This workshop is about making connections. We started wondering what could bring us together since our research interests may seem far away from one another. Pascale works on the spatial construction in anarchist thought in the late 19th century and Esther deals with expulsions of migrants in East Africa in the 1960s. Today’s readings and presentations made us think about our ways of conceptualizing Europe in a transnational perspective.

                While reading Raj and Saunier, we noticed (but did not have time to discuss) that the authors come from different traditions and display different perspectives. Saunier’s approach to transnational history remains more centered on Europe as he is trying to recast the narrative of European integration, whereas Kapil Raj’s background is in imperial science production. As a result, “Europe” occupies a crucial but slightly different place in both accounts. Saunier is interested in how Europe emerged as “the result of connected circulatory regimes, which have eventually crystallized into a construct that has received a growing attention in the modern age, where it became the object of dedicated political and cultural engineering”. Raj on the other hand convincingly shows that these circulatory regimes involved in the construction of something perceived as “European” such as science had ramifications extending well beyond the geographical unit of the European continent. However, both authors use the notions of circulation, exchange, and contact to break up the dichotomy between the West and the rest, the center and the periphery and the boundaries of national narratives.

                In our respective projects, the spectre of Europe looms large. In Esther’s work, non-European actors, such as the Ugandan government, are concerned with imperial populations, which they see as being a part of Europe (Indian minorities). Defining which groups belong to British imperial legacy becomes a key conflict between the former metropolis and the former colony. Imperial circulations of population come to an end with the rise of Ugandan nationalism, which generates a last and final movement of population, the expulsion of Indians from Uganda (1972). Pascale works on the collaboration between two anarchist-scientists, one from the center of Europe (France) and another from the periphery (Russia). Through their common political interest and their shared experience of exile and marginalisation, they debated political and scientific matters on eye level and created a common vision of the world. While Europe is still presented as the most “advanced” region of the globe, their knowledge of the extra-European world allows them to engage critically with imperialism and racism.

From the “outside”, extra-European spaces , as well as from the “inside”, the territoriality and idea of “Europe” seems to have been shaped by circulation of people and streams of thought that crossed national – and eventually continental – boundaries.

Esther Ginestet

Pascale Siegrist