The aim of the conference is to reflect more fully on the nature of certain conflicts – ethnic, socio-economic, religious – within so-called British Africa, while pursuing a threefold goal: to highlight their complex and composite nature; to reflect on the different attempts to resolve them; and to shed more light on both British foreign policy and the role of the Commonwealth as an instrument of transnational global governance. Focusing on reasons and modalities of the new British prominence in Africa, therefore, also represents an approach of studying the Commonwealth from an «outside in» perspective and the ways in which its modern structure developed.
Free entry.
Program
Panel I (15.00-18.30) – Institutional welcome
Luigi Bruti Liberati (Università Statale di Milano): “The British Empire, an historical perspective”
Philip Murphy (University of London): “The historical evolution of the Commonwealth till today”
Saul Dubow (Cambridge University): “The Commonwealth in Africa, a history of the commonwealth from the African perspective”
Jan Erk (Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique): “A Federal Casualty of the Journey from the Empire to the Commonwealth”
Discussant: Paolo Gheda (Università della Valle d’Aosta)
Panel II (09.00-12.30) Conflicts and Peace Processes in Divided Societies
Paolo Gheda (Università della Valle d’Aosta): “The role played by the Christian denominations in the process of design and implementation of the segregationist regime until the abolition of apartheid”
Mario Zamponi (Università di Bologna): “Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Nationalism, land reform and crisis in Commonwealth relationship”
Paolo Borruso (Università Cattolica di Milano): “The role played by the various Sierra Leonean religious confessions (Catholics, Protestants, Muslims) during the civil war and then, above all, in the long post-war negotiation phase”
Paolo Perri (Università della Valle d’Aosta): “A complex affair. The history of Anglo-Rwandan relations” Discussant: Saul Dubow (Cambridge University)
Panel III (15.00-18.30) Identity, Nations and Conflicts in British Africa
Richard Reid (University of Oxford): “The Uganda civil war and its relationships with the Commonwealth”
Maria Stella Rognoni (Università di Firenze): “The Nigerian mosaico within the Commonwealth”
Paola Pizzo (Università G. d’Annunzio di Chieti-Pescara): “The Anglo-Egyptian relations and the Commonwealth”
Carollann Braum (Institute of Commonwealth Studies): “A Case for Healing in Kenya through Litigating Colonial Era Claims in the UK”
Discussant: Philip Murphy (University of London)
Panel IV (9.00-12.30) The African battlefield
Pierluigi Valsecchi (Università di Pavia): “The European colonialism in Africa”
Mélanie Torrent (Université Picardie Jules Verne): “Franco-British Relations in Africa” (online)
Emanuele Ertola (Università di Siena): “The Italian colonialism”
Teodoro Tagliaferri (Università Federico II di Napoli): “The British colonialism”
Discussant: Maria Stella Rognoni (Università di Firenze)
Panel V (9.00-12.30) La Valle d’Aosta tra Gran Bretagna e Africa
Alessandro Celi (Fondation Emile Chanoux): “An ‘English’ Valley? British presences and Anglophiles in Valle d’Aosta between the 19th and 20th centuries”
Laura Grivon (Centre d’Etudes Abbé Trèves di Emarèse): “English travellers at the Great St. Bernard between 1815 and 1850”
Joseph Péaquin (Union de la Presse francophone, Aoste): “Au sud des montagnes, l’Afrique”: les Valdôtains en Afrique du sud »
Andrea Désandré (Historical Institute of the Resistance): “The United Kingdom and the Valle d’Aosta resistance”
Discussant: Paolo Perri (Università della Valle d’Aosta) Final Round Table
(15.00-18.30) Intelligence and Africa: the Cold War, the end of Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations
Philip Murphy (University of London) – Saul Dubow (Cambridge University) – Mario Caligiuri (Università della Calabria) – Paolo Gheda (Università della Valle d’Aosta).
Chair: Paolo Perri (Università della Valle d’Aosta)
Scientific Committee: Paolo Borruso, Saul Dubow, Paolo Gheda, Philip Murphy, Paolo Perri, Mario Zamponi.
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