The 15th European Social Science History Conference 2025 will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands, 26 - 29 March 2025, organised by the IISH and the Leiden University.

Call for sessions for the World Economic History Congress, to be held in Lund, Sweden, from 28 July to 1 August 2025. The text of the call and theme appears below, along with instructions for submission. The deadline for submitting sessions has been extended to March 15th, 2024. 

While inequality has played a pivotal role in shaping societies and economies worldwide, many authors have argued the importance of studying its historical evolution in order to have a deeper comprehension of its dynamics and determinants (Milanovic et al. 2011; Piketty 2013). Until recently in industrialized regions, and still today in many countries in the Global South, agriculture, and therefore land, was the main source of rents, income and wealth. This session seeks to delve into the intricate web of historical dynamics that influenced land property arrangements from Early Modern times and onwards. Our objective is to foster a comprehensive understanding of the manifold factors that contributed to the often-glaring disparities in land ownership during this transformative period. The proposed session aims to provide a nuanced exploration of the theme by employing a variety of methodologies and case studies, each offering unique insights into the complexities of land property inequality. We contend that the roots of modern land property arrangements can be traced back to this era, and understanding this historical context is essential for comprehending contemporary disparities.

The conference we are organizing in Rio de Janeiro urges scholars to rethink capitalism’s history from the vantage point of this new historical moment and to consider what are the most promising theoretical formulations, methodological approaches, and historical framings to define capitalism, identify its drivers, shed light on its mechanisms, periodize its cycles, incorporate previously neglected spaces or processes, and offer a prognosis of its current reconfiguring. While traditional analyses of capitalism’s history were centered on Europe, the United States, or the North Atlantic, new strands of scholarship recognize that such a narrow lens fails to capture the complexity of the global economy and its history.

The British Commission for Maritime History (BCMH) invites contributions to its twenty-ninth conference for new researchers. This year it will be held at the University of Strathclyde in the heart of Glasgow, a city transformed through maritime trade and shipbuilding from the early modern period onwards. This is an ideal location to hold this annual conference and provides a unique opportunity for new scholars to present their work in a historic setting.

Oil was the most important commodity of the twentieth century. It fundamentally changed societies, markets, and the relationship between states and companies. Oil is a business with high fixed costs, encouraging companies to seek economies of scale and market domination. From the start of the modern industry in the 1860s, the international oil markets within a few decades came to be dominated by a few large vertically integrated global companies. The oil majors at times competed vigorously but mostly colluded in international cartels. This meant that a few large companies tightly controlled the market for the product that societies became increasingly dependent on. All over the world, states had to find a way to deal with the market power of the dominant oil companies. The question of whether and how the authorities should regulate the oil markets became a burning political issue that brought about a diverse array of national strategies.

Young Scholars Initiative and Figuerola Institute invite you to the Economic History Workshop of Developing Regions at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M). There has been recent growth in the economic history literature on developing countries, backed by quantified evidence. However, this expansion lags significantly behind the well-established corpus of literature centered on the core European and North American contexts. Bridging this gap in the literature is crucial to comprehensively addressing the major questions in economic history. Indeed, we still lack comparable historical datasets of markets, land ownership, human capital, and tax records in developing regions due to limited access to primary sources and insufficient funding opportunities.

We invite your participation in “Climate and Business/The Business Climate,” a conference sponsored by the Canadian Business History Association – l’association Canadienne pour l’histoire des affaires, to be held in Banff, Alberta, 19-21 September, 2024 at the Banff Centre. The planning committee welcomes proposals for papers and roundtables relating to business history within a Canadian or international context.  

Precious objects, and jewelry in particular, have generated repeated and echoed reactions over the centuries and across the globe, despite variations in context and location. Indeed, while the disapproval of an often ostentatious dissipation has been recurrent since Antiquity (Pliny the Elder), the benefits of a precious object has been claimed for aesthetic, symbolic, religious and economic reasons alike, whether it may be an agalma worthy of devotion ; an offering to the gods or the dead ; a symbol of status, power, alliance; a social or family heirloom, both a vehicle and a pledge of transmission or tradition ; an inspiration for artistic creation and the development of techniques ; as majors elements of exchange in the gift economy, and even a driving force behind the capitalist economy as emphasized by Bernard de Mandeville, Jean-Baptiste Say, Werner Sombart, and many others.  

Thus, the precious object and jewelry especially, whether carried on oneself, socially exchanged or integrated into spaces, create distinction at all levels, material and symbolic: they “radiate”, according to the worlds of Georg Simmel, attracting attention, reconfiguring the space of appearances, and establishing cultural and social divides and a “partition of the sensible”. Because of their distinctive value, they influence social taste, originate fashion, encourage imitation and counterfeiting, and fake and kitsch reproductions.

The 20th World Economic History Congress will convene from 28 July to 1 August 2025 in Lund, Sweden. The theme for the Congress is Equality and Sustainability Challenges, which highlights some of the central issues facing humanity today and also connects to a broad and diverse range of historical problems. To address both the challenges and to find insights from the historical record for that endeavor, a range of perspectives will be necessary.

The Centre of Maritime History in the Institute for Mediterranean Studies in Rethymnon announces the Sixth International Conference of the Mediterranean Maritime History Network (MMHN), which will take place at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies in Rethymno from the 27th to the 31st of May 2024.

The ELHN Labour and Family Economy Working Group invites papers for the session:
Elsewhere. The Migration of Families in the Past from a Labour History and Family Economy Perspective (18th-19th Century) . Organizers: Mario Grassi (Yale University & University of Padua), Céline Mutos-Xicola (University of Girona). Discussant: Beatrice Zucca Micheletto (University of Padua). Deadline to receive papers: 10 September 2023.