Cost Action A36, Tributary Empires Compared
Minutes of the meeting of the management committee
16 October 2005, 14.00, Istanbul, Sabanci
Present
Antonios Anastasopoulos (Gr)
Peter Bang (DK)
Jeroen Duindam (Neth)
Björn Forsén (Fin)
Vincent Gabrielsen (DK)
Ebba Koch (Au)
Dariuz Kolodziejczyk (Pol)
Metin Kunt (Tur)
J. C. Meyer (Nor)
Giovanni Salmeri (It)
Greg Woolf (UK)
Carlos Cunha (Cost)
David Grønbæk (COST)
Chair Peter Bang
Agenda
1. Welcome to participants; taking of minutes
2. Adoption of agenda, point 8 were to be treated in connection with 12.
3. Minutes of last meeting
4. Report from the Science Officer
• News from the COST Office
• Status of Action
• Number of Signatories
• Budget Status
5. Year Budget planning
6. STSM status, applications
7. Publications, annual report
8. Action evaluations
9. Requests for membership
10. Request for non-COST participation
11. Website news
12. Progress report of working groups
13. Long-term planning
14. Time and place of next meeting
15. AOB
Ad. 1: Peter Bang was to take the minutes of the meeting.
Ad. 2: The agenda for the meeting was approved.
Ad. 3: The minutes of last meeting as circulated in advance were approved.
Ad. 4: Grønbæk informed in general about COST Activities, noted the progress of the Action, the number of signatory countries was now at 12 (including Greece who had initiated the formal procedure to join the Action and nominated Antonios Anastasopoulos as MC member) and declared that the action was on target in relation to this year’s budget, of some € 40, 000.
Ad. 5: David Grønbæk announced that given the number of participants, the action could provisionally expect the budget for 2006 to be set at approximately € 50, 000. Final and official confirmation of the budgetary frame for next year’s actions, however, was still pending. To the extent that the action would avail itself of the Short Term Scientific Missions option, they had to be paid out of the Action’s own budget.
Based on this information, the management committee decided to divide the provisional funding equally between the two joint working group and management committee meetings bar € 2,000 for secretarial assistance to the chair. This gives a provisional 2006 budget with the following posts:
Meetings Athens € 24, 000
Meeting Warsaw € 24, 000
Secretarial assistance € 2, 000
Total € 50, 000
Ad. 6: David Grønbæk advocated use of the STSM tool. No present applications. Howver, the Action could expect to receive no extra funding in addition to 50, 000 to cover any STSMs (for each with a maximum of € 2, 500). STSM, short term scientific mission is a tool to facilitate exchange of researchers (young in particular) and PhD students.
Ad. 7: Publications. It is planned to develop the Copenhagen meeting combined with the Warsaw meeting into a mid-term collection of papers to set out a broad framework for the study of classical empires. The Istanbul meeting will form the basis of a publication presenting comparative perspectives on the court as an institution of rule and monarchy.
Ad. 9: Greece is, as mentioned, in the process of signing the MoU. The MC welcomes the new member.
Ad. 10: Nothing to report.
Ad. 11: An official Website for the Action is presently under construction. It will be hosted by The University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Arts.
- A bibliography of relevant research would be a useful resource to include at this website.
The MC now reverted to 8, Action evaluations.
Ad. 8.
The MC reviewed and discussed the working group meetings in both Copenhagen andIstanbul .
In the lights of the experience at these two previous meetings, it was felt that more general sessions for discussion should be included in coming programmes. This might be achieved by having a general discussion session at the end of each day’s papers. It was also emphasised that it was important to leave plenty of room for discussion and concomitantly to keep the time allotted to each speaker´s presentation at a minimum, say some 20-25 minutes.
It would also be helpful to force speakers to address a specific set of issues in their papers. This might be achieved by circulating some basic general studies and theoretical papers among speakers before meetings. This would create greater coherence at meetings and ensure commonality of questions.
It was also stressed that it should be an important priority to complement the experience of the 3 core empires with examples fetched from other historiographies, such as the early Middle-Eastern Empires, China, Russia and even the new world.
Ad. 12. The programme for the meeting of working group 3 in Athens in June 2006 was presented and approved.
The MC then went on to discuss the provisional plans for the mid-term meeting in Warsaw in October 2006. The core group and the local organisers where asked to reduce the number of topics. Various options were considered and it finally decided that the mid-term meeting should consist of 3 main sections:
Schedule for mid-term meeting in Warsaw, October 2006
Day 1: Historical sociology and comparative of empires. (7 speakers)
This session is intended to strengthen the sociological and methodological aspect of the network’s agenda. It is to present a number of prominent sociologist and historians working with imperial comparisons. They will be asked to reflect on how to characterise empires as systems of power and the methodological problems involved in comparative research.
Possible speakers include Chris Wickham, Jack Goldstone, Garry Runciman, Michael Mann, John Hall, Michael Tynowski
Day 2: Imperial universalism (7 speakers)
A key feature the 3 core empires seem to share is a universalist conception of empire. From discussions both in Copenhagen and Istanbul, it is clear that many aspects of the cultural construction of imperial statehood belong to a common tradition. This sessions aims to explore the shared components of ideology, symbolism and imagery of classical empires. However, the approach should not be purely, not even primarily, genealogical. Instead the session should explore how each state drew from a common set of symbols and concepts to serve its own particular ideological needs. Function and construction should be at the centre of interests. To put this shared, by origin middle-eastern, tradition of statehood into perspective comparison from other regions should be included for contrast, e.g. China and Meso-America.
Some common cultural notions may include sun-imagery, paradisiacal and golden age imagery of an era of peace and effortless prosperity, culture heroes such as Hercules, Alexander, Jamshed. Hellenistic Philosophy will provide an important bridge between latin and middle-eastern traditions.
Prospective speakers include Patricia Crone, Gojko Barjamovich, Ebba Koch, Justyna Olko, Marigold Accent etc.
Day 3 (half-day): Imperial frontiers:
Adam Ziolkowski, Roman frontiers
Dariusz Kolodziejczyk , Ottoman frontiers
Michael Khodarkovsky (Loyola University , Chicago), The Russian Steppe Frontiers
+ Mughal/Indian Specialist.d
The core group and the local organisers in Warsaw will now continue work to get a programme in place as soon as possible.
Ad. 13.
Greg Woolf offered to host a meeting at St. Andrew’s in June 2007. The MC accepted the offer and after some discussion the topic of the working group meeting: infrastructure of imperial knowledge-.systems, information gathering, sponsorship of science and scholarship, development of specialised discourses of knowledge regarding imperial resources etc.
For future meetings, topics such as imperial law and religion and decline of empires were suggested. It was agreed that the chair should provide a provisional plan for the last meetings of the network at the next MC meeting. This should form the basis of discussions and lead towards the adoption of a finalised plan at the mid-term meeting in Warsaw .
Offers to host a meeting were given by Ebba Koch in Vienna, Giovanni Salmeri in Pisa and Christian Meyer in Bergen..
Ad. 14: Time and place of next MC meeting was fixed to Athens, 19-21 June 2006.
