Cost Action A36, Tributary Empires Compared
Minutes of MC meeting no: 5
Date and time: 1 April 2007
Meeting place and address: St. Andrews, Swallowgate 11
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
5. Requests for membership
6. Request for non-COST participation
7. Website news
8. STSM status, applications
9. Year Budget planning
10. Action evaluations
11. Progress report of working groups
- Tours-meeting
- Vienna-meeting
12. Long-term planning
- Extra-meeting to be decided
- Plan for the general continuous development of the network
13. Publications, annual report
14. Time and place of next meeting
15. AOB
Minutes
Ad 1) Peter Bang would prepare the minutes
Ad 2) The agenda was adopted.
Ad 3) Peter Bang went through the minutes from the last meeting, after which they were approved; and informed about the main purpose of the present meeting: to adopt a plan for the execution of the second half of activities in the network and to decide theme and venue for the penultimate working group meeting.
Ad 4) David Grønbæk informed about COST developments. He pointed to possible areas of contact with other COST actions, informed about the details in the new system of monitoring action progress. This also entailed transferring the daily administration of the grant from the COST office to the grant-holding institution which would normally be the University of the chair from the beginning of 2008. Peter Bang could inform that Copenhagen would be able to take over the administration of the grant money and he now had to work out an arrangement which could be presented to the MC by next meeting.
Ad 5) Peter Bang was authorised to invite professor Joseph Fradera, Barcelona, to join the network for Spain.
Ad 7) Balázs Kiss suggested that the collection of links on the home-page be expanded. Somehow the report from the working group meeting in Athens had fallen out, could the web-master please take care of correcting that.
Ad 8) Peter Bang had begun his STSM in Cambridge and work was going well.
4 applications had been submitted by graduate students: Corinna Forberg, Magdalena Jaetke, Barbara Karl , Elzbieta Szabat. They were all approved.
Jeroen Duindam was awarded an STSM to go to Istanbul to collaborate with Metin Kunt on editing the papers from the “Households and Courts” meeting.
Two further candidates for an STSM this year were brought up and it was therefore decided to include 8 STSM’s, of 2500 euros each, in the budget for this year.
Ad 9) On this basis the following budget was planned for 2007:
St. Andrews 16,000
University of Crete 25,000
8 STSM, of 2500 20,000
Book support 2,000
General Support 2,000
Total 65,000
Ad 10) This section was treated under 12.
Ad. 11)
Militarism: As announced before the meeting, Claire Sottinel had had to withdraw from the work due to illness. Instead, Antonios Anastasopoulos had kindly offered to host the meeting at the University of Crete in Rethymno, 2-4 November 2007. This offer was accepted with thanks by the MC.
The working group was in place, a draft programme had been drawn up. This was further discussed, suggestions made and invitations now had to be sent out immediately, so arrangements would be finalized by April-May.
Decline at Vienna:
11-13 April 2008 were selected as dates for the meeting.
The working group had begun working up a draft programme and expected to have a programme ready by the middle of the summer.
Ad. 12)
In accordance with the pre-circulated proposal it was decided to adopt “Empire and law: theories and practices” as the theme for the penultimate meeting of the network. Jeroen Duindam (presently Utrecht) was chosen as the local organiser. Greg Woolf, Peter Haldén and Metin Kunt would join him in the working group to work out a programme (together with the core group) to be presented at next MC-meeting.
The plan, circulated by the core group prior to the meeting, taking stock of the network after the mid-term conference, was discussed and then adopted. First half of our work had now been accomplished (key themes identified), the working groups had all met (one or more times) and the first part of the objective (cf. the Memorandum of understanding), namely establishing a continuously running dialogue between practitioners from separate fields, had been achieved. To take full advantage of the level of collaboration established, the working groups now had to be reshuffled to allow the network to move on to the next stage characterised by a more intense level of collaboration which should prepare the way for a number of twin-authored comparative papers for the concluding conference. On the basis of the themes treated by individual meetings, MC members should now begin thinking about possible collaborators for such papers (should not be from one’s own field). The partner should either be found in the management committee or among the wider membership of working groups. Suggestions of topics should be presented at next meeting in Rethymno, at the University of Crete. This will play a key role in achieving the objective of the Action to create new comparative history (cf. Memorandum of understanding).
Ad. 13)
a. Metin Kunt and Jeroen Duindam were working on the papers from Istanbul
b. Björn Forsén and Giovanni Salmeri were in the processes of editing the papers from the Athens meeting (publication expected at the end of the year).
c. Chris Bayly and Peter Bang were collecting and editing a set of papers from Warsaw and Copenhagen to present the main aspects of network activities (Confrontation of historiographies, historical sociology, comparative analyses, universalism. Work was progressing well).
d. Peter Bang was authorised already now to attempt to invite Michael Mann to participate at the concluding conference in spring 2009.
e. the annual progress report, pre-circulated, was passed.
Ad. 14) Next meeting, will be at the University of Crete, Rethymno, 4 November 2007.