Cost Action A36, Tributary Empires Compared
MC meeting no: 6
Date and time: 4 November 2007, 15.00
Meeting place and address: Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H., Rethymno
Chair: Peter Fibiger Bang
Agenda
1. Welcome to participants; taking of minutes
2. Adoption of agenda
3. Minutes of last meeting and purpose of this meeting
4. Report from the Science Officer
• News from the COST Office
• Status of Action
• Number of Signatories
• Budget Status (develop a brief for transition to grant holder)
5. Requests for membership
6. Request for non-COST participation
7. Website news
8. STSM status, applications
9. Year Budget planning
10. Action evaluations (Crete meeting)
11. Progress report of working groups
- Vienna-meeting
- Utrecht-meeting
12. Long-term planning
- Implementation of the plan for the general continuous development of the network: the Rome meetin.
A. Summary of general evaluation meeting in June in Vienna (Kiss Balasz’ comments)
B. training school/summer school
C. Roman Host institutions, the Academies in Via Omero, the French School, British School?
D. Suggestions for joint comparative papers written by a pair of management committee or working group members.
13. Publications.
14. Time and place of next meeting
15. AOB
Minutes
Ad 1. Peter Bang would take the minutes
Ad 2. The agenda was adopted
Ad 3. The minutes of the previous meeting in St. Andrews were approved. Main tasks of the Rethymno meeting were to discuss the organization of a prospective training school, plans for the Utrecht meeting on law and the concluding meeting in Rome.
Ad 4. In the absence of the science officer, Peter Bang informed the MC about new developments in COST:
a. The implementation of the transition from central COST administration of the grant to administration by grantholder institutions had been delayed. Peter Bang was authorised to negotiate the transition for A36 to administration by University of Copenhagen as long as the administrative overhead did not exceed 15% of the action budget.
b. 14 countries had now signed the Memorandum of Understanding for Tributary Empires Compared, and Sweden had declared its intention to sign.
c. The budgetary year has been changed so that it now ran from July-June. For the period July 2007 till June 2008 the A36 budget had been raised to 65,000 euros.
Ad 5/6. No new requests for membership. Peter Bang would make enquiries about the plans of Spain to accept the invitation to join with professor Joseph Fradera.
Ad 7. An announcement of news section had been introduced on the action web-site. Suggestions were made to let it include various categories: books, conferences, exhibitions. MC members were encouraged to submit such information to either Peter Bang or the Web-master.
- a bibliography might also be included on the web-site.
Ad 8. During 2005 five STSMs had so far been completed within the action. It was decided to reserve money for 4 further STSMs within this budgetary period and if necessary ask for an increase in the budget. Ebba Koch, Adam Ziolkowski and Peter Bang informed about the concluded STSMs.
Ad 9. Budget July 2007-June 2008:
- Rethymno meeting: 26,000 euros
- Vienna meeting: 26,000 euros
- General action support grant: 2,000 euros
- STSMs (8) 17,500 euros
Total: 70,500 euros
As regards the general action support grant, Peter Bang was authorised to use these money to pay a student assistant for maintaining the homepage and for moderate travel expenses in relation to preparatory meetings of the core group in Cambridge.
Prospective candidates for STSMs (Jeroen Duindam, Elisabeth Szabat, Natalia Królikowska). To the extent that these would materialise an extra grant of up to 7,500 euros would be required.
Ad 10. The Crete meeting had turned out to be both fruitful and very stimulating. Particularly noticeable developments were the inclusion of the sociogist John Hall in the group and the continuing successful integration of Chinese imperial history into the framework.
Adam Ziolkowski, Suraiya Faroqhi would invite Douglas Streusand to join them in a troika which would edit the papers from Rethymno combined with the frontier papers from Warsaw.
Ad 11.
a. Ebba Koch presented the almost finished programme for the Vienna meeting on Aspects of decline and resistance. A few suggestions were made and the organising committee promised to take them into account to the extent it was possible.
b. Jeroen Duindam presented options for the Utrecht meeting on Empire and Law: principles and practices.
- dates are set to 7-9th November 2008.
- various prospective themes and speakers were suggested and discussed. Jeroen would now discuss these further with his working group members and the core group to produce a programme for presentation at the next meeting.
Ad 12.
a. Kiss Balasz had expressed his satisfaction, at the general evaluation meeting in Vienna in June 2007, with the plan adopted in St. Andrews for the conclusion of the network.
b. Metin Kunt presented his views on the desirability of a training school for graduate students to help foster more comparative research. There was general agreement about this and it was decided to organise such a thing in connection with the concluding Rome conference and that it should start 3 days before the conference. Claire Sotinel declared her interest in assisting in the organisation and execution of this school, as did Giovanni Salmeri and Peter Bang.
c. Peter Bang informed about his contacts to the Danish Academy in Rome and its willingness to function as “anchor” for the concluding meeting. The MC accepted this offer.
Possibilities were also discussed for placing some of the activities of the Rome meeting at other institutions such as the Finish School, The British School or the L’école francaise to emphasise the co-operative nature of the action.
The dates were set to avoid clashing with Easter (both Orthodox and Catholic/Protestant): 24-26 April 2009.
d. Author pairs for comparative papers in Rome.
Confirmed:
Chris Bayly and Greg Woolf, Empire and Information
Ebba Koch and Peter Bang, Imperial Universalism
Giovanni Salmeri and Herve George Line: Empire and the Novel
Potential:
Jeroen Duindam and Metin Kunt, Empire and Courts
Suraiya Faroqhi considered Steven Mitchell as a possible partner for a paper on transport and imperial power; Claire Sotinel was also contemplating a paper.
It was agreed that MC members should continue to think about possible joint papers till the next meeting at Vienna (pairs did not have to be formed exclusively by MC members. One might also invite scholars from outside the MC to do a paper together, keeping in mind that authors should come from different fields so as to enable comparison).
In addition to these papers, Michael Mann had made a provisional promise to contribute in Rome. John Hall would also present a paper.
Ad 13. Publications:
Björn and Giovanni, in the pipe-line
Jeroen Duindam, Metin Kunt were progressing steadily with the court volume
Peter Bang and Chris Bayly had started editing the papers from Warsaw and Copenhagen, in that process Dariusz Kolodzjiek had joined Peter Bang in editing a set of papers on universalism.
Ad 14. Next meeting of the MC will be in Vienna 13 April 2008.