Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Browse By Time
Browse By Person
Browse By Room
Browse By Category
Browse By Session Type
Browse By Affiliate Organization
Search Tips
2019 Summer Convention Home
About ASEEES
Personal Schedule
Sign In
Session Submission Type: Panel
This panel aims to explore the intertwined relation between empires and infrastructural development along the Lower Danube and in the Black Sea. In a region in which the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires often clashed, infrastructures had on the one hand the purpose to secure borders and keep unwanted intruders outside, while on the other hand, they were built to increase trans-imperial mobility and exchanges. In more general terms, infrastructural projects and technologies of the time provided governments (and in some cases international organizations) with new opportunities to exercise power and intensify the use of territory. However, the story of river regulation, international shipping networks and quarantine systems shows that building infrastructures was a highly contested process in which central governments, local authorities and technical experts often pursued different agendas. Furthermore, the panel also sheds light on the ambivalent relationship between human artifacts, “nature” and narration, be it in form of water, infectious diseases or steamers. And finally, another line of inquiry refers to the users of infrastructure (such as migrants, travelers, shipping companies) and how they appropriated and sometimes repurposed the new constructions and gave them additional meaning as backward, Oriental or exceptional.
Quarantines, Infrastructure, and Territorial Sovereignty in the Danubian Region in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries - Andrew Richard Robarts, Rhode Island School of Design
The River as Infrastructure: Hydraulic Engineering in the Danube Delta in the Second Half of the 19th Century - Luminita Gatejel, U of Regensburg (Germany)
Vehicles as 'Civilization': The Steamship Transport between the Danube and the Black Sea in the Second Half of the 19th Century - Lyubomir Raychev Pozharliev, Justus-Liebig-U of Giessen (Germany)