Tobacco was one of the most important globally traded commodities from the 17th century through to the present day, and yet it has received relatively little attention in the historiography of modern empires in comparison to other commodities, such as sugar or cotton. As a result, recent approaches to rewriting the history of European imperialism from a more global perspective have hardly been problematized with regard to the peculiarities of tobacco history. Nowadays, studies no longer understand empire as a rigid relationship between metropole and colonies, but take the dynamics of actors within an empire as seriously as the networks and global processes that crossed imperial borders, or indeed lay beyond them. The conference starts from this assumption. We ask to what extent the history of tobacco allows new insights into the tension between the imperial integration of a metropole and its colonies, and the global entanglement of places and peoples within and beyond empires. Changing regimes of consumption, knowledge, myth-making, trade, and work, are central fields of recent commodity studies, and deserve particular attention. To this end, we aim to apply insights from economic and cultural history, but also from political, social, psychological, and environmental history. While Western overseas empires have tended to attract most attention, we welcome contributions on all countries and all empires.

The Feminist Labour History Working Group invites papers which address the following two large themes:

a) Working women in agriculture (19 to 21 centuries).

b) Women workers as writers

The Working Group “Labour in Mining” welcome proposals for the session "Impact of mining: economic activities, labour markets, living conditions, environmental problems (18th-21st century)", to be submitted  to the 4th ELHN Conference-WORCK, 30.8.-3.9.2021, Vienna University. 

We welcome paper proposals for the session “Business and Finance in Turbulent Times: The Developing World in the 1970s and 1980s” to be submitted to the 2nd call of the 2022 WEHC-Paris.

Organisers: Carlo Edoardo Altamura (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva) and Sebastian Alvarez (University of Oxford)

Since the 1980s that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has specialised in interventions in developing countries. But that was not the typical situation in the previous 40 years of existence of the organisation. From 1945 to the 1980s the IMF signed Stand-by arrangements with both developing and developed countries and conducted sometimes quite large adjustment programmes in the latter (such as those in Italy and the UK in 1977). Those interventions were much lighter in terms of conditionality than what became common after the 1980s: their main purpose was to give quick support to countries facing balance of payments crises in order to help them keep the par value of their exchange rates within the context of the Bretton Woods system. 

Due to the exceptional circumstances caused by the COVID-19 epidemic crisis, the Organising Committee of the 40th Conference of APHES has decided to postpone the conference. The chosen new dates are 9 and 10 July 2021, and the venue and theme remain the same. Paper and panel proposals already submitted may be considered for the new dates if the proponents who have made them want to. If not, they can be replaced by new proposals.

This panel focuses on how financial resources were collected and allocated in order to fund and run healthcare institutions. The aim is to examine which ‘business models’ were better able to meet the large and increasing costs, caused by population pressure and secular trends, and which factors determined the emergence of diverse types of financing healthcare in the long run (14th - 21st cc). Over time public, private and mixed forms of supporting unraveled: historical evidence shows for instance the changing role played by governments, shifting from the ‘minimum State’ before 19th century, to the central function played by the State later, when it became the chief provider of public services including also healthcare. When medical care services were provided to large proportions of the population, costs increased. This was also due to the fact that because technology initially hardly affected healthcare, its productivity increased only slightly, keeping unit costs high, as Baumol masterly proved. Attention will therefore also go to how more advanced healthcare institutions managed to finance and adopt scientific and technological innovations.

The Society for Social and Economic History (Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, GSWG) and the Economic History Committee of the Verein für Socialpolitik (Wirtschaftshistorischer Ausschuss des Vereins für Socialpolitik, VfS) jointly organise a conference on "Territories, States and Nation in Economic and Social History" to be held in Vienna on 7-9 April 2021.

We would like to contribute to the conference with a session on financial history entitled "The territorial state and the creation of an integrated monetary and financial space in the 19th century".

Session organisers: Maria Stella Chiaruttini, Clemens Jobst.

Place: University of Groningen (further details will be communicated in due time)

When: 20-21 January 2021

Deadline for submitting a 500-word abstract: 15 September 2020

In this special issue, we invite new empirical and theoretical contributions in order to understand the status of gender perspectives within ongoing economic historical research in the Nordic region and elsewhere. What is the status of gender research and how is gender and intersectional theory used in the field – and with what results? Which new theoretical understandings have been introduced? Is research with a gender approach challenging or even changing the discipline of economic history? In addition, how do these perspectives contribute to the larger field of gender studies?