A cycle of lectures organised by the IHC and the European Commission of the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa.

During the first three decades of the integration into the European project, Portugal crossed one of the most profound transformations in its long nine-century history. This cycle, titled “The Decades of Europe”, aims to register the main aspects of the Portuguese integration into the European Union over the last 30 years, counting on the participation of many of its protagonists.

PROGRAMME (PART III):

– 11 October | Augusto Mateus: “O QREN e Portugal 2020 – Impacto de três décadas de fundos estruturais”

– 12 October (5.30PM) | José Manuel Durão Barroso: “Uma perspectiva portuguesa para a União Europeia”

– 25 October | General Valença Pinto: “As questões de Segurança e Defesa-Portugal e a Cooperação Estruturada Permanente”

📎 Poster

Partners:

European Commission in Lisbon
Gabinete do Chefe de Estado-Maior da Armada e da Autoridade Marítima Nacional

A space to promote the debate and reflection about Comparative History, with Elizabeth Buettner, a specialist in postcolonial history.

TAKING THE CONTINENTAL TURN: COLONIALISM AS A COMMON EUROPEAN HISTORY

This workshop aims to promote the debate and reflection about Comparative History, including its potential and main challenges, as well as its relationship with other historiographical schools (Global, International, or Transnational History). The workshop will host Elizabeth Buettner, Director of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies and professor of Modern History. Her latest book, Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society and Culture (2016), is a comparative analysis about how several European societies handled the troublesome end of their empires.

The session will be conducted in English.

About the lecture

This talk taps into several of the core topics covered within my book Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which considers British as well as French, Belgian, Dutch, and Portuguese histories of coming to terms with the end of empire at home with a special emphasis on cultural and social adjustments, notably the impact of migration in postcolonial Europe. It argues that comparing decolonization and postcolonial histories helps counteract narratives of exceptionalism that continue to remain prevalent in many accounts of overseas imperialism that examine one colonizing nation alone, making a case for a ‘continental turn’ in which the imperial past counts as a shared European history. It proposes several directions a continental turn might take in future, not least by engaging with scholarship that works to extend colonial and postcolonial frameworks from Western and Southern Europe to analyses of Central and Eastern Europe and recasts the history of the European Union itself.

About the speaker

Elizabeth (Liz) Buettner has been a Professor of Modern History at the University of Amsterdam since 2014 and the Director of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies since 2016. Her publications encompass earlier work on Britain and late imperial India and memories of the ‘Raj’ in postcolonial Britain, particularly Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford University Press, 2004); her more recent research focuses on postcolonial migration, multiculturalism, and memories of empire in Britain and other Western European countries.

Since her book Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016, her research has extended further into the overlapping histories of postcolonial Europe and European integration. This counts among the topics covered within the European Commission-funded Horizon 2020 consortium project she is now part of that explores ‘European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities’ (ECHOES).

Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) was selected among the ‘Books of the Year’ by the Times Literary Supplement (14 Nov 2017), had an honourable mention, Prose Awards (Category: European and World History), 2017 and was shortlisted for the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, 2017. Reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, American Historical Review, BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review, Choice, English Historical Review, Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte/European History Yearbook, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Journal of World History, Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, Nations and Nationalism, Postcolonial Studies, and Twentieth Century British History.

FREE ADMISSION

📎 Flyer (PDF)