Category: Events

With the university semester gradually receding, it’s time to look back on an exciting inaugural year here at the CSMCH (and, if you missed anything, you can catch up with reports and podcasts simply by following the links in the text).

Our theme for the past academic year has been ‘democracy’, and almost all of our events tied in with this theme. The core of the Centre’s activity has been the fortnightly seminar series, which brought an exceptional range of scholarly talent to the university.

We opened the year with an exciting – and polemical – roundtable on ‘truth and democracy’. This was followed by a series of talks by Vincent Tiberj (Sciences Po) on French democracy, Malte Rolf (Bamberg) on Soviet visions of modernity, Lorena de Vita (Utrecht) on the German-Israeli reparations agreement of 1952, Esra Ozyurek (LSE) on Holocaust memory and Muslim Germans, Jake Blanc (Edinburgh) on dam protests in 1980s Brazil, and a double bill on the history and geography of South Asia with Rakesh Ankit (Jindal) and Nilanjana Mukherjee (IIT Delhi).

In the second semester, we got a chance to listen to Aditya Sarkar (Warwick) on the Hindu right in India, Peter Jackson (Glasgow) on interwar Franco-British relations, Sonja Levsen (Freiburg) on postwar education policy in France and Germany, Malcolm Petrie (St Andrews) on Scottish politics and the European question, and Rana Mitter (Oxford) on the reconstruction of postwar China. Our last event of the semester was a book launch by our Edinburgh colleague Felix Boecking, who discussed his research on the mid-twentieth century Chinese economy with Rana Mitter.

Our seminar series was complemented by a range of other activities, from a Czech New Wave film screening series, to a major public event on academic freedom in Uganda, China, Turkey and Bangladesh. In addition, our enterprising affiliated students set up a CSMCH Discussion Group, which met several times throughout the year. They tackled issues as complex and controversial as the Catalan crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a convivial environment.

Last but not least, we hosted two visiting scholars and students this year. Our inaugural CSMCH-IASH Visting Postdoctoral Fellow was Rakesh Ankit from OP Jindal University in Delhi, who pursued his research on Indian Communism while he was in Edinburgh from November 2017 to January 2018. And we hosted a Belgian Erasmus+ student, Birgit Ampe, who assisted with the running of the Centre and produced a three-part series for the blog on Indian soldiers in the First World War.

Despite this bewildering list of activities, some of this year’s achievements have been more intangible. The conversations in the pub after each seminar; the exchanges between students in the discussion group; the contributions to the CSMCH’s blog and social media pages; or the new ideas that have emerged out of chance encounters. These are exactly the kinds of benefits that a research centre can bring.

So, thank you to all of you for taking part in the life of the Centre. We hope to welcome you back next year – when we will be tackling the theme of ‘space’ – and we look forward to continuing some of the stimulating conversations that have already begun.

— Emile

For the third CSMCH Discussion Group of this semester, the students of the centre screened the film Good Bye, Lenin! by director Wolfgang Becker as a basis from which to discuss nostalgia in post-Communist Germany and the Socialist world. Anita Klingler led the discussion by presenting the context of the film and post-socialist memory in Germany. Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz sent this report.

Good Bye, Lenin! is the story of an East German family during the tumultuous year of the Wende (“Turning Point,” the term used in referring to the events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall). The mother, Christiane, is a devout and active party loyalist who has been deeply committed to the socialist state since the departure of her husband to West Germany in 1978. Eleven years later, in October 1989, she is on her way to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the GDR with party dignitaries and observes her young adult son, Alex, clash with police during a pro-democracy protest march. The trauma of seeing her son among the demonstrators, combined with the shock of witnessing the brutality of the regime, prompts her to have a heart attack and sends her into a come for the next eight months.

While she is in a coma, the Berlin Wall falls, Eastern Germans embrace capitalism and consumerism, and Germany is catapulted toward reunification. Alex loses his job in the state-owned television repair service and begins selling satellite dishes, while his sister starts a relationship with a Wessi (West German citizen) and abandons her studies in order to work at Burger King. When Christiane emerges from her coma, doctors warn her children that any unexpected shock could complicate her recovery and potentially prove fatal. Her son Alex thus resolves to recreate the GDR in her bedroom, concealing from his mother all the changes of the past eight months.

In the course of this two-hour long tragicomic film, Alex manages to reinvent the GDR for his mother to the extent that he even thinks himself that the East Germany he has created actually exists. It was this theme that provided the springboard for the post-screening discussion.

A major theme of the discussion involved the tensions and gaps between appearance and reality, between fact and fiction. One question that arose was the way Alex rewrites the official history, like when he explained the presence of Wessies (West Germans) in East Germany due to the opening of the frontiers for the West Germans running away from the country through Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Also, a relevant aspect of the film is how Alex’s mother believed in Socialism, but at the end of the film confesses to her children that their father had not fled to the West for another woman, as they had been led to believe. Rather, his departure had been planned with the intention of having the family follow him as soon as possible. After he went, she tells them, she lacked the courage to go through with the plan. This raised a discussion about the extent to which she was a believer in the Socialist Regime. It also raised the question of the experience of exile from a dictatorship and the consequences of this action.

A second point discussed was how the film handled the question of democratisation in East Germany with the expansion of consumerism and sexual liberation, notably with the appearance in the film of symbols of late-capitalism or globalisation like Coca-Cola and Ikea. The discussion honed in on the empty buildings abandoned by East Germans which were occupied after the fall and most of them re-used, especially as spaces for alternative cultures and consumerism. A final theme was how the film explained the union of both Germanies through the role that football played politically during the World Cup in 1990, whose victory united both West and East in the joy of celebration.

Finally, we discussed the enduring nostalgia for the Socialist past, or Ostalgie, a term that plays with the German words for East, Ost, and nostalgia, Nostalgie. Anita reminded us how in today’s Germany, along with the official memory of this past promoted by the State, the people who lived in East Germany have their own memories, which tend to emphasize the positive aspects rather than the negative. We discussed this phenomenon not only in East Germany and other ex-socialist countries, but in other places such as Spain where part of the population idealises Francoism.

To sum up, this fantastic film allowed us to have an interesting debate about memory and nostalgia in post-communist societies. Our main conclusion was that the emotional memory of a regime could shape the way we see our own present, not only in the context of post-communism, but also other dictatorships, such as Spain.

While this is probably the last event of this academic year, we will continue our discussion group next semester. We expect to continue this exciting and lively forum for debate, with many overlapping perspectives. Everyone and all ideas are welcome. Do not hesitate to write to us (either Iker or Anita), and stay tuned for more news soon!

Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz is a PhD student in History. His research interests lie broadly in the history of the European left, political theory, political violence and historical memory. His thesis focuses on the political commitment of Eric Hobsbawm and his passion for politics in a transformed world (since 1977). He is a member of the CSMCH steering commitee.

Our final week of CSMCH activities had a decidedly Chinese tinge to them. In the first of two China-related events, the renowned historian and broadcaster Rana Mitter (Oxford) discussed the postwar reconstruction of mainland China – and why it did not lead to the economic modernisation and democratic politics of postwar Europe, as some hoped it might. Rosalind Parr, who gives us this report, was part of a very large and curious audience.

As the world considers what role China might play in the twenty-first century, Rana Mitter’s paper on post-war reconstruction explored how Chinese nationalists responded to this question in the war-ravaged 1940s. In Chinese history, the post-war/pre-Communist moment is usually associated with Nationalist failure, while the global history of world governance tends to overlook the East Asian story. But Rana suggested that it was time to revisit this period. In his talk, he argued for a new narrative that reinstates Chinese agency and depicts 1945-47 as a dry run for the Asian developmentalism of the 1950s.

He approached this history through the figure of Jiang Tingfu, the leftist scholar-turned-diplomat who represented China at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) from 1943 and headed up the national parallel organisation, the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, in 1945/46. In exploring Jiang’s thought, he argued, we may gain insight into Chinese international relations in the present day.

He began by sketching the post-war context, drawing our attention to China’s position as the only autonomous non-Western actor involved with the new international organisations that emerged in the 1940s. At the same time, Chinese nationalists contributed to constitutional and political debates about social welfarism and liberalism in both the global and national contexts.  Although we now tend to view the 1945-49 moment in China as one of civil war and failure, the assumption at the time was that the Nationalist government would remain a significant player for some time to come.

He then moved to the figure of Jiang Tingfu himself. In his early career, he was a historian who completed a PhD in the United States before returning to China. A liberal and a social democrat, Jiang variously expressed admiration for the USSR, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, and for the Attlee government in Britain. He was also a critic of Chiang Kaishek yet, despite this, was appointed by Chiang to UNRRA and as Director of the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The levels of destruction faced in China in the 1940s brought comparisons with the Belsen concentration camp and famine-decimated Bengal – one UNRRA report stating that ‘people need everything’. Jiang’s response to this massive crisis combined short term relief measures with longer term reconstruction and rehabilitation planning.

The victory of the Communist Party in China in 1949 has obscured the brief history of this nationalist-led reconstruction.  Rana argued that we should reinstate this period as a means of accessing alternative Chinese post-war visions of progress and of China’s role in the new regional and global order. In the 1940s, Nationalist visions existed in conversation with Communist ideology and, although Maoism triumphed, Jiang Tingfu’s pro-liberal, anti-imperial stance holds contemporary relevance. In particular, the history of ideas relating to modernisation, China’s role in the world, and her anti-imperialist legacy speaks to current, unresolved issues that play into international relations in the present day.

The thoughtful comment by Konrad Lawson (St Andrews) emphasised the great significance of Rana’s paper for historical scholarship. Not only does it suggest an otherwise obscured narrative, but it opens up areas for further study. In particular, studies of Chinese intellectual history and of relief and rehabilitation in a global context, as well as those located at the intersection of the two, may productively draw on this research and, in doing so, further inform wider debates about China and the world.

Rosalind Parr is a PhD student in History. Her research interests are located in transnational and global histories of the twentieth century, particularly through the lenses of South Asian and gender history. Her thesis examines the international activities of Indian nationalist women in the period from the 1920s to the 1950s.

This week, the Centre welcomed Malcolm Petrie, a former Early Career Fellow here at Edinburgh and now a lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews. After a truly global year of talks and events, his discussion of Scottish politics and the European question brought us much closer to home. Calum Aikman sends this report.

The main focus of Malcolm’s paper was the hostility of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to the attempts by successive British governments to enter the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the positive impact this stance had on the party’s overall prospects.

Coming at a moment when the governing unionist tradition was already under severe strain, many historians have concentrated on the effects of several prevailing structural factors – most notably the discovery of oil fields in the North Sea and Britain’s comparatively poor economic performance – to explain the SNP’s upturn in fortunes during this period. But Malcolm argued that opposition to ‘Europe’ provided an equally important rallying point for the party: not only were its leading figures able to portray EEC membership as a ruse that would leave the Scottish people still further from the centre of power (on ‘the periphery of the periphery’, as a contemporary slogan would have it), but the subsequent campaign for a referendum on the issue helped return attention to the question of what Scotland’s constitutional status within the United Kingdom should be.

The position of the SNP, Malcolm contended, was initially characterised by pragmatism as much as by principle. Having welcomed the Treaty of Rome when it was signed in 1957, the party’s instincts began to shift away from pro-Europeanism towards the end of the following decade. During a by-election in Hamilton in 1967 the victorious Nationalist candidate, Winnie Ewing, repeatedly highlighted her opposition to integration with Europe, describing it as akin to ‘national suicide’.

That same year, Gordon Wilson, a future leader of the party, urged a ‘hard, intransigent attitude’ towards the EEC, citing the loss of nationhood and sovereignty that membership would entail together with a more esoteric claim that entry would contravene the terms of the 1707 Act of Union. In 1970 the leadership, with a keen eye for publicity stunts, sent a delegation to Brussels to let the European Commission know what it thought about their project, and in the General Election that followed soon after the SNP ran on an unambiguously anti-EEC platform. At a time when both the Labour and Conservative parties were theoretically committed to joining (despite significant opposition among their respective memberships), this was a distinctive policy that generated enthusiasm from within a somewhat Euro-sceptical public.

Malcolm suggested, however, that this was far from the whole story. While the party’s antipathy to Europe was at times motivated by tactical opportunism, what really catalysed such feeling was an underlying populist, anti-establishment spirit. This emerged in the rhetoric of William Wolfe, leader from 1970 to 1979, whose antagonism towards the overmighty state, whether it was located in London or Brussels, drove him to advocate the twin measures of localism and decentralisation as a suitable antidote.

Another prominent Nationalist, Dr Robert McIntyre, made similar arguments by suggesting that only an independent Scotland outside of the EEC could properly enshrine human values, thereby echoing the ‘small is beautiful’ concept then being popularised by E. F. Schumacher. Such doctrines are often associated with the political Right, and Malcolm noted that the party performed particularly well in areas, such as the North-East of Scotland, where the Tories had traditionally been dominant. But the SNP also used their opposition to a remote European bureaucracy as a means of transcending the binary political divide: at a senior level the policy attracted support from libertarian-minded socialists on the Left as well as the anti-statists of the Right.

The party’s strident defence of the right to self-determination soon found an outlet in the campaign for a national referendum on the European question. First articulated in 1970 by the anti-EEC Labour politicians Douglas Jay and Tony Benn, the idea to place the decision ‘before the people’ gained significant traction throughout Britain during the following year, when the vote to join the EEC was passed in the House of Commons with much rancour on both sides. In Scotland, a poll suggested that 75 per cent of the public supported the concept.

For the SNP, which unlike the two major parties was united in its refusal to support entry, this was too good an opportunity to miss. Over the next four years the party used the referendum campaign to develop its own perspective. Arguing – as other anti-EEC politicians also did – that no government can surrender common privileges without popular consent, the SNP’s leaders went further by suggesting that, as there was no provision in place for member states to leave the EEC, entry would effectively freeze Scotland inside the confines of the British state for good. A Declaration of Rights was therefore proclaimed, and Wilson wrote to the sitting President of the European Commission, François-Xavier Ortoli, to defend the unique nature of Scotland’s constitutional framework.

Malcolm pointed out that the focus of Nationalists on these issues successfully diverted attention away from economics, and played on existing discontent with the political system. Despite this, when the EEC referendum was finally staged in 1975 it proved to be something of a disappointment for the SNP. Although there had long been a widespread perception that the British public were not keen on joining the EEC, once the decision was made and entry officially ratified (on 1 January 1973) there was an equally strong feeling that membership was now a fait accompli that could no longer be resisted.

The result was a majority in all four nations for staying in; but with a ‘Yes’ vote at just 58 per cent and a comparatively low turnout, it was Scotland that seemed the least enthusiastic about the decision. Malcolm wondered if voter apathy indicated an even higher level of opposition than has been assumed; more importantly, he argued that the precedent set by the referendum was useful to the SNP in the long run, as it led to further referendums – including one on the establishment of a Scottish Assembly in 1979 – and entrenched notions of popular sovereignty in  British political debate, to the extent that it is now taken for granted that the union itself can be dissolved constitutionally.

Summarising Malcolm’s paper,  Ewen Cameron (Edinburgh) pointed out its value in reminding us of the difficult relationship that has long existed between Scottish nationalism and the idea of ‘Europe’, contrary to the common belief that Scotland as a whole has a settled tendency to be pro-European. He felt this to be particularly important when considering Winnie Ewing – whose anti-EEC propaganda in Hamilton perhaps belies her subsequent ‘internationalist’ reputation as ‘Madame Ecosse’ – and argued that greater distinction should thus be made between internationalism in Scotland and the narrower specificity of the European question.

Ewen also noted that the SNP’s anti-statist rhetoric, and its ability to use it to promote a particular view of Scottish identity, was reminiscent of the political formula that the Tories had earlier deployed to ensure their own political success in Scotland. A lengthy – and at times quite lively – discussion then ensued, with questions raised concerning the pre-eminence of pragmatism over ideology in determining the SNP’s actions, the position of the few pro-Europeans inside the party, and the need for an examination of historically Liberal areas vis-à-vis Nationalist strongholds in the context of the referendum result.

Calum Aikman is a PhD student in History. His research mostly focuses on twentieth-century British and Scottish politics, trade union history, and the fortunes of the Labour Party in the post-war era. His thesis is on the political thought of the Labour Party’s ‘revisionist’ right wing in the 1970s. He is a member of the CSMCH steering committee.

In solidarity with ongoing UCU strike action, this week’s talk was moved out of the university into the Brass Monkey pub’s back room, trading rows of seminar desks for cosy sofas and cushions.  The session was adapted into a less formal ‘teach-out,’ aiming to emphasise the possibilities for an accessible and non-hierarchical educational culture. Aptly, the discussion centred around visiting speaker Sonja Levsen’s research into conceptions of democracy and authority in postwar French and West German educational policy, inviting comparisons with educational attitudes and policies today. Mathew Nicolson sent this report.

Sonja began the discussion by introducing some of the central themes of her research.  Teaching styles and society’s attitudes towards young people underwent a significant shift across much of Western Europe during the postwar years.  One such notable development proved to be the ‘permissive turn,’ characterised by dialogue within parent-child and teacher-student relationships, greater toleration of youth sexuality and a growing distaste of corporal punishment.

In attempting to understand such a rapid social transformation, historians have tended to focus upon European consumer society, 1960s youth culture and developments within social sciences as key drivers of change.  However, these approaches have yet to fully explain how this shift in attitudes occurred and often lack transnational perspectives.  In her work, Sonja has added further insight to these debates by offering a comparative analysis of France and West Germany in which she highlights growing perceptions of young people as citizens and democratisation in education.

As Sonja noted, the history of education can provide a particularly useful contribution to German history.  Since the 1960s, one leading historical interpretation analyses German history through the prism of authoritarianism.  In this view, modern Germany has been defined by its authoritarian society of which Prussian militarism, nineteenth-century imperialism and National Socialism were all simply different manifestations. Accordingly, it is argued that, after the Second World War, West Germany retained these authoritarian trappings, beginning its transition to a more democratic society only during the 1960s, at which point teacher and parent attitudes similarly democratised.

Sonja situated the origins of this concept of authoritarianism in the occupying powers’ ‘diagnosis’ of Germany’s problems and associated anthropological ‘national character studies.’  This led to a major push for democratic reform which reached down to educational establishments.  By the 1950s, West German schools and universities had created student councils, preceding those formed later in France and Britain. In contrast, despite recently emerging from the Vichy regime, there was little inherent contradiction between authoritarianism and democracy in postwar France, particularly within the sphere of education.  Indeed, even the student activists of 1968 spoke more in the language of anti-capitalism than anti-authoritarianism, while in West Germany much of the focus remained on tackling the vestiges of Nazism and authoritarianism.

In West Germany, concerns about authoritarianism intersected with new developing attitudes towards sex and youth sexuality.  Taking inspiration from the research and ideas of Wilhelm Reich, by the 1960s ‘diagnoses’ of authoritarianism increasingly attributed Nazism to repressed sexuality.  Thus, democratisation and sexual liberation should occur hand in hand. As this idea gained traction, West Germany became the second country after Sweden to introduce sex education which acknowledged sexual pleasure, moving beyond a solely biological approach.  To better understand the connection between attitudes to sexual liberalisation and authoritarianism, Sonja’s upcoming research project intends to extend her transnational analysis into sex education.

Finally, Sonja engaged with the argument that social change naturally followed economic change in postwar Europe – that liberalisation accompanied consumerism and prosperity.  She questioned this sense of inevitability, highlighting regional variations despite similar economic contexts as evidence of a more complex reality.  Instead, she suggested we focus on the importance of influential actors in political and public life, viewing social change as contingent upon the possibilities for different social groups to be visible and vocalised in the public sphere.

Commenting on Sonja’s research, Anita Klingler (doctoral student in history at Edinburgh) provided some further points for discussion.  She highlighted the possibility for other transnational comparisons in educational policy, such as with Britain or Italy, and raised the question of whether Saarland, administered by France until 1956, adopted French or West German ideas of democracy and authority within educational systems.  Responding to these points, Sonja acknowledged the lack of research into other countries’ education policies and argued that from a German perspective, British and American schools and universities represented a democratic ideal to aspire to, even when the reality – for example, British public schools – fell short of this image.  In the case of Saarland, Sonja added that student newspapers only proliferated after the transition to German administration, further emphasising the importance of political context in driving democratisation within education.

The session ended with a wide-ranging discussion, which lasted for over an hour. Sonja was grilled about the methodological and empirical foundations of her work, and she responded superbly to the many different questions. The very open discussion between staff, postgraduates and undergraduates was proof that, under these unusual circumstances, it is possible to break down some of the hierarchies of the university. Long may this continue!

Mathew Nicolson is an MSc by Research student in Scottish History. His research interests focus on the politics and culture of postwar Scotland with particular emphases on its ‘peripheral’ island groups and imperial connections. His dissertation explores Scottish responses to the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

In honour of the 50^th anniversary of the Prague Spring in 1968, the CSMCH put together a Czechoslovak New Wave film screening series. Unfortunately, the poor weather meant that we had to cancel the second of our screenings, but the first one went ahead. Those who braved the snow were treated to a rare screening of the classic film ‘The Valley of the Bees’ (1967) by director František Vláčil in the cosy back room of the Brass Monkey pub on Drummond Street. Birgit Ampe was in the audience. 

The film was introduced by Tereza Valny, Edinburgh’s very own Czech historian. She began her discussion by briefly outlining the political climate of post-war Czechoslovakia. After the Second World War, a communist coup in 1948 had led to the establishment of a communist totalitarian regime. The Communist Party infiltrated not only economic and political structures, but also cultural, religious and social ones. Teresa highlighted the Sokols as an example of this process. The Sokol was a gymnastic organization that had its roots in the 1860s. During the 1950s, the Communist Party tried to replace the gymnastic festivals hosted by the Sokols with mass exercises for propaganda purposes. In that way, they used already existing structures for the spreading of their own ideals.

But all this started to change in the 1960s. Moscow, the bulwark of communism at that time, realised that the Czechoslovakian economy was deteriorating and it was decided that an economic reform was needed in the country. The reform would only apply to the economy; no other reorganisations were allowed. However, it soon became clear that this was an illusion, as reforms quickly started to take root in many other fields as well.

Tereza argued that the opening of Czechoslovak society was mainly due to these new reforms, and more specifically the artistic renaissance of the 1960s. This renaissance began in 1963, when the Kafka writers conference was held. Choosing the Prague author Kafka was in itself an act of rebellion because the themes he explored in his work, such as alienation, go against the communist ideals. This conference marked the beginning of a broadening of culture and an artistic revolution in Czechoslovakia.

The artistic renaissance also had an impact on filmmaking. Teresa recounted how people could go to the cinema and watch films that criticised the system in an covert way. One of these films was ‘The Valley of the Bees’ by František Vláčil. Like other directors, Vláčil was able to avoid censure by disguising his critique and placing his story in the past. In ‘The Valley of the Bees’, Vláčil explores the inevitability of life crushing the individual, which leaves the entire film in a gloom of impending doom. By examining the strict cloister life in the Middle Ages, he is able to criticise dogmatism within the contemporary communist system.

The film is set in the 13^th century and focuses on Ondřej. As a boy, he grew up in the castle of his father. The film opens with the marriage between his father and his new wife. Ondřej plays a cruel trick on the bride, for which his father almost kills him. Out of regret, his father promises to devote his son to God if he survives, which he eventually does. That is how Ondřej ended up in a religious order. There he meets Armin, who becomes his friend and teacher. However, the strict life is not for everyone and a brother of the order tries to leave. He is captured and fed to the hunting dogs. This event triggers something in Ondřej and he decides to flee as well. Armin takes it upon himself to bring back Ondřej. But nothing can convince Ondřej, who eventually arrives back at his father’s castle. There he learns that his father has died. He becomes the lord of the castle and marries his stepmother. Armin cannot condone this act, so he slits the woman’s throat. As a punishment, Armin is devoured by hunting dogs. But before he dies, he begs Ondřej to go back to the order. The film ends with Ondřej eventually returning to the order.

Birgit Ampe is an Erasmus+ trainee and visiting postgraduate student, who will be based in the CSMCH for three months from March to May 2018. Birgit completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Ghent in Belgium. During her stay at the Centre, she will be helping to manage some of the administrative tasks, as well as pursuing her own research on colonial soldiers during World War One using archival collections in the National Library of Scotland.