In this edition of Druckfrisch Book Discussion, Austin Glatthorn (University of Southampton) discussed his book “Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire” with Ellinor Forster (Innsbruck), Barbara Babić (Leipzig), and Axel Körner (Leipzig).

The interdisciplinary study “Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire: The German Musical Stage at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century” by Austin Glatthorn was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2022. It reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the ‘Classical era’.

The event took place as part of the ERC Study day, which is organised by the ERC Project “Opera and the Politics of Empire in Habsburg Europe, 1815–1914” in cooperation with the Centre of Competence for Theatre (CCT) and the Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe).

In this edition of Druckfrisch we discussed the book “The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy” with author Jonathan Singerton.

The book presents the American Revolution from the perspective of the Habsburg monarchy. It reveals how, despite seeming antithetical to the American cause, the Habsburg dynasty and people in the Habsburg lands realized the opportunity unleashed by the creation of the thirteen United States of America, demonstrating the wider effects of the American Revolution beyond the standard Atlantic World and portraying the Habsburg Monarchy in a new, oceanic light.

Chair: Maren Röger, Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa (GWZO) Discussants: Jana Osterkamp, LMU München and Axel Körner, Universität Leipzig

Reply: Jonathan Singerton, Universität Innsbruck The event was jointly organized by the Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics, the ERC-Project “Opera and Politics of Empire in Habsburg Europe, 1815–1914”, and the Leibniz-Institute for History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO).

In this edition of Druckfrisch Book Discussion, Sandrine Kott (Université de Genève) discussed her book “Organiser le monde. Une autre histoire de la guerre froide” (SEUIL) with Katja Castryck-Naumann (GWZO), Antje Dietze (SFB1199), and Martin Deuerlein (University of Tübingen). An English translation of the book is now available under the title “A World More Equal. An Internationalist Perspective on the Cold War” at Columbia University Press.

By adopting an international perspective, the book challenges the usual interpretation of the post-World War II period too often reduced to the Cold War seen as a global conflict between the United States and the USSR that would have dominated international affairs. This book looks at international organizations and associations as stages on which the Cold War discourse was deployed, but which are above all, especially their secretariats, spaces for dialogue and working together across the ideological divisions of the Cold War. It tells the story of this period through the prism of internationalism as an ideology and a social practice.

Druckfrisch Book Discussion is an event series by ReCentGlobe and the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH).

This edition was organized in cooperation with:

• Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”
• Leipzig Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World
• Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO)

In this edition of ReCentGlobe’s Druckfrisch Book Discussion, organised jointly with the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), will feature the book “Global Easts - Remembering, Imagining, Mobilizing” (Columbia University Press) with South Korean historian Jie-Hyun Lim. He was joined in the discussion by Katja Castryck-Naumann and Frank Hadler (both GWZO Leipzig).

The book, which was published in July 2022, explores entangled Easts to reconsider global history from the margins. Examining the politics of history and memory, Lim reveals the affinities linking Eastern Europe and East Asia. He draws out commonalities in their experiences of modernity, in their transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and in the shaping of collective memory. Ranging across Poland, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Korea, Lim traces the global history of how notions of victimhood have become central to nationalism. He criticizes mass dictatorships of right and left in the Global Easts, considering Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s notion of sovereign dictatorship and the concept of decisionist democracy. Lim argues that nationalism is inherently transnational, critiquing how the nationalist imagination of the Global East has influenced countries across borders.

More about the book

Jie-Hyun Lim is professor of transnational history and director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University. He is coeditor of Mnemonic Solidarity: Global Interventions (2021), The Palgrave Handbook of Mass Dictatorship (2016), and Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Global Perspectives (2011), among many other works.

This edition of ReCentGlobe’s Druckfrisch Book Discussions on march 07 2023 at ReCentGlobe features the book “African Activists in a Decolonising World: The Making of an Anticolonial Culture, 1952–1966” by Ismay Milford, published by Cambridge University Press in the Global and International History Series. Three experts in the field joins the author Ismay Milford to critique the book and discuss its contributions to the global history of anticolonialism and decolonisation. Many thanks for the organization to Steffi Marung and Roman Krawielicki!

Author: Ismay Milford is a historian based at ReCentGlobe, with research interests in East and Central Africa, activism, education, religion, and Cold War information politics. The book is based on her PhD thesis, awarded by the European University Institute (Florence) in 2019.

Discussants:

• Ana Moledo is a PhD student in the project ‘“Free radicals”? Political mobilities and postcolonial re-spatialization processes in the second half of the 20th century’ within the SFB 1199 at Leipzig University. Her research interests lie in the field of global and transnational history, particularly with regard to colonialism and decolonization, transnational activism and radical politics and the Cold War in Southern Africa.

• Dr John Njenga Karugia is a researcher at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, and an independent consultant. His research specialisms include Chinese migration to Africa and the Indian Ocean as a memory space.

• Dr Mariusz Lukasiewicz is a historian of Southern Africa, based at the Leipzig University Centre for African Studies, with research and teaching interests in the history of economic institutions, financial intermediaries and business organisations.

Chair: The event will be chaired by Dr Steffi Marung, director of the Global and European Studies Institute and PI of “‘Free radicals’? Political mobilities and post-colonial processes of re-spatialization in the second half of the 20th century” at the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199 at Leipzig University.

About the book: As wars of liberation in Africa and Asia shook the post-war world, a cohort of activists from East and Central Africa, specifically the region encompassing present-day Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and mainland Tanzania, asked what role they could play in the global anticolonial landscape. Through the perspective of these activists, Ismay Milford presents a social and intellectual history of decolonisation and anticolonialism in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on multi-archival research, she brings together their trajectories for the first time, reconstructing the anticolonial culture that underpinned their journeys to Delhi, Cairo, London, Accra and beyond. Forming committees and publishing pamphlets, these activists worked with pan-African and Afro-Asian solidarity projects, Cold War student internationals, spiritual internationalists and diverse pressure groups. Milford argues that a focus on their everyday labour and knowledge production highlights certain limits of transnational and international activism, opening up a critical – albeit less heroic – perspective on the global history of anticolonial work and thought.

For more info, see the publisher: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/african-activists-in-a-decolonising-world/9628C2584632573703380F18B4EEE581

At the next edition of Druckfrisch Book Discussion, Pierre Hazan (Geneva) will present his new book “Negotiating with the Devil: Inside the World of Armed Conflict Mediation”.

Comment by: Steffi Marung (Leipzig) Moderation: Gilad Ben-Nun (Leipzig)

Organized in cooperation with the Global and European Studies Institute.

After many years in the little-known world of back-channel mediation, helping sworn adversaries to prevent, manage or resolve conflict, Pierre Hazan felt compelled to re-examine the acute practical and ethical dilemmas that affected his work in Bosnia, Ukraine, the Sahel and the Central African Republic. What is the mediator’s responsibility when two belligerents conclude a peace agreement to the detriment of a third? Should mediators never be party to ‘ethnic cleansing’, even if it saves lives? Is a fragile peace worth sacrificing justice for—or will that sacrifice fuel another cycle of violence?

In an increasingly dystopian world, Negotiating with the Devil offers both practical guidelines and a moral compass for mediators whose field of action has transformed dramatically. We have gone from soft to hard power; from ‘peace dividends’ to war in Europe; from the end of one Cold War to a new East–West confrontation in Ukraine; from Pax Americana to a multipolar world; from the dream of an all-powerful UN to the organisation’s marginalisation.

Against this tapestry, Hazan sheds light on the complex work of those steering peace negotiations, blending vivid first-hand observation with sharp insights into the psychology of compromise as a first step towards peace.