Agrarian Reform and Resistance in an ‘Age of Globalization’: The Euro-American World, 1815-1914

The purpose of this two day international conference is to explore the myriad experiences of agrarian reform and resistance that characterized rural regions of Europe and the Americas, whether based on either free or unfree labour, between 1815 and 1914. In this period, the economic changes associated with the influence of the Industrial Revolution transcended national boundaries, profoundly affecting rural societies by transforming patterns of demand for agricultural commodities. In response to these global processes, ‘progressive’ landowners, serfowners and slaveholders throughout the Euro-American world endeavoured to rationalize their management of land and labour while embracing scientific farming techniques and technological innovations. The resulting drives for ‘improvement’ and better market integration typically exacerbated the fundamental economic, political and social inequalities that prevailed in most agrarian regions. In all those regions, the proprietors’ efforts were often resisted by the diverse range of unfree and free labourers who produced agricultural commodities for sale on the world market, including slaves, serfs, sharecroppers, tenants and peasant proprietors. Focusing on the above issues, this conference features scholars of rural Europe and the Americas who will discuss the possibilities for comparative and transnational research within and between the different agrarian regions of the Euro-American world.

The keynote lecture will be delivered by Professor Sven Beckert (Harvard University), author of the award-winning Empire of Cotton: A New Global History of Capitalism (2014). This lecture will be held in the Mechanics Institute, Middle Street, Galway at 8pm on Friday 2 June, and is open to the public.

To register or for further information contact Joe Regan and Cathal Smith at agrarianworldconference@gmail.com

Programme

DAY 1, Friday 2 June

10.00-10.35   Registration

10.35-11.00    Opening Remarks

11.00-12.30    Panel 1: Views of and from ‘Below’: Peasants, Farmers and Slaves

Chair: Nicholas Canny

What is a Peasant Movement For? The Struggle for Rural Representation in Eastern Europe before 1914

Daniel Brett (Open University)

Agrarian Resistance to Modernization and Nation-Building in the Confederate South and Southern Italy: East Tennessee Unionist Farmers vs. Northern Terra di Lavoro’s ‘Legitimist’ Peasants in 1861

Enrico Dal Lago (National University of Ireland, Galway)

“The General Strike”

James Oakes (City University of New York)

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3.00 Panel 2: Agriculture, Radicalism and Politics

Chair: Caitriona Clear

‘Progress’ and ‘Civilisation’: The Idea of Land and the Tensions of Modernity in the Transatlantic Discourse of the Irish Land League, 1879-86

Andrew Phemister (University of Edinburgh)

Michael Davitt’s Second Tour of the Scottish Highlands and Land Reform in Scotland and Ireland

Brian Casey (Independent Scholar)

Manoeuvring Between Nation and Empire: Agrarian Protest and Political Mobilisation in Finland, 1880-1917

Sami Suodenjoki (University of Helsinki)

3.00-3.30 Coffee Break

3.30-5.00 Panel 3: Farmers Confronting Modernization

Chair: Aidan Kane

Small Farmers Facing the Challenge of Expanding Slave-Based Sugar Plantations: Campinas-

Brazil, Nineteenth-Century

Laura Fraccaro (University of Campinas)

Negotiating Need and Reform in a Transatlantic World: Nineteenth-Century Farmers and

Agricultural Scientists in Maine and Westphalia

Justus Hillebrand (University of Maine)

Rural Labourers and the ‘Ranch War’ in County Cork: From Canada to Castlelyons

John O’Donovan (University College Cork)

6.00 Conference Dinner

8.00 Keynote Lecture, Mechanics Institute, Middle Street, Galway

The Transformation of the Global Countryside: The Nineteenth Century

Sven Beckert (Harvard University)

DAY 2, Saturday 3 June

10.00-11.30 Panel 4: Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Reform in Regional and National Perspective

Chair: Enrico Dal Lago

The Agrarian Thought of William Sharman Crawford

Peter Gray (Queen’s University, Belfast)

Agricultural Education in Hungary: A Response to the Challenges of the ‘Age of Globalization’

Zsuzanna Kiss (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

Knowledge Production and Institution Building: The Agrarian Response to the First Wave of Globalisation

Peter Moser (Archives of Rural History, Bern)

11.30-11.45 Coffee Break

11.45-1.00 Panel 5: Debates on Landownership and Use in a Globalizing World

Chair: Conor McNamara

Rural Co-operation and a Transnational Solution to the Problem of Rural Life, 1889-1932

Patrick Doyle (University of Manchester)

Land Privatization and Export-Led Modernization in Chiapas, Mexico: Reform, Resistance and Revolution, 1876-1911

Sarah Washbrook (University College London)

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.15 Panel 6: The Euro-American Agrarian World and Beyond: Global Connections

Chair: Kevin O’Sullivan

From European Roots to Australian Wine: A Study of Foreign Influences on the British Wine Industry in Australia

Chelsea Davis (The George Washington University)

Inventing Colonial Agronomy: The Buitenzorg Laboratories and the Transition from the Western Plantation Model to the Eastern Model of Scientific Cash Crop Improvement, 1880s-1914

Florian Wagner (University of Erfurt)

3.15-3.30 Coffee Break

3.30-4.00 Closing Remarks

The conference organisers would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Moore Institute, the Discipline of History, and the Research Office, all at NUI Galway, as well as the British Agricultural History Society.

For queries please contact Dr. Joe Regan and Dr. Cathal Smith at

agrarianworldconference@gmail.com