European Network in Early American History

This proposal will create a European network of early American history. It is designed to foster international collaboration between early Americanists throughout Europe. As such, it provides a multilateral European alternative for the practice of early American history - an increasingly international field - different from normal bilateral relationships between individual Europeanists and scholars and institutions in North America. It will provide a means whereby European early Americanists can share their work with other Europeanists without the expense and difficulty of presenting such work in America. Such a network will be of potentially great value to postgraduate students and to European scholars with limited resources who find it difficult to accommodate themselves to American intellectual patterns. It build on the successful establishment of an early American network within Britain (the British Group in Early American History), which has held annual conferences on North American history for over a decade. It also builds on the networks established in early American history (marked by the formation of a Scientific Committee on early American history) at the first European network on early American history held in Paris, December 2006. The principal aim of the European Network in Early American History is to establish fora where European scholars will meet to exchange ideas and do research. This is especially important at a time when European and American agendas in contemporary politics and in institutional assumptions are more divergent than for many years. The network will host biannual conferences at European venues (Venice 2008, Paris 2010, Spain/Portgual 2012, Germany 2014) where European scholars will present work to other European early Americanists and to scholars from North America. It will, through its Scientific Committee, serve as a clearing house for collaborative bids to European funding bodies and will serve as an institutional link with important stakeholders in Europe and in America (such as BGEAH and the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture). It will, under the auspices of the Virtual Research Group in Early Modern History at the University of Warwick, host bi monthly virtual meetings on early American history with European colleagues. It will provide opportunities for postgraduate students, both at biannual conferences and through research meetings in individual European countries, with opportunities to present their work to a diverse European group of scholars. Most importantly, the network will connect European scholars with developing early American scholarship that stresses the cosmopolitan origins of early American history. In this evolving scholarship, European early Americanists can play a vital part. They are well-placed to show, through researches in European archives and through increasing participation in a European as opposed to an American network of scholars, how a European perspective on early American history can complicate and enrich an early American scholarship that is increasingly focused on Atlantic rather than purely American links. By 2010 we aim to have a flourishing and self-sustaining network of European scholars interested in early American history that interacts with each other on a regular basis at networked events in varying locales throughout Europe. One feature of this network will be the wide variety of European countries that will be represented in the network. Key partners in the network are the University of Warwick, the University of Paris, the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture and the University of Cambridge, but it will extend beyond the well-established early American historical networks in Britain and France to include substantial representation from southern and eastern Europe. The activities of the network will be disseminated through a dedicated website for early American history in Europe.