Conference at the University of California in San Diego
Conveners: Hartmut Berghoff (GHI), Frank Biess (UCSD), Ulrike Strasser (UCSD)
While the transpacific networks and the cultural encounters of Asians have received a relatively high level of attention in recent years, especially in subjects like Pacific, Oceanic, Area or Colonial Studies, the German element in these transit regional exchanges has often been underestimated or overlooked. This holds especially true for research on the European presence in the early modern period when Germany's lack of formal colonies long seemed to obviate the need to look for Germans in this part of the world.
In recent years individual scholars have started to uncover the significant presence and influence of Germans in the Pacific since the late 17th century in the economic, cultural, educational, religious and academic or intellectual spheres: from early modern missionaries and merchants to modern entrepreneurs and Cold War strategists. They have also probed the ways in which the Pacific figured in the development of German thought about culture and national identity in relationship to a larger world. In addition, a growing number of works on the German colonialism in the Pacific have appeared.
This conference seeks to summarize the state-of-the-art of research so far and aims at developing a trans-disciplinary research agenda for the future. To capture the multi-faceted and multi-nodal connections between Germany and the Pacific, the conferences deliberately pushes the temporal frame beyond the period of colonial expansion, and investigates instead questions of continuities and discontinuities in the German presence abroad across the early modern/modern divide and into the 20th century. The conference also takes a very broad view of the Pacific. It seeks to illuminate the myriad of Pacific worlds that stretch from the different landmasses bordering the globe's largest ocean to the innumerable islands scattered across it and the spaces in between.