University of Heidelberg

Milinda Banerjee's project is entitled  "Nationising Kings: Modern Indian Discourses on Kingship as the Basis of Nationhood, 1858-1947" (with a primary focus on Bengal). Normally one thinks of the dynasty and the nation as opposed entities. The king-subject relation appears to be the polar opposite of the nation-citizen relation. By focussing on modern India, and particularly on Bengal (1858-1947), Banerjee would like to show that the citizen and the king, the ideology of the nation and the ideology of the dynasty, are quite often symbiotically related. It will be argued that nationalists in India used regal-dynastic ideologies quite effectively to challenge the colonial British state. The king, who was sometimes an ancient historical king, and sometimes a messianic monarch, haunted Indian nationalist discourse in the late nineteenth century as well as in the era of Gandhian nationalism.  

In her project “Between dynasty and nation: nationalist popular discourse in China before the revolution“ (current working title), Ulrike Büchsel examines how the perception of the Manchu Qing as a dynasty changed due to the influence of foreign imperialism and nationalism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. She focuses on the period of the “New Policy“ - Reforms (xinzheng) in the first decade of the 20th century, and discusses the content of both the official nationbuilding project and of popular nationalist discourse with regard to the relation between dynasty and nation.   

In her project “Die Geburt des Thronfolgers - Symbolische Kommunikation zwischen Dynastie und Nation in Frankreich” (“The Birth of the Heir to the Throne – Symbolic Communication between Dynasty and Nation in France and Great Britain”, current working title) Verena Gander focuses on the birth of the dauphin as an important moment for the French dynasty, and its relation to the nation. She studies the large field of “symbolic communication” and analyses whether or not these forms of symbolic communication contributed and/or failed in establishing and maintaining political and social order. 

Julia Schneider, who is writing her Ph.D. on The Sinicization Concept: The “Chinese Assimilative Power” and Chinese Historiography (current working title) at Ghent University, is an external member of A5. In her research project she investigates the development and the spread of the sinicization concept in Chinese historiography of late Imperial and Republican China (1890s–1949) in connection with Chinese nation-building. The sinicization concept claims that as a result of the cultural superiority of the Chinese, non-Chinese ethnic groups in East Asia inevitably assimilated to the Chinese people and culture when they come into close contact to the point of being undistinguishable. Thus, the concept seemingly formed a handy strategy to integrate non-Chinese people into a Chinese nation-state.  

Élise Wintz' project "Two Dynasties, One Territory: English and French Dynasties in 15th Century Normandy (current working title)"  focuses on questions related to 15th century Normandy, and analyses and compares the English and French dynasties' justification of their power over the duchy. Moreover, she will study the two dynasties' administrative practices and their discourses, which can be seen as a tool of dynastic communication, in Normandy as well as in their respective countries.