Posted on 20 January 2016
The multidisciplinary research workshop “Circulation, Contact and Conflict before the 20th Century”, first part of the series “Interrogating the Idea of Europe: Views from North Africa” organised by the Max Weber Programme, will take place on Thursday 21 January, from 14:00 to 17:30 in the Sala Emeroteca, Badia Fiesolana.
This workshop will explore how North African interactions with European powers can shed light on our understandings of empire, as well as nationality. From the sixteenth century, when Algiers was used by the Ottoman Empire to conduct warfare in the Western Mediterranean, North Africa has been at the heart of various attempts to define European identity. Instead of taking for granted the idea that North Africa was perceived as "Other" with regards to Europe, these papers will aim to reconstruct the relationships and structures that created a multi-faceted understanding of the Mediterranean. The themes of the discussion will include: the strategies used by North African actors in asserting their influence among European powers, and how religious differences, as well as the construction of nationalities and empires of which they were a part, were understood.
The event will be chaired by Muriam Haleh Davis (MWP) and Ann Thomson will participate as main discussant. The first panel, “Managing Systems of Inclusion and Exclusion”, will consist of presentations by Cecilia Tarruell (EUI) – “Addressing the Catholic King from North Africa: Petitions from Muslim and Jewish Converts and their Rhetoric (16th -17th Centuries)" – and Arthur Asseraf (Oxford University) – “Don Quixote de Guelma: Masa'ud Jabari and the Manipulation of European Rivalry in Algeria, 1881”. The second panel, “Legal Structures and Regimes of Legitimation”, will be attended by Noureddine Amara (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) with the presentation “Petitions to the State between Legitimation and Restriction: Algerians and their Nationality in International Relations in the Mid-19th Century” and M’hamed Oualdi (Princeton University), with "Excluded from European Debates on Norms and Values? North-Africans in-between 1860s Empires". The session will be followed by a commentary and a discussion with participants.
More information on the event