Imperial Sites of Memory

A Conference at the University of St Andrews, 2 & 3 September 2011

The Centre for Transnational History at St Andrews (represented by Dr Frank Lorenz Müller) and the Chair of Modern History (Professor Dominik Geppert) at the University of Bonn invite you to attend a conference dedicated to a transnational consideration of different categories of Imperial Sites of Memory.

In the wake of the Industrial Revolution several metropolitan powers began projecting their scientific, cultural, religious, commercial, geopolitical and military interests into what they perceived as a colonial periphery beyond Europe. The commemoration of numerous salient experiences associated with this myriad-faced phenomenon emerged as one of the hallmarks of the political culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Memory, crystallised in discrete Sites of Memory or Lieux de Mémoire became a prominent part of narratives that were constructed to generate support for political aims and certain cultural practices (but sometimes ended up inviting dissent). It also helped to form rituals and a rhetoric that sought to exalt the particular calling and distinctiveness of individual nations (yet frequently reflected a shared, transnational pattern).

As Imperial Sites of Memory inevitably arose from situations of encounter between metropolitan agents (individuals or groups) on the one hand and societies indigenous to the areas targeted by imperial expansion on the other, the memory with which they are bound up was often bifurcated. Investigating these sites therefore involves questions of their symmetry and asymmetry, of how they were constructed amongst the colonisers and the colonised and of their different effects and durations on both sides of the imperial relationship.

The conference at St Andrews examines and compares different categories of imperial commemorations that persisted in and across various metropolitan powers: (i) Monuments, (ii) Personalities, (iii) Trauma, Defeat and Loss, and finally (iv) Institutions. The conference will also be mindful of these were perceived and constructed amongst colonised societies.

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support received from the German History Society and the Society for the Study of French History

Please click here for a full conference programme.

Conference fee (incl. two lunches & coffees): £35

Conference fee (incl. dinner on 2 September, two lunches & coffees): £55

Overnight Accommodation can be arranged at a rate of £50 per night (single, B&B)

To register, please contact Dr Frank Lorenz Müller on flm3@st-andrews.ac.uk.