Chair of Modern and Contemporary History – Prof. Dr. Manuel Borutta

Professorship for Modern and Contemporary History

Our group is dedicated to Modern and Contemporary History with focus on the Mediterranean (18. to 20. centuries). The Mediterranean is conceived as a contact zone between Africa, Asia and Europe, a zone, where borders have been moved since antiquity and which was closely networked even before modern globalisation. Thematic foci of the group are the history of colonialism and decolonialisation, of cultur clash and religious mission, chronopolitics and pluricontemporality, youth and illegality. Our researchers are members of the Mediterranean Platform.
_{image: © Wikimedia Commons}

Spring School Mediterranean History
28.-30. März 2023

The Mediterranean is a contact zone of Africa, Asia and Europe that was closely intertwined long before modern globalization: a ‘liquid continent’ where borders have constantly shifted since ancient times. Today the region is in the focus due to multiple crises and conflicts. Many of these current problems have a deep history.

The Spring School will shed light on them in a longue durée perspective. Together with students from different countries from Europe and the Mediterranean distinguished scholars and experts from all periods of Mediterranean history will highlight crucial topics such as power, violence and representation, social inequality, religion and mobility across the ages. Concise lectures and intensive group work with sources will be combined to provide an understanding of epoch-spanning features and epoch-specific problems of the region that are also relevant to its present and future. Participants will receive a reader in advance.

Further details and registration see here.

This interdisziplinary colloquium provides a forum for academic exchange where current research approaches of Modern and Contemporary History, Contemporary History, Eastern European History as well as the History of Economics are being discussed. It is also open for students.
See programme winter term 2022/23.

The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800 | 2000

Due to current conflicts, crises and wars, the Mediterranean is back on the agenda of the Humanities and the social sciences. Yet, in the field of modern history this paradigm is almost absent. The DFG research network “The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800 | 2000” therefore aims to transcend the fragmentation of separate historiographies and to get a more integrated view of the modern period of this region. It focuses on the dynamics and transformations of the region in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of taking the Mediterranean as a natural given, the network will explore how this space was invented and shaped in the modern age. Against myths of Mediterranean unity, continuity and singularity, the region is conceived as a contact zone between Africa, Asia and Europe that was connected to and is comparable with other regions of the world.

Mediterranean Entanglements.France and Algeria between colonization and decolonization

In his current book project Manuel Borutta explores political, economical, demographic and cultural connections and interactions between the mediterranean countries on the periphery of  Europe and Africa.  His book aims to show that Southern Europe and North Africa were so closely linked by Mediterranean entanglements that they cannot be analyzed separately..

Bild: @ Elisée Reclus, Nouvelle géographie universelle. La terre et les hommes, Bd. 1, L'Europe méridionale, Paris 1876: 5.

Die Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen

Ziel des Projekts ist es, einen grundsätzlichen Beitrag zur Zeiten-Geschichte der Industriemoderne zu liefern. Der Mehrwert des Projekts gründet darüber hinaus in dem Versuch, die Frageperspektive der Chronopolitik in der Geschichtswissenschaft zu etablieren und zu einer Systematisierung von Pluritemporalität beizutragen.

_{Illustration aus: Lyell, Charles: Principles of Geology. Volume III. With a new introduction by Martin J. S. Rudwick, Chicago, IL 1991 [Or. 1833].}