Imagining the Revolution: Cultural Transfers and Reinterpretations of 19th-Century Revolutionary Experiences in Europe

The conference aims to examine the concepts and representations of various kind of 19th-century revolutions, uprisings, rebellions, upheavals, struggles for freedom or independence and civil wars within an international comparative context. The period under consideration is the “short” 19th century, i.e. the decades between the aftermath of the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the Paris Commune (1871). The conference welcomes contemporary and retrospective interpretations and re-interpretations of revolutions occurred during the above given time-span across various domains, including historiography, education, propaganda, visual culture and literature of the broadest sense. The geographical focus encompasses Europe, with an emphasis on cultural transfer processes across the Atlantic. This cultural exchange can be intriguing in both directions. For instance, the Western European and Atlantic interpretations and receptions on the Eastern part of the continent are significant, as evidenced by the English cultural reaction to the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) and the North American to the Hungarian War of Independence (1848–49). Conversely, it is essential to examine the reception of Western European influences in the Eastern regions, particularly those of the French Revolution of July 1830 and the Belgian Revolution. Nevertheless, the period in question saw the Central- and Eastern European semi-peripheries of the Western world functioning not as mere recipients of cultural transfers from the West, but often as sources of these transfers, including both ideas and individuals (as the well-known historical role of Hungarian and Polish freedom fighters in exile demonstrates it clearly).

The conference aims to focus primarily on the ideological, myth-creating and markedly re-interpretative endeavours and representations of revolutionary events rather than the strictly historiographical efforts to reconstructing the events themselves “as they actually happened”. As it is widely known, an abundance of interpretations of revolutionary events that occurred in the 19th century were produced as a result of the formation of contemporary national mythology and the ideological repercussions of those interpretations. These historical patterns were then repeatedly utilised, typically, but not exclusively, by the totalitarian dictatorships that ruled Eastern and Central Europe during the 20th century, just as much as they were embraced by the anti-totalitarian movements, which often turned revolutionary themselves, too. Finally, the accounts of historical actors regarding their actions are equally significant as their contemporary representations and interpretations, along with the propagandistic, collective memory, and canon-forming efforts of later generations to establish historical continuity or discontinuity.

Keynote speaker to be confirmed.

The exact date is to be confirmed.

The conference will be held sometime in late October or early November 2025.