Current Conference

Research Network Military, War and Gender/Diversity (MKGD)

Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences (ZMSBw)

 together with the

University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften, Historisches Institut

Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Fachbereich Geschichte

 

First international MKGD-ZMSBw Conference

Gender and Violence in Colonial Wars, Colonial Rule and Anti-colonial Liberation Struggles

 

Thursday and Friday, January 30 and 31, 2025 

At the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences, Zeppelinstraße 127/128, 14471 Potsdam

 

Sponsors

The organizers would like to thank our sponsors

• the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences  (ZMSBw)
• the University of the Bundeswehr Munich
  
• Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Fachbereich Geschichte

 

Registration

A registration is necessary. A registration form you will find here

The conference fee for two days of catering is 25 EUR (coffee and lunch breaks). It has to be paid in cash with the registration on site.

For addresses and transportation, click here.

 

Aims of the Conference

The extreme violence in colonial wars and anti-colonial wars of liberation as well as the structural and actual practice of violence under colonial rule have received increased international academic attention in the last two decades. However, the gender dimension of the topic is still under-researched, although previous gender-historical research on colonial conflicts shows that gender is of considerable importance both as a methodological approach and as a subject of research.

Gender images constructed intersectionally in connection with social, ethnic and racial differences shaped and legitimized the spheres of action of men and women in the violent interactions of colonial conflicts. They significantly influenced the colonial invaders’ practices of violence and the colonized population’s experiences of violence. Native women in the colonies, for example, were particularly victims of sexual violence in its various forms, from forced prostitution and forced concubinage to rape. Native men were forced into forced labor by the colonial powers and recruited as colonial soldiers.

In colonial wars and anti-colonial wars of liberation, especially when they took the form of guerrilla wars, the distinction made in international laws of war—at least in theory—between soldiers and the civilian population was usually completely abolished. They were waged early on as “total” wars with systematic mass violence against the entire population to be colonized. Both colonial troops and the armed forces of anti-colonial liberation movements were dependent on the support and services of the civilian population, including women, during their campaigns. After victorious colonial conquests, the violence in the rule over the indigenous population continued in many ways. Both men and women in the imperial metropolises supported the belligerent politics of colonial conquest in a gender-specific way. Both genders were also actively involved in various ways in the uprisings and wars of liberation that fought against colonial oppression.

The aim of the first thematic conference of the newly founded MKGD research network is to comparatively examine the manifold violent interactions in colonial wars, colonial rule and anti-colonial liberation struggles with a focus on “gender”. In doing so, we want to look at both early modern and modern colonial conflicts up to the end of the Cold War and therefore include both: contextualized case studies and diachronic and synchronic comparisons.

 

Program

For the conference program click here

For a one-page flyer click here

For the abstracts and bios of the speakers click here

 

Thursday, January 30, 2025

9:00 – 9.30: Registration and Welcome Coffee

9:30 – 10:00: Welcome and Introduction

• Karen Hagemann (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, MKGD FV)
• Alaric Searle (Nundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences)
  
• Tanja Bührer (Paris Lodron University Salzburg, MKGD-FV)

10:00 – 11: 30:  Panel 1: Gender in Early Modern Colonialism

Moderation: Isabelle Deflers (University of the Bundeswehr Munich)

• Chechesh Kudachinova (Free University of Berlin)
  The
 Construction 
of
 Colonial
 Masculinities
 and
 Agency in
17th
 Century
 Siberia
• Marion Philip and Elodie Bascoul (University of Geneva)
  Studying Masculinities, Violence and Colonial Rule in the 18^th Century French Caribbean: Sources and Approaches

11:30 – 12:30: Lunch Break

12:30 – 14:30: Panel 2: Women in the Imperial and (Anti)Colonial Project

Moderation: Tanja Bührer (Paris Lodron University Salzburg)

• Carla Andreas Bauzá (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
  Enslaved and Free Women of African Descent in the Ten Years’ War in Cuba, 1868-1878
• Kirsty Campbell (University of the Bundeswehr Munich)
  More than just Kulturträgerin: The Role of German Women Settlers in the Colonial Violence in German South-west Africa,1884-1915
• Swati Guha (Institute of Language Studies and Research, Kolkata)
  Reformer or Perpetrator of Gender Crimes? British Colonial Rule in India and the Woman Question

14:30 – 15:00: Coffee Break

15:00 – 17:30: Panel 3: Men in the Imperial and (Anti)Colonial Project

Moderation: Christian Stachelbeck (ZMSBw)

• Marie Muschalek (University of Basel)
  Martial Violence, ‘Caring’ Violence: Colonial Masculinities in the Mounted Police of German South West Africa, 1905-1915
• Carl Deußen (University of Amsterdam)
  Sexuality and Sexual Violence in Imperial Ethnographic Collecting: The Case of German Anthropologist Wilhelm Joest
• Susie Protschky (Frer University of Amsterdam)
  Race and Soldiering Masculinities in Modern Dutch Colonial Wars in Indonesia
• Rachel McElroy White (University of Groningen)
  Soldier-Photographers’ Images of Violence during the Algerian War through the Lens of Military Masculinities

17:30 – 18:00:    Coffee Break

18:00 –  19:30: Keynote: Gender in Anticolonial Conflicts: The Example of the Algerian War

• Natalya Benkhaled-Vince (Oxford University)

Abstract: 

Like all wars, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) was highly gendered, and like all anti-colonial conflicts it was highly racialised, too. As part of their ‘hearts and minds’ strategy, the French army – and particularly women auxiliaries in the French army – sought to win over Algerian women by ‘emancipating’ them to become ‘modern’ French housewives. The sexualised violence of the ‘other’ was publicised by both sides as evidence of their enemy’s perverted masculinity. Those Algerian women who joined the rural guerrilla or planted bombs in urban areas prompted bemusement in the French and colonial press as they shattered Orientalist assumptions about Muslim women in public space and veiling practices. The debate about whether wars bring about shifts in hierarchies, power relations and the roles attributed to women and men – or not – is well established. In societies emerging from colonial wars, such questions were brought into even sharper focus. In this paper, I will revisit these discussions from the perspective of how the experience of participating in the War of Independence led to Algerian women recodifying ideas about male and female spaces, the ways in which citizenship was gendered and how they dealt with the fact that good nationalists could also be misogynist men. 

Bio: 

Natalya Benkhaled-Vince is Associate Professor in the History of France and the Francophone World at the University of Oxford and Sanderson Tutorial Fellow in Modern History at University College, Oxford. She is the author of Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 (‎Manchester University Press, 2015) and The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She is also co-producer of the film shorts series ‘Generation Independence’ on YouTube, which is part of a larger project she is currently working on about post-independence state- and nation-building in Algeria.

Moderation: Karen Hagemann (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

The keynote is open for the public, the participation is free of charge.

20:00: Conference Dinner (a registration is necessary)

 

Friday, January 31, 2025

9:30 – 11:30: Panel 4: Gender, Violence, and Resistance against Colonial Rule I

Moderation: Friederike Hartung (ZMSBw)

• Michael Rösser (University of Bamberg)
  Gender, War and Violence –Revisiting the Maji Maji War in German East Africa, 1905-1908
• Maria Tumiotto (University of Manchester)
  Bengali Women Activists In Revolutionary Nationalism (1930s): Practices and Narratives
• Paula Dahl (University of Hamburg)
  Women as Anticolonial Freedom Fighters in Algeria, 1940s-1960s

11:30 – 12:30:  Lunch Break

12:30 – 14:30: Panel 5: Gender, Violence, and Resistance against Colonial Rule II

Moderation: Frank Reichherzer (ZMSBw)

• Jonathan Verwey (University of Leiden)
  The Dutch Military Leadership’s Approach to Intimate Encounters and Sexual Violence by Dutch Soldiers during the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949
• Niels Boender (University of Edinburg)
  Insurgent Masculinities and the Return of Anti-Colonial Mau Mau Fighters in Kenya since 1956
• Sandra Lourenço (Universidade de Lisboa)
  Struggle, Resistance and Guerrilla: The case of East Timor under Indonesian Neo-colonial Rule in a Gender Perspective, 1975-1999

14:30 – 14:45: Coffee Break

14:45 – 16:30:  Panel 6: Recollecting and Presenting Colonial Rule and Anticolonial Resistance

Moderation: Anke Fischer-Kattner (University oft he Bundeswehr Munich)

• Silvan Niedermeier (University of Erfurt)
  Gender, Imperial Violence and Family Memory in Private Photo Albums of the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902
• Claudia Siebrecht (University of Sussex)
  The Testimony of Maria III: Sexual Violence and the Archival Grain, German South West Africa, 1906
• Carmen Letz (Université de Limoges / Pilecki Institut, Warszawa/Berlin)
  Women in German Southwest Africa: The Theme of Violence against Women in Historical Novels and Films

16:30 – 16:45: Coffee Break

16:45 – 17:45: Final Discussion with

• Birthe Kundrus (University of Hamburg)
• Alaric Searle (ZMSBw)

Moderation: Karen Hagemann (UNC Chapel Hill)

18:00-19:30: Meeting of the Research Network Military, War and Gender/Diversity (MKGD)

20:00: Joint Dinner in the Trattoria Toscana (A registration is necessary)

An online participation is unfortunately not possible.

Sponsors

The organizers would like to thank our sponsors

• the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences  (ZMSBw)
• the University of the Bundeswehr Munich
  
• Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Fachbereich Geschichte
  

Organizers

• Prof. Dr. Tanja Bührer (Paris Lodron University Salzburg)
• Prof. Dr. Isabelle Deflers (University of the Bundeswehr Munich)
• Prof. Dr. Karen Hagemann (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  
• Organizational assistant
  ZMSBw: Linus Birrel, Email: LinusBirrel@bundeswehr.org
  University of the Bundeswehr Munich: Daniel R. Bonenkamp, Email: daniel.rugerio@unibw.de

Conference Hotel: Kongresshotel Potsdam am Templiner See, Am Luftschiffhafen 1, 14471 Potsdam

If you have any questions, please contact the organisers at: mkgd.forschungsverbund@gmail.com.