Young Scholars Explore the 'Atlantic World'

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

At most academic conferences, senior scholars claim the lion's share of attention. Their papers are the ones people flock to hear. Their theories and opinions are the centers around which controversy swirls. Young scholars must content themselves with the role of acolyte.

But at a seminar at Harvard this past August the order of things was reversed. Young scholars held forth and debated while their elders served as facilitators.

"The International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800" took place from Aug. 17-28, the second in a series funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The topic for this year's gathering was "Ideas of Empire, Imperial Politics, and the Governance of Colonies: The European Powers in America."

The seminar was organized by Bernard Bailyn, the Adams University Professor Emeritus, whose works on American and early modern history have helped shape the concept of the Atlantic World, a sphere of political, economic, and cultural interactions involving the Western European and American peoples.

"The idea of the Atlantic World has an explanatory power which otherwise would not be available to historians," Bailyn said.

The authors of the papers were all advanced graduate students or recent Ph.D.'s. Together with young historians from American universities were participants from Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Brazil, Australia, and the Caribbean.

Bailyn said that bringing young scholars together was one of the chief aims of the seminar. The hope is to create an international community of historians familiar with approaches, archives, and intellectual traditions different from their own, and ultimately to further international understanding.

"There is a latent community of young historians, and a gathering like this helps to bring it out. Last year's seminar resulted in e-mail and other conversations that are still going on, and I believe that this one will do the same."

That community of historians began to form even as the seminar was taking place.

"It was unlike any conference I've ever been to," said Daniel Hulsebosch, a history graduate student at Harvard whose paper on constitutional thought in 18th-century New York was one of 32 presented. "It was really dynamic, sort of like a soccer match -- the ball was really bouncing around at times."

Hulsebosch not only enjoyed the daily sessions at which the group discussed two or three precirculated papers, he also relished the lively tabletalk when the historians gathered for dinner at Irving House, where most of the out-of-town participants were staying.

"There was a summer-camp quality to it. It was the way many of us hoped graduate school would be before we actually got there," Hulsebosch said.

Willem Klooster of Leiden, the Netherlands, a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History this year, who chaired one of the sessions at the seminar, agreed that this gathering of young historians would have a far-reaching impact.

"I believe that many of these young scholars will be in touch for the rest of their careers," he said.

Klooster was also impressed by the intellectual level of the seminar. "I thought that this year's discussions were even more interesting than last year's, which probably has to do with the nature of the topic. Governance ties into almost every aspect of colonialism."

The intellectual excitement that was generated this summer will continue on Nov. 15-16 when the Atlantic History Seminar will convene a special workshop to explore the research possibilities of an extensive German archive only recently made available to scholars.

The archives of the Lutheran Pietists in Halle, in the former East Germany, long neglected and withdrawn by the Communist regime, were opened to scholars in 1992. They contain letters, pamphlets, diaries, and other material sent back and forth between Pietist headquarters in Halle and the ministers, agents, and settlers who traveled to the New World and elsewhere, a correspondence that has been called a "global communication network."

The workshop, open to anyone interested in this aspect of Atlantic history, will feature talks by Thomas Müller, the head archivist at Halle, and by German and American historians who have used the archives in their research. For further information, please contact Pat Denault, administrator for the Atlantic History Seminar, fax: 496-8869; e-mail: atlantic@fas.harvard.edu.