FOR APAC Research Colloquium Talk
Friday, 15 December 2023, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
HS 888, Forum Asia Pacific, Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 18, Salzburg
Online: LINK
Meeting-ID: 396 539 523 494
Passcode: bcH7qc
Lecturer: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Tanja BÜHRER (Department of History, PLUS)
Topic: “The Age of Revolution from a South Asian Perspective, 1770-1815”
The decades straddling the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Century, which historians call the “age of revolutions”, traditionally encompass an Atlantic triangle of grand event. By looking to South Asia and the Indian Ocean, the intent is to shed light on the significance of events in this forgotten quarter of the globe at the time. Upon the French declaration of 1778 to fight Britain in the American Revolutionary War, Anglo-French rivalries in South Asia intensified as well and revolutionary rhetoric began to circulate. Indian rulers became interested in the theatres of war both in Europe and the Western Hemisphere and thus added to the globally connected interactions of different world regions. This paper aims to show how Indian, French, and British agents in the Indian Ocean used and interpreted global news to pursue their own interest. Far from being mere followers of what was crafted in the Atlantic, they created their own revolutionary or counter-revolutionary political agenda.
Tanja Bührer completed her PhD in 2008 at the University of Bern (Switzerland) on German colonial Security Policy and the German colonial armies. In 2019 she completed her Habilitation on Intercultural Diplomacy between South Asian powers and the French and British companies in the Age of Global Reforms and Revolutions, c. 1770-1815. She was awarde several Mobility Fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation to conduct her research in Germany, UK, France, Tanzania and India, where she was visiting fellow at internationally distinguished institutions such as the HU Berlin, the University of Oxford, the SOAS London, and the Jawaharlarl Nehru University. Before she joined the PLUS as Professor of Global History she was Visiting Professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (Lehrstuhlvertretung).
