20. Power, violence and mass death in pre-modern and modern times
20. Pouvoir, violence et mort: XIVe-XXe siècles

Thursday, 10 August, 14:00-17:00
Jeudi 10 août de 14h à 17h

Building C, Auditorium 1

Organisers:
Joseph Canning, United Kingdom
Hartmut Lehmann, Germany
Jay Winter, United Kingdom

Introduction:
Death and the excesses of power are characteristics of the 20th century. The causes and possible consequences of this oppressive individual and collective experience have so far only been scantily researched. We know more, but not enough, about the importance of power and the causes and results of the rapid increase in mortality in the 14th and 17th centuries. It will therefore be very fruitful to deepen research into this theme within an international and interdisciplinary framework, and to analyse, through comparison, the importance of power and death in the 14th, 17th and 20th centuries. In this way, it will be possible to reach a new perception of all three «crisis» epochs.

Short description of different aspects of the theme:

• The origins of power as potential and its translation into reality in different areas from daily life to high politics.
• The legitimisation of power and mass killing (as far as genocide) and their glorification.
• The forms of power and deaths.

In particular the connections between the themes of violence, anxiety and apocalyptical explanations will be examined.

The papers range over the effects of attitudes to war, plague and famine.

To download a pdf-file, you need the programme Adobe Acrobat Reader, it is free and can be downloaded from www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html

Papers:

• Sam K. Cohn, United Kingdom
  The Epidemiology of the Black Death of 1348: The End of a Paradigm
• William Chester Jordan, USA
  Famine and Resistance: Northern Europe, 1315-1322
• Malcolm Vale, United Kingdom
  War and Violence in the Later Middle Ages: Johan Huizinga and the Problem of Chivalry
• Markus Meumann, Germany
  War, Violence and Eschatological Expectation in an 'Iron' Age
  
• Otto Ulbricht, Germany
  The Thirty Years War and the Experience of Violence
• Bernd Roeck, Germany
  Das Antlitz der Schlacht. Geistesgeschichtliche Aspekte der Kriegführung zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit
• Jay Winter, United Kingdom
  Representations of War on the Western Front,1914-1918
• Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, USA
  Representations of War on the Eastern Front, 1914-1918
• Pieter Lagrou, France
  Representations of War in Western Europe, 1939-1945
• Tobias Jersak, United Kingdom
  Representations of the War in the East, 1941-1945

Specialised Theme 19 Thème Spécialisé 19	Specialised Themes	Thèmes Spécialisés	Specialised Theme 20 Thème Spécialisé 20