HISTORIES OF EMPIRE
Tout Empire périra, in 1981, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle entitled his book "the theory of international relations". It is true that the 20th century has seen empires brought to an end. After WW1, the collapse of the German and Russian Empires due to the fall of their monarch, and the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. After WW2, the disappearance of colonial empires. Finally, in 1989-1991, the break-up of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR could be seen as the end of an ideological empire, although still denied.
However, since this era, we've seen a "return of the empires". Firstly, on the international scene, where imperial temptation is once again a current issue, particularly in Russia. There has also been a rediscovery of the stabilizing role of large groups facing international disorder, that is what Ghassan Salamé has called the "call of empire" in the Middle East. Historians are also taking a more positive view of former empires, which are no longer "prisons for peoples", condemned to obsolescence by nation states, but spaces for contact, circulation and multiple identities.
Built over the long term, from the Roman model to modern forms of imperialism, this course offers a historical approach to the notion of empire. It will enable us to define, and clear a typology of its modalities ( territorial, colonial, ideological - and compare it to other related notions such as hegemony or leadership.
It is a range of courses with several voices, that call upon specialists of each era and empire approached.
In 2020-2021, given the use of videoconferencing, it seemed easier to use advance recordings of recorded speakers; these will be inserted on Moodle a little in advance so that they can be viewed at the scheduled time of the session.
Damien Agut (CNRS) - The empire of the pharaohs
Aline Tenu (CNRS) - Empire in Mesopotamia: the Assyrian example (10th-7th century BC)
Damien Agut (CNRS) - The Persian Empire
Sylvain Destephen (Université Paris-Nanterre) - The Roman empire, a model
Bruno Dumézil (Sorbonne-Université) - The Carolingian Empire (800-880), the story of a failure
Pascal Buresi (CNRS/EHESS) - The Arab-Islamic Empire
Catherine Horel (CNRS/Panthéon-Sorbonne) - The Austrian Empire
Anne Dulphy - The long history of colonial empires
Anne Dulphy - Can we speak of empire today?
Evaluation:
A 4-hour written dissertation in French that tests both the quality of expression (clarity, style, relevance) and the solidity of the argument (authoritative arguments, personal opinions).
Only personal, handwritten notes and hard-copy language dictionaries are allowed during the tests, apart from any other printed documents, as well as electronic dictionaries and translators.
Course language: French
- Teaching coordinator: Dulphy Anne