Workshop, October 19-21, 2023; Penn State University, Department of History
Conference convener, Sophie De Schaepdrijver scd10@psu.edu
We tend to associate military occupations with World War II – and World War I with trenches and home fronts. Yet occupation regimes were a feature of World War I as well. Across Europe and beyond, from the Baltic to the Balkans and from the North Sea to Anatolia, invading armies set up structures of rule in conquered territory, and occupied populations faced a war of their own, different from the one experienced by their contemporaries on fronts or home fronts.
This workshop brings together experts on military occupation in the World War I era to examine how this dimension of the war sheds light on the social, cultural, economic, legal and military universe that made this war thinkable – and to reflect on how this war’s occupations fit into the global history of modern imperial rule.
Schedule
Participants
All meetings take place in the Department of History, Weaver Building Seminar Room 102.
Day 1: Thursday, October 19
Morning
9:30-10:30 Introduction (Sophie De Schaepdrijver)
Session 1
11:00-12:30 Russian Occupations
Peter Holquist (Russian occupations of Galicia and region)
Halit Dundar Akarca (Russian occupation of Anatolia)
Afternoon
Session 2
1:30 – 3:00 Centrals Occupations from 1915
Jesse Kauffmann (Centrals occupation of Poland)
Klāvs Zariņš (German occupation of the Baltic)
Session 3
3:30-5:00 Centrals Occupations in the second half of the war
David Hamlin (Centrals occupation of Romania)
Oksana Dudko (The German and Austro-Hungarian Occupations of Ukraine, 1918)
Day 2: Friday, October 20
Morning
Session 4
9:30-10:15 Italy
-Vanda Wilcox (Italy, occupier and occupied)
Session 5
10-30-12:00 Serbia / Macedonia
-Gwendal Piégais (Entente occupation of Serbia and Macedonia)
-Jovana Lazić Knežević (Centrals occupation of Serbia and Macedonia)
Afternoon
Session 6
1:15-2:45 The Western Front
-Sophie De Schaepdrijver (German occupation of Belgium)
-Emmanuel Debruyne (German occupation of France)
Session 7
3:15-5:00 General discussion I
Commentators Isabel Hull and Aviel Roshwald
Day 3: Saturday, October 21
Morning
Session 8
9:30-11:30 Summing Up: General Discussion II
Commentators Isabel Hull and Aviel Roshwald
11:30-12:00 workshop ends
“Marching into Warsaw, August 5, 1915.”
German military post-card (Feldpostkarte), City Archive Sigmaringen, Braun Papers, http://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/plink/?f=6-456919-1