ABSTRACT

The workshop aims to focus on major methodological questions pertaining to the study of infrastructure, with a special focus on the construction of rail and fluvial-maritime transportation infrastructure in Central-South-East Europe (from the early nineteenth century to present day). It explores three interrelated directions. First, transportation infrastructure’s both phenomenological and performative nature. Discussions include here, but are not limited to, ‘progressive’, ‘disruptive’, ‘dangerous’, if not overtly ‘colonial’ characteristics of transportation infrastructure; controversies over financial and human capital and technology transfers; debates on paths and rhythms of infrastructure-boosted ‘modernization’. Second, the workshop will also inquire into the fears generated by the asymmetrical political, financial and economic interactions between Central-South-East Europe’s (emerging) polities and Europe’s Great Powers and empires in the process of transportation infrastructure construction. It will discuss methodological difficulties related to the study of the entanglements of economic nationalism with civilization-discourses and xenophobia; fears of economic ‘vassalage’ or ‘colonization’; colonial-like aspirations of political and economic influence; (in)formal dependencies or occupations. Last but not the least, the workshop’s methodological inquires include the relevance of corruption debates and scandals surrounding infrastructure construction that generated and constantly reshaped ‘colonial’ anxieties. Moreover, the workshop looks into the many ways ‘corruption’ as an idea and discourse, as well as a practice, played an important role in the history of modern politics and state- and nation-building processes.

Emphasis will be on the limits, nuances, and contested meanings, and the historical layers of main concepts – such as ‘colonialism’, ‘corruption’, ‘modernization’, ‘infrastructure’, ‘informal empire’, ‘soft colonialism’ – generated by the debates and scandals surrounding transportation infrastructure construction, and technological development in the process of nation- and state-building in Central-South-East Europe.

*

PROGRAM

Thursday, 19 October 2023

9h50-10h00
Opening remarks

Session 1
Chair: Alex. R. TIPEI

10h00-11h00
Infrastructures – Methodological Challenges

Jens Ivo ENGELS, Darmstadt University of Technology
History of Critical Infrastructures – Some Conceptual and Methodological Remarks

11h00-11h30
Coffee break

11h30-13h15
Infrastructure, Development, and (National) Interests

Darina MARTYKÁNOVA, Autonomous University of Madrid / Ecole Normale Supérieure
Technology, Identity, and Interests: Infrastructures in the Last Decades of the Ottoman Empire

Malte FUHRMANN, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient / New Europe College
The Enemy Within: Bulgaria versus the Orient Railways, 1878-1908. The Story of a 30-Year Infrastructural Cold War

Boriana ANTONOVA-GOLEVA, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia
Foreign Entrepreneurs, Social Networks, and the Patterns of the Ottoman Railway Development during the Nineteenth Century

13h15-14h30
Lunch break

Session 2
Chair: Jens Ivo ENGELS

14h30-17h00
Rail, Fluvial, and Maritime Infrastructure and (Corruption) Controversies

Gábor EGRY, Institute of Political History, Budapest
Steel, Wood, and Gold: Forest Exploitation, Railway Construction and Corruption in Southeastern Europe

Ștefan DORONDEL, Francisc I. Rainer Institute of Anthropology, Bucharest / Regensburg (via Zoom)
Disturbance. Infrastructuring a Large River

Silvia MARTON, University of Bucharest / New Europe College
The Discourse of Corruption and Railway Concessions in Romania

Constantin ARDELEANU, New Europe College / Institute for South-East European History, Bucharest
The ‘Hallier Affair’, Political Corruption and National Dignity in Romania in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Friday, 20 October 2023

Session 3
Chair: Constantin ARDELEANU

10h00-11h00
(Post)colonialism – Methodological Challenges

Andrei CUȘCO, “Al. I. Cuza” University, Iași
‘Post-Colonialism’ and ‘De-Colonization’ in the East European Setting: Elusive Concepts, (Post)Imperial Syndromes and Methodological Challenges

11h00-11h30
Coffee break

11h30-13h15
Civilization(s), Colonialism(s), Othering(s)

Alex R. TIPEI, University of Montreal
Civilization or Corruption: Representing Modernizing Projects of the Early Greek State in the Francophone Press

Andrei-Dan SORESCU, New Europe College
The Perils (and Promise) of German Colonialism: Civilizational Hierarchies and Anxieties in Nineteenth Century Romania

Raul CÂRSTOCEA, Maynooth University / New Europe College
Antisemitism at the Intersection of Corruption and Colonialism: Continuities of Nineteenth-Century Political Rhetoric in Interwar Romania

13h15-13h30
Conclusions

*

Photo source: www.imagoromaniae.ro

This workshop is organized within the research project Colonial Anxieties, Corruption Scandals and Xenophobia in Nineteenth-Century Infrastructure Development in Romania (CanCor). It is funded by UEFISCDI, ‘Basic and frontier research’ scheme, PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-0399 (2022-2024).