The research project:
Between Restoration and Revolution, National Constitutions and
Global Law: an Alternative View on the European Century 1815-
1914 (EReRe) at the University of Helsinki sponsored by the European Research Council directed by Bo Stråth and Martti Koskenniemi
advertises, under precondition of signing of final contract, up to six PhD or postdoc positions as researchers at the University of Helsinki for a period of up to three years beginning 1 September 2009.
The point of departure of the project is that a good part of the present deficit of legitimacy of European institutions emerges from a deeply a-historic view of Europe’s past. This view relies on teleological modernization and the globalization of human rights and democracy as the heart of the European heritage. There is an urgent need for a more realistic history that rejects such a one-sided view of Europe as a self-propelling project on steady march towards a predetermined goal. The fragility of European peace and progress needs to be highlighted. European modernity is not only a legacy of the revolution of 1789 but also of the authoritarian reaction of 1815. It is, we claim, a heritage built on a continuing tension between the two. The research project focuses on the century 1815-1914 as the ground on which the peace of 1945 and our present conception of Europe were built. It testifies at least as much to conflict and fragility as to progress. The century is traversed by a series of tensions in the political, cultural, social, economic and legal fields and struggles between the protagonists of different conceptions of European modernity.
The legal and political basis for a new European order established in the Vienna Treaty, called the European concert, opened an era that lasted until 1914. During this period, inter-state wars in Europe decreased, whereas the number of civil wars and European wars outside Europe increased. Neither the Revolution nor the reaction could gain a firm upper hand. The tensions were articulated in different geopolitical strategies, constitutional conceptions, prescriptions for economic efficiency and claims for social protection, and alternating views of the meaning of Europe. In one way or the other, they were also expressed in the interactive dynamics between politics and law, nationally as well as internationally. These dynamics were also visible in the permanent movement between search for and expectations of stability and experiences of fragility.
The aim is to explore the tensions in deep detail and on that basis provide a contribution to an alternative, more realistic, more varied historical view on Europe. How it developed was not the result of an intrinsic telos, but of contingent events and projects.
Applicants are invited to submit the outline (5-7 pp) of a research project under one of the three areas of investigation described in the project outline. A brief CV should be attached to the application. We envisage applicants with an interest in interdisciplinary methodological approaches, in particular in the fields of history, law, political theory and social theory. Residence in Helsinki is presumed for the period of employment contract.