Masterclass with Maartje Abbenhuis on diplomacy at war and peace after 1815

Beginning with a review of Maartje Abbenhuis’ own work on neutrality, internationalism and the The Hague conferences, this masterclass investigates the ways in which historians construct the history of international politics, the sources they use, the lenses of interpretation they prioritise and the methodologies they apply.

Questions to be addressed include: How do we account for power in international history? How do we assign relevance to concepts and ideas? How can we describe systemic developments ‘from above’ and ‘from below’? How do we account for the ‘power of the people’ in a field that is so often defined by the ‘power of the state’?

Maartje Abbenhuis is a historian of neutrality and internationalism, particularly in Europe in the period 1815 –1919. She is the recipient of two Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grants: one in 2004 for work on the borderlands of the Netherlands in the First World War, one in 2014 for her Hague conferences project. She is in the process of co-authoring two further books for Bloomsbury: The First Age of Globalisation: An International History 1815-1918 (with Gordon Morrell, forthcoming, 2019) and Global War, Global Catastrophe. Neutrals, Belligerents and the Transformation of the First World War (with Ismee Tames, forthcoming, 2020).

Location: Utrecht, Drift 23, room 2.07
Date: 13 May 2019, 13.00 – 17.00 hrs
Registration: send an email to Annejet Landman: bureau@onderzoekschoolpolitiekegeschiedenis.nl
Compensation: 1 ECTS, Open for PhD candidates and Research Master Students
Information: Erik de Lange, e.deLange@uu.nl