Preliminary Programme

During the second half of the 19th century – during a period of rapid economic globalization – several East and Central African regions went through an extremely violent phase characterized by an increase in slave raiding, the 'rush for ivory', colonial exploitation and numerous uprisings against the colonial rule. A strong increase in African imports of firearms and gunpowder from the 1850s onwards accompanied, and probably spurred these processes.
It was only in the 1870s that the arms trade in Africa was criticized to a greater extent. In its first part, this paper focuses on concerns expressed by Europeans about the arms trafficking in Africa. It analyzes how individual actors, mainly missionaries and antislavery activists, first criticized an unchecked arms importation, partly calling for state action. It further examines how these concerns were embraced by governmental actors, how the arms trade in Africa was formed as an international issue, and – with a view on the Brussels Conference in 1890 and its aftermath – how a colonial arms regime was put into action. In its second part, the paper observes a stepwise disentanglement of civil and governmental action in regards to the arms issue. In the context of a rising awareness of colonial exploitation, the paper particularly examines the role of individual actors investigating a connection between a state-legitimized arms importation and colonial atrocities in Africa. (Show less)

The number of export processing zones (EPZs) and special economic zones (SEZs) has risen dramatically in the last quarter century, from only 176 zones in 1986 to at least 3,500 zones by 2006, employing an estimated 65 million workers in 130 countries. Scholars in various disciplines including economic geography, economy, political economy, and anthropology have studied the social, economic, and political effects of zones, but many take for granted a prevalent narrative that today’s SEZs have their origins in past free ports. For many authors, this narrative plays only an anecdotal role in the introduction of an article or chapter. Others, like economist Aradhna Aggarwal, cite the World Bank and the World EPZ Association for such a claim, both organizations that may benefit from using “history” to legitimize the use of zones around the world today.

I question this narrative of continuity between free ports and today’s special economic zones by exploring the history of port and zone planning in Mumbai, India over the last 150 years. My sources include official planning reports and annual reports from chambers of commerce, port trusts, and various government ministries. I use research perspectives from global history and political geography that set a local diachronic study, where I focus on how actors institutionalize port and zone practices in Mumbai, within the history of the global development of free ports and export processing zones. I focus especially on how engineers, technical consultants, state planners, and business elite exchanged ideas about zone development plans and how these final plans were actually used and implemented, sometimes in idiosyncratic ways. My findings are partially consistent with this claim of continuity, but I argue that the usefulness of the zone to the territorial regime changes over time, such that free trade enclaves in the periods preceding and following a solidified national territorial regime resemble each other in curious ways. In conclusion, this paper, by closely examining the way zones have been planned in one place over time, leads to a more nuanced understanding of the complex, entangled history of free trade enclaves and territorial regimes. (Show less)

Historians have long been interested in the study of the most vibrant Northern European port cities of the early modern period, and the merchant communities that conducted their business from there. The latest historiographic trends have focused not only on their commercial successes, or the political-institutional status that defined them as merchant republics, but also on the social practices, perceptions and interactions that made these cities multinational spaces par excellence.
However, even the most cutting edge contributions delve on a few usual suspects, usually the port cities which occupied a pivotal position in the world system of the time. The trio Antwerp, Amsterdam and Hamburg provide a case in point. Consequently, a plethora of more peripheral and ultimately less impactful cases are overlooked. In this paper we will focus on the less familiar 17th-century Danish overseas commercial centre, Glückstadt.
The foundation of Glückstad was a personal political project of the Danish king Christian IV, who wanted to create a trading emporia from where Denmark could more actively participate in overseas commerce. The political relevance of this city for the Danish overseas designs was made clear when Danish Atlantic joint-stock company was named after the city (The Glückstadt Company). Through the concession of jurisdictional and diplomatic privileges, Christian IV sought to attract members of the leading trading diasporas of the day to Glückstadt, such as the Portuguese Sephardic nation, as well as seasoned and wealthy German and Dutch merchants. The king hoped that their capital, contacts and know-how in overseas trade could be used to increase the wealth and grandeur of Denmark.
With this paper we seek to unveil the settlement dynamics of merchant communities and trading diasporas in this node of international trade and global exchanges. We are particularly eager to consider two dimensions:
1) The reasons that lead the political power to sponsor the creation of this space and how its upbringing was reshaped by the agents who settled and did business there.
2) The tensions that stirred up from the coexistence of the Danish crown, the local governance institutions and the foreign trading communities that settled there.
Glückstadt, albeit arguably less prominent than other port cities, provides historians with an alternative narrative for the rise and fall of the “merchant republics”. This emporia was envisioned and built by the Danish crown, only to be reshaped by the cross-cultural interactions of its inhabitants and trading nations. Glückstadt represents the attempts of what is usually perceived to be a semi-periphery of the World System (Denmark) to increase its share of the overseas-trade wealth alongside the leading European commercial powers of its time. (Show less)