The Association's work is coordinated by a Committee elected every two years, which finds the researchers needed for common projects. The conference topics are set one year before the event, and the conference is open to researchers from all countries. As the topics reveal, the Association wishes to enhance a wide range of research fields in urban history reflecting the present situation of history writing in the West. The six major sessions addressed a variety of larger issues such as The Social Position of Women in Towns; Foreigners and the Town, the European City and Energy; Leisure and Recreation in the European City; The Urban Neighbourhood; Myth and Reality and the European Small Town. The minor sessions were concerned either with more specific topics or with a particular aspect of a major session's topic, such as the Topography of Medieval Towns; Urban Taxation in the Middle Ages; Fortified and Military Towns; Agro-towns; Urban Crime; Cities of Central Europe in the 19th Century; Public Transport and Urban Space 1890-1939; Sanitary Policy in the 19th and 20th Centuries; Advertising and Urban Culture; Self-help and Cooperative Housing; Housing Policy in Comparative Perspective 1900-39, Healthy Cities; Preventive Medicine and Medical Care; Seaside Towns in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The title and the location of this year's conference indicates that the organizers wished to put cities in Eastern Europe as well as local urban research into the focus of interest for Western historians. Encouraging the integration of Eastern European historians also guided the selection of topics. Though in the end only 16 of the 130 speakers were from Eastern Europe, scholars from this region constituted a substantial proportion of the 300 participants. The choice of Budapest as the setting for the conference was also an acknowledgment of the research efforts in urban history concentrated in Hungary, underlined by the fact that eight of the speakers from Eastern Europe were Hungarian. The president of the conference was Vera Bácskai and the host was the Central European University. The British and the French delegations were the biggest followed by the German and the American ones.
It was with great sadness that the Committee commemorated the death of Bernard Lepetit, the president of the first conference, and of Herman Diederiks, one of the founding fathers of the Association, who both did a great deal to win general recognition for European urban history and whose contributions are now considered indispensible to history-writing in France and Germany.
The success of the workshops organized around the session topics proved once again that the town and the city provided an excellent unifying concept for integrating economic, social and cultural history, confirming the validity of urban history as a subdiscipline in modern historical research.
The small towns session concluded that investigating towns in an urban system illuminates the prevailing economic, social and cultural trends of the period. Papers in this session dealt with early modern and modern cities and towns, since the 16-19th centuries are considered as the period of the nation-state's birth and that of the formation of a new urban system related to it. Since it is hard to distinguish small towns from villages the definition of towns, and the general problem of classification were discussed in most of the papers. Carl A. Hoffmann proposed to reevaluate the period between 1600 and 1750 in Lombardia and Upper Bavaria, previously regarded as a time of de-urbanisation and decline. Recent research in the history of smaller towns suggests that whilst the significance of earlier centres-mainly middle towns - did indeed decrease in terms of prosperity, trade and population, this was accompanied by a levelling of wealth and urban functions amongst all the towns in the two regions, establishing the foundations of the modern urban system. Andrea Pühringer also talked about the standardising intentions of central authority in the context of town finances in Lower Austria. José Hernanz Elvira demonstrated the influence on a metropolis of bound or free means of production in the surrounding countryside, using London and Madrid as examples. Katrin Keller pointed out the significance of small-town schools in the formation of an urban identity in Saxony during the Enlightenment. Eastern European historians were able to find some parallels with their own region's troubles in Brian Graham's lecture about the birth of current conflicts in Northern Ireland in the late 19th century, which included an element of opposition between "urban" and "rural" in the forming of "Catholic and rural" Irish identity. (Gábor Sonkoly, using his analysis of towns in Transylvania, introduced a multivariate quantitative definition of the town special to the given region renewing older definitions based on a single factor. Jorgen Mikkelsen also challenged some traditions in history-writing, claiming that a competitive market economy had already developed in small Danish towns by the early modern period, prior to the 19th century. Hoffmann stressed the equal distribution of functions among small towns as opposed to the centralised model that only takes account of a few centres. The discussions delineated a possible common research direction concentrated around a complex definition of town and the analysis of the emergence of urban and regional identities.
The session on Foreigners and the Town centred on the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Several papers emphasized the significance of the immigrant's social status in historical analysis: artisans or travelling salesmen found less difficulty in settling in a new town, since they were regarded as mobile persons anyway; merchants, however, who were similarly mobile, had to face resistance because they threatened local interests and were often of a different ethnic background or religion. Researchers frequently referred to travel accounts, which simultaneously provide insights into the history of cities and the history of writing as mental activity.
The European City and Energy is a relatively new field. The participants in this group unanimously concurred that the organisation of the energy sources of a historical settlement is a product of economic, political and social factors and without the appreciation of all three of these components, the historian may well end up with a misguided interpretation of the past.
The work of the session entitled The Social Position of Women in Towns demonstrates clearly how far gender-specific studies have come from their generally politically biased beginnings under the influence of feminism in the Sixties and Seventies. They are now an integral part of research in economic and social history, enriching these fields with the novelty of their focus and particularly their approach. The establishment of this school of thought in Hungary, demonstrated by the fact that three of the ten speakers in this session were Hungarian (Andrea Petô, Katalin G. Szende, Susan Zimmerman) is to be applauded. Older historical studies, which tended to ignore women (often a majority in historical towns) or classify them as "neutral inhabitants" (G. Szende), missed out on many points of social structure, domestic life and the role of individuals (men as well as women) in social interactions. The studies presented here applied prosography and combined quantitative and qualitative approaches to classical sources such as testaments, marriage certificates, birth certificates and town by-laws to obtain fresh insights.
The Urban Neighbourhood: Myth or Reality session gave rise to the most intense specialist debate, ironically summarised by P. Cornfield as follows: "At earlier conferences we were debating about the definition of town, now we are debating about what a neigbourhood is." In a more serious vein, urban neighbourhoods, which are difficult to define because of their combined topographical and social characteristics, are one of the most dynamic research areas in urban history. At the center of the debate is how the neighbourhood evolves through the modern period and whether it is ultimately a topographical or an affective entity, as Vanessa Harding asks in her study of London parishes in the early modern period. Appreciating the complexities of this concept, the majority of speakers approached it from an angle that accounted for its continually changing physical and social boundaries. Perhaps the best example for this is provided by David Garrioch's comparison of the parishes in 18th century Milan and Paris, which concludes that the underlying reasons for the differences in the social functions of the parishes are the differences in the workings of the neighbourhoods themselves.
The lectures on Leisure and Recreation in the European City deserve special attention, since today's urban structures are directly influenced by the 19th and 20th century factors that they investigated. One of the two main themes in this area is city tourism, as seen through guidebooks, which provide valuable insight into the self-representation of cities and their stereotypical image in the mind of the general public. The other theme traces the relationship of leisure time through the ages to urban society and the topography of the town itself.
A good indication of the regional differences in research is that while the speakers in the session on Seaside Towns in the 19th Century were all from Britain, the speakers in the Agro-towns group were all Hungarians (Gyula Benda, György Tóth István, Béla Pálmány). Regrettably, no study was presented on Eastern (non-Central) European cities, despite the title of the conference. Gerhard Feld's lecture in the workshop titled Cities of Central Europe in the 19th century examined the interaction between spontaneous urbanisation and the pre-planned effects of central authorities. The Hungarian speaker Gábor Czoch talked about the evolution of the town concept and its representation in 19th century Hungary. Liljana Marks from Croatia struck a similar note, investigating the history of the image of Zagreb in oral history. The Romanian architect Araia Agachi presented the development plans of Kolozsvár drawn up in the late 19th century.
In their current state of path-searching and conscious experimentation, historical studies demand intensive and regular opportunities for scholars to share their results. Urban historians will next meet to continue their dialogues in Venice, in 1998.
Gábor Czoch - Gábor Sonkoly
As a start, a two-day workshop was organised. Dedicated to the memory of Erik Fügedi it opened on 18 October 1996 with a commemoration of this most distinguished researcher of medieval nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary by Szabolcs de Vajay (Vevey, Switzerland, visiting professor at CEU). Papers were presented by Pál Engel, Janusz Bieniak, John Klassen, John Freed, Martin Aurell and Joseph Morsel. Pál Engel (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) in "What we would like to know about medieval nobility in Hungary" gave a critical overview of Fügedi's book on the Elefánthy kindred and pointed to differences between it and his own investigation - based on a record of noble households in the medieval County Ung - of the development of medieval Hungarian nobility in the late Middle Ages. Janusz Bieniak (University of Torun´, Poland), leading Polish genealogist, spoke about "Possibilities and tasks facing Polish genealogists-medievalists", emphasising new perspectives for genealogical research in Poland and the importance of a critical reassesment of the sources. John Klassen (Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada) presented a case-study of the public and private aspects of the life of a medieval Czech magnate with "The public and domestic faces of Ulrich of Rozÿmberk (1403-1462)". John Freed (Illinois State University, Normal IL., USA) used the twelfth-century Codex Falkensteinensis to analyse the importance of noble self-representation in preserving their independence from both the dukes of Austria and Bavaria. Martin Aurell (University of Poitiers, France) in his "Later medieval nobility in Western Europe. Bibliographical approach" described the process of formation of the medieval aristocracy as an institution (ordo) and relation between it and the crown. Joseph Morsel (University of Paris I, France) in his paper "Zur sozialen Konstruktion des Adels: Franken im späten Mittelalter" analysed the process of the corporate formation of nobility in medieval Franconia. Additionally, participants from Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia discussed the possible avenues of research and worked out a "questionnaire" on the topics to be addressed in the single projects.
In the first round seven proposals arrived and will begin to be pursued (financed by CEU Research Grant) in January 1997. The first results and the proposals for further research are to be presented at the Third Medieval Congress at Leeds (U.K.) in July, 1997.
For information contact:
Dr János M. Bak or project coordinator
Damir Karbic ´,
Central European University, Dept. of Medieval
Studies
P.O. Box 1082
1245 Budapest
(location: Budapest V., Nádor u.
9)
Tel.: (36-1) 327 3046; Fax: (36-1) 327-3055,
E-mail:
bakjan@ceu.hu
or:
karbic@picasso.ceu.hu
.
The conference, held between 30 October and 3 November 1996 in the village of Dunabogdány, under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was an attempt to invigorate the latter tradition.
The theme was the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. From the Fifties to his death in 1989, Sellars had been one of the key figures in American philosophy. His ideas are now enjoying something of a revival. Amongst contemporary philosophers of the Anglo-American, analytical school, it was probably Sellars who had the greatest influence on Hungarian philosophy, thanks to György Márkus, the first philosopher of this kind in the country, who in the Sixties studied with Sellars for a year.
The philosophy of Sellars is a complex synthesis of seemingly incompatible notions - of empiricism and rationalism, of epistemological realism and epistemological idealism, and indeed of approaches characteristic of the philosophy of science on the one hand and of Lebensphilosophie (existentialism plus hermeneutics) on the other, including morals and cognition, goodness (virtue? ethically correct behavior) and rationality.
Sellars' is a Kantian synthesis between epistemology and ethics. In his view, the intentions of the members of a community can differ from each other in innumerable ways. But some intentions are necessarily held in common, and those that are relevant from a moral point of view are exactly of this kind. In a certain sense they constitute the community. It is logically impossible that there should be a difference of opinion concerning morals insoluble in principle between members of the same community. In particular, there can be no doubt for members of a community that it is unconditionally reasonable to maximize the welfare of that community.
The conference was actually a seminar on Sellars's major essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". What this essay has shown is that even our most immediately given notions pertaining to the nature of sense perception and to the inner-mental scene of thinking in the last analysis derive from external, public, communicational habits. Given the present-day radical changes of the communicational environment this Sellarsian approach is, once again, timely. Indeed, these changes today again increase the significance of that conceptual-linguistic creativity which is the specific task of philosophy.
Participants from abroad were Bruce Aune, Kevin Falvey, Dale Jacquette, Keith Lehrer, Joseph Pitt, Jay Rosenberg, Johanna Seibt, David Stern, Joseph Tolliver, Timm Triplett and Willem deVries from the U.S.A.; Johannes Brandl from Austria and Josef Bremer from Poland.
Holding an international academic event in a village such as Dunabogdány might seem surprising at first, but it is not without precedent. Dunabogdány hosted two similar meetings in 1995, entitled Politics and Philosophy of Electronic Networking - Austrian and Hungarian Approaches and Experiences; and Philosophy of Religion in the Years of Transformation - The Intellectual State of the Hungarian Churches. There was an additional reason for holding the present philosophy conference in Dunabogdány: Kristóf Nyíri, head of the Institute of Philosophy, who organised it, lives in the village.
Earlier conferences had dealt with the archeology and the diplomatic sources of the age and with the ethnographical and linguistic evidence. Some aspects are listed below, primarily following the train of thought of Professor György Györffy, the leading Hungarian authority on the period.
Pollen analysis has thrown much light on a major drought which had considerable influence worldwide on migrations and the state of civilisations generally. It was one of the effects of this drought that the Hungarian tribes invading the Carpathian Basin found large areas which were sparsely populated or completely depopulated. This made it easier to overcome minimal resistance and to establish permanent settlements. Other historians, thanks to meticulous research, were able to establish where and how the iron was produced which was such an important infrastructural element of the successful raids for booty in which the Hungarians engaged. Professor Szabolcs de Vajay, an authority on the subject, provided new details, suggesting that there was much more logistic work than had previously been supposed in the way these raids were carried out.
Hungarian physical anthropologists have created two major groups of the Conquerors on the basis of their anatomical characteristics. The grave furnishings of these two groups also differ. It can be presumed that the Kabar tribes, whose economy was mixed, did not chose the same areas for settlement as the stock-raising Magyars. A recently found Arab source dated 943 containing a list of the names of the leaders allowed conclusions to be drawn that are of relevance to the dispute between Professor Györffy and Professor Gyula Kristó, that is the "Szeged school". This concerns demographic and organisational issues. The two schools now differ less than they used to, and both accept that the process of political organisation, that is the creation of a state, did not start with Prince Géza. A nomad state of the steppes probably started to take shape in the second half of the 9th century when the Magyar tribal federation subjected the Kabar tribal federation to its rule.
Gábor Kronstein