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International Economic History Association

2017 Newsletter

Happy belated 2018, I hope you have had a productive year 2017 as we did at the International Economic History Association (IEHA).

With the XVIIIth World Economic History Congress (WEHC) (Boston, July 29-August 3, 2018) just less than five months away, I am sending you this newsletter to inform the most important activities pertaining to the preparation of the Congress and the relevant decisions at the recent IEHA Executive Committee (EC) meeting in Amsterdam in October 2017.

CONGRESS MATTERS

Session proposals

We are very pleased that the second call for session proposals in 2017 brought in another record number of proposals. A total of 165 proposals were submitted covering a diverse range of themes, approaches and geographic coverage. In addition to a continued strong showing of submissions from Western Europe and North America, we saw a healthy number of submissions from other regions. Also, the range of topics and approaches was also indicative of the good state of affairs in the field of economic history (and related fields).

To accommodate this surge of interest in participation, the IEHA and Local Organizing Committee (LOC) for the Boston World Congress have coordinated and made booking of additional seminar rooms and also decided to accept some two hour-sessions in addition to the regular three hour sessions in the second round. Adding the 75 sessions accepted in the first round, we have 197 total sessions. This will make the conference the largest in WEHC history ever in terms of number of parallel sessions. Information on all the accepted sessions is available at the WEHC website at http://wehc2018.org/.

Dissertation Nominees

The IEHA dissertation committees (composed of Sandra Kunz-Ficker, Latika Chaudhary, Mathieu Arnoux, Irina Potkina, Marjolein t’Hart, Anne McCants, Jari Eloranta, Stephen Broadberry, Joerg Baten, and Marco Belfanti) have a received a total of 78 dissertations from countries around the world. After careful deliberation, the committees have made the following short list of nominees for the three categories of historical time periods (including where the thesis was completed):

The Ancient/Medieval/Early Modern Period:
Pinar Ceylan, Essays on markets, prices, and consumption in the Ottoman Empire (late-seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries) (London School of Economics, UK)

Trevor Jackson, Markets of Exception: An Economic History of Impunity in Britain and France, 1720-1830 (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

Anne Ruderman, Supplying the Slave Trade: How Europeans Met African Demand for European Manufactured Products, Commodities and Re-exports, 1670-1790 (Yale University, USA)

The Long 19th Century:
Anna Missiaia, Industrial location, market access and economic development: regional patterns in post-unification Italy (London School of Economics, UK)

Ghassan Moazzin, Networks of Capital: German Bankers and the Financial Internationalisation of China (1885-1919) (University of Cambridge, UK)

Charles Read, British Economic Policy and Ireland, c.1841-53 (University of Cambridge, UK)

The 20th Century:
Vellore Arthi, Human Capital Formation and the American Dust Bowl (University of Oxford, UK)

Johannes Norling, Essays on the Economics of Fertility (University of Michigan, USA)

Marlous von Waijenburg: Financing the African Colonial State:Fiscal Capacity Building and Forced Labor (Northwestern University, USA)

Congratulations to these nominees. As with previous WEHCs, all dissertation nominees have been invited to present in Boston this summer with final awards announced towards the end of the Congress. The poster session finalists have also been chosen, and we will feature young scholars from around the world, displaying their research for the conference attendees. As with the dissertation session, the best posters will be rewarded at the conference.

LOC Congress preparation

Anne McCants, the chair of the LOC reported good progress for Congress preparation in terms of funding, programs, hotel reservations etc. The LOC will also administer travel funding for participants pledged by the IEHA. The LOC is also very happy to report a good list of eminent speakers committed to give keynote lectures and round table discussions, which you can see in the preliminary program: http://wehc2018.org/preliminary-program/. The various plenaries and presidential sessions will include scholars such as Thomas Piketty, Claudia Goldin, Sevket Pamuk, and Bob Allen. We all look forward to the Boston WEHC which holds the promise of an exciting and monumental event for the discipline of economic history.

Please also remember that you should take advantage of the early registration rate, which provides a sizable discount on the registration. See more details here: http://wehc2018.org/registration-is-live/. The early rate is available until Apri 30, 2018. Also, please refer to the conference page on issues like accommodations, travel, visas etc. – the local organizers can help you sort through most issues. See: http://wehc2018.org/.

IEHA MATTERS

The IEHA officers for 2018-2021

An important agenda at the EC meeting held in Amsterdam in Oct. 27– 29, 2017 was to make a few key decisions on personnel change to be submitted to the General Assembly for approval in Boston. First of all, Marjolein t’Hart will continue as the Treasurer and Jari Eloranta will continue as the Secretary-General for another term.

Marjolein ‘t Hart is a Professor at VU University Amsterdam and is also the current Dutch EC member of IEHA. She has extensive administrative and treasury experiences in various national and international academic associations. Jari Eloranta is currently professor of history at the Appalachian State University in the US. Professor Eloranta has an exceptionally strong record of service to the economic history community.

According to the IEHA statutes, Anne McCants, the current IEHA Vice-president and chair of the LOC for Boston WEHC is due to succeed Professor Tetsuji Okazaki as the new President in 2018-2021. The IEHA vice presidency in 2018-2021 will be taken up by Professor Liliane Hilaire-Perez of Université Paris Diderot, the incoming chair of the Local Organizing Committee for the XIXth WEHC to be held in Paris in 2021. Tetsuji Okazaki will be the next honorary President and he will also serve in the EC as an honorary member.

New IEHA EC members and member association

By August 2018, the following EC members will leave after serving two terms: Mathieu Arnoux (France), Knut Sogner (Nordic), Pablo Martin Acena (Spain), Irina Potkina (Russia), Kris Inwood (Canada), Joerg Baten (Germany), and Min Ma (China). In addition, Tetsuji Okazaki will stay on as an honorary, non-voting member, and Japan gets another delegate for the EC, and Liliane Hilaire-Perez will become the French representative. Finally, John Wallis (USA) decided to end his service after the first term. After careful review of the nominations made by IEHA member associations and other considerations, the EC endorsed the nomination of the following candidates for the 2018-2021 term:

Lena Andersson-Skog (Nordic)
Blanca Sanchez-Alonso (Spain)
Andrei Markevich (Russia)
Chris Minns (Canada)
Jochen Streb (Germany)
Se Yan (China)
Tomoko Shiroyama (Japan)
Dan Bogart (USA)

Financial Report

The EC reviewed and approved the financial report prepared by the treasurer Marjolein t’Hart for this fiscal year. Continuing the trend of recent years, the report reveals a strong financial position of the IEHA with a good and cumulative surplus, for which we thank the contributions and support from our member associations. The EC is also happy to report that it received a pledge of support from the Economic History Association for $30,000 for the Boston conference, and the EC decided to match that sum in euros.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Marjolein ‘t Hart and the staff at the Huygens ING, a research institute, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the excellent logistical arrangement for the EC meeting, as well as Jeremy Land for logistical support.

XIXTH WEHC IN PARIS IN 2021!

The IEHA is delighted to have received three strong and carefully prepared bids for the site of the next WEHC to be held in 2021. After careful review and vote by ballot, the IEHA EC has decided to endorse Paris as the next location for the XIXth WEHC. The Paris WEHC will be chaired by Professor Liliane Hilaire-Perez of Université Paris Diderot, supported by the various economic history and other professional organizations of France, including several private and public agencies.

The IEHA thanks all three bidders for their interest and efforts in putting forward the wonderful bids and also extends its gratitude to the three EC members, Marco Belfanti, Stephen Broadberry, and Sandra Kunz-Ficker for taking their time to make the on-site visits to the three locations.

PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I think the IEHA is thriving as an organization, but more remains to be done. We need to have a great, interdisciplinary meeting in Boston and then in Paris, and build on this momentum. The record numbers of submissions are a good sign of the health of the profession. Also, the breadth of the topics, regions, and methods represented in the session proposals is an encouraging sign. Our discipline cannot be resigned to a sub-discipline of any other major discipline, and the continued success of individual economic history departments in the UK and the Nordic countries gives us something strive toward in the future. Moreover, we need to make sure to welcome younger scholars into the fold in Boston, and help them build new professional networks. The IEHA stands for inclusivity and global collaboration. The local organizers have done well to gather support for graduate students and early career scholars. But we can do better in the future, with your help.

On a personal note, while I am continuing in this role as a Secretary-General, I am changing institutions this year. I will start as Professor of Economic History at the University of Helsinki in Finland later in the year. For me this means a return to my home country and exciting new opportunities for teaching and research. I hope I will also have a chance to host some of you in the years to come in Finland.

See you in Boston!

Jari Eloranta

Secretary General
International Economic History Association (IEHA)
IEHA web: http://www.ieha-wehc.org/

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