Revolution of 1908 as well socio-cultural shifts, shatter the view of a ‘calm before the storm’ and indicate concurrent crises and ruptures. Building on recent work concerned with global trends in nineteenth century studies, such as work on the ‘global bourgeoisie’, this workshop will scrutinise specific episodes in this half decade and test how far ‘surprising similarities’ between these episodes can be framed as a ‘global moment’.

Some questions this workshop might tackle include: did contemporaries understand the moments as part of the wider world? Why did the period witness a particular concentration of unrest, violence, and shifts in cultural and political certainties? How might we explain the ‘globality’ of that half decade? Why have moments of crisis, rupture, and change been studied as (nationally) singular events? What, if any, were the connections between disparate events and ruptures? And: what are the limits of current research to impose globality on the past? This workshop thus explores the nexus of contemporary research on ‘global moments’ in a period often marginalised — 1903 to 1908 — to initiative a research conversation about (the globality) of this crucial half decade.

Format:

This half-day workshop will include three panels in which 3-4 contributors are in conversation with each other. The workshop will end with a 30-minute roundtable led by Ludmilla Jordanova. The conversations will be based on a position paper circulated a month in advance.

Programme

10am Welcome

10.30am-11.30am Conversation I: Ruptures

James Koranyi, Adam Bronson, Jen Kain, John-Paul Newman

11.45am-12.45pm Conversation II: Crises and orders

Katalin Straner, James McConnel, Michael Miller

12.45pm-1.45pm Lunch

1.45pm-2.45pm Conversation III: New worlds

Tom Stammers, Amanda Hsieh, Zoe Shipley , Markian Prokopovych

3pm-3.30pm Roundtable

Lead: Ludmilla Jordanova

Participants: Adam Bronson (Durham), Katalin Straner (Newcastle/York St John), John-Paul Newman (Maynooth), Tom Stammers (Courtauld), Markian Prokopovych (Durham), James McConnel (Northumbria), Amanda Hsieh (Durham), Jen Kain (Newcastle), Ludmilla Jordanova (Durham), Zoe Shipley (Durham), Michael Miller (CEU Vienna/Budapest), James Koranyi (Durham)