Jerusalem and Palestine in the midst of conflicting confessional and political interests. Aspects of a history of relations between East and West in the XIXth century

Michael Portmann Announcement
Location
Italy
Subject Fields
Middle East History / Studies, Modern European History / Studies, European History / Studies, Islamic History / Studies

The Austrian Historical Institute in Rome and the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Historical Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences on the 28th of September 2017 organize at the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome a workshop dedicated to a topic area positioned at the intersection of the local, national and international levels. Rome as place of the event is pretty adequate for the mixture of initiatives of a confessional and governmental nature that made up that interwoven system of relations.

Focal topics:

  • From Napoleon to World War I – effects and consequences of the European power policy
  • Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, crisis in Orient (military conflict of 1840), war of Crimea, Palestine during World War I – outlook on the mandate period
  • Ottoman rule in the Holy Land

Historiographical revision owing to a more updated view of the Ottoman Empire, in general, and the Ottoman rule in the Holy Land, in particular (away from the ”topos of decline“ etc.); changing Ottoman administration; Ottoman rule and the non-Muslims

  • Confessional and political interests

The Holy See and the European protectorates of worship, the Patriarchates in Jerusalem, the position of Catholic orders, the Protestant mission, chiliasm/millenarianism, Orthodox interests, pilgrimages in the international comparison, travellers and the question of interculturality, European consulates and other representations, the XIXth century as the time of European expansionism

  • The situation of the autochthonous population – Demographic development, the structural transformation of the Jewish demography, the Arabic population between the Ottoman rule and European interests, discussion on the situation of sources.

The workshop’s goal is to present new approaches in a field of research that came up a long time ago. Given the existing divergences at the level of frame of mind and reality, it will be necessary to overcome the traditional borders between disciplines; furthermore, it will be opportune to verify the outcomes of the discussions on recent investigations in view of their applicability to the specific case of the history of the relations between Europe and Palestine during the XIXth century. Which type of contributions might, for instance, the broadly-conceived historical research of the last years on the Empires or the numerous new publications on World War I give for a further structuring of this topical area?

Contact Information

Please submit proposals relevant to the specific topics (with abstracts of one page at most) before September 5th, 2016 to the e-mail address: 

Contact Email
andreas.gottsmann@oeaw.ac.at