Statement on violations of presidential records act (February 2022)
Along with 13 other organizations FEEGI has cosigned a statement from the AHA “condemn[ing] in the strongest terms former President Donald J. Trump’s reported extensive and repeated violations of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 ... These acts of destruction and noncompliance with the Presidential Records Act demonstrate blatant contempt for both the rule of law and the principles of transparency and accountability that constitute the bedrock of our nation’s democracy."
Read the full statement here.
Read the full statement here.
Statement on Threats to Historical Integrity in Texas (july 2021)
FEEGI has cosigned an AHA statement on the recently-enacted Texas House Bill 3979. The American Historical Association and the 23 cosigners view "with alarm several provisions” in the so-called “divisive concepts” legislation, including those affecting state institutions that present history to the public. “By hindering the professional development of public historians and restricting funding,” the statement says, “this law would prevent state-owned agencies and facilities from presenting accurate views of Texas history, and would hobble fundraising efforts crucial to the vibrant state-sponsored public-history sector.” The legislation “clearly violates” the AHA’s Standards for Museum Exhibits Dealing with Historical Subjects and “will adversely affect not only K–12 students, but all Texans and visitors who want to learn more about the state's complicated past.”
Read the full statement here.
Read the full statement here.
Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism in American History (June 2021)
Along with 89 other organizations FEEGI has cosigned a joint statement stating “firm opposition” to legislation, introduced in at least 20 states, that would restrict the discussion of “divisive concepts” in public education institutions. “The clear goal of these efforts is to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States,” the statement explains. Education proceeds from exploration, facts, and civil debate. “These legislative efforts,” on the other hand, “seek to substitute political mandates for the considered judgment of professional educators, hindering students’ ability to learn and engage in critical thinking across differences and disagreements. . . . Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today.”
Read the full statement here.
Read the full statement here.
Statement on Violence against Asians and Asian Americans (March 2021)
FEEGI has cosigned a statement from the American Historical Association deploring the recent incidents of violence and harassment aimed at Asians and Asian Americans. “This hostility against particular groups because of their ethnic origins—expressed via cultural stereotypes, scapegoating, physical aggression, and bloodshed—has deep roots in our nation’s past,” the AHA writes. “The murder in Atlanta of eight people on March 16, including six women of Asian descent, suggests that we have not transcended this history.” From 2019 to 2020, the number of hate crimes committed in the United States against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders increased by 150 percent. “The racialized misogyny explicit in the Atlanta killings is the product of generations-long stereotyping and cultural denigration against Asian American women in particular.”
Read the full statement here.
Read the full statement here.
Ransacking Democracy (January 2021)
Along with 44 other organizations FEEGI has cosigned the American Historical Association's statement condemning “the actions of those who, on January 6, stormed the United States Capitol, the seat of the nation’s legislature, the heart of its democratic form of governance.”
Read the full statement here.
Read the full statement here.
FEEGI'S NEW NAME
At our recent biennial meeting in St. Louis (February 14-15, 2020), we approved the new name for FEEGI. We are now the Forum on Early-Modern Empires and Global Interactions. This decision was made to do away with our previous name's inclusion of “European Expansion” to better reflect the work that we do and the assumptions that underlie that work.
The logic behind the change is relatively simple. Many of FEEGI’s original organizers felt strongly that the organization should promote the idea that European Expansion was the main driver behind the global transformation of this era, and they named the organization accordingly. See the remembrance of co-founder George Winius on our website, written by Norman Fiering, for that viewpoint. At that initial planning meeting, some participants questioned the adequacy of the name to cover the history FEEGI explores, and opposition to it has grown since. We now find that some prospective participants are confused if not put off by the former name, and sometimes even choose not to become involved in FEEGI, having concluded their work is not in keeping with the organization’s bent. The name change better reflects the foci of our meetings and the rich and wide-ranging conversations that we host there.
The logic behind the change is relatively simple. Many of FEEGI’s original organizers felt strongly that the organization should promote the idea that European Expansion was the main driver behind the global transformation of this era, and they named the organization accordingly. See the remembrance of co-founder George Winius on our website, written by Norman Fiering, for that viewpoint. At that initial planning meeting, some participants questioned the adequacy of the name to cover the history FEEGI explores, and opposition to it has grown since. We now find that some prospective participants are confused if not put off by the former name, and sometimes even choose not to become involved in FEEGI, having concluded their work is not in keeping with the organization’s bent. The name change better reflects the foci of our meetings and the rich and wide-ranging conversations that we host there.
NEWS OF MEMBERS
Erica Heinsen-Roach has published the monograph Consuls and Captives: Dutch-North African Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean with University of Rochester Press.
Wim Klooster has been appointed Robert H. and Virginia N. Scotland Endowed Chair in History and International Relations at Clark University.
Karen Kupperman has published two books with NYU Press this year, the monograph Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia and a new edition of Henry Spelman's Relation of Virginia: A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and Patawomecks. This edition is the first from the original manuscript to be published since 1872.
Peter Mancall is the 2019-20 Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford University.
Laura Mitchell is Vice-President and President Elect of the World History Association.
Carla Pestana has been elected to a three-year term on the AHA Nominating Committee (2020-22).
Gabriel Rocha's essay, "Maroons in the Montes: Toward a Political Ecology of Marronage in the Sixteenth-Century Caribbean” has appeared in the collected volume Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies, edited by Cassander Smith, Nicholas Jones, and Miles Grier and published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Matt Romaniello has published the monograph Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia with Cambridge University Press, and has been named the new editor of The Journal of World History.
Rebecca Shumway's article “The Shared Legacy: Atlantic Dimensions of Gold Coast (Ghana) History in the Nineteenth Century” has appeared in Ghana Studies, volume 21.
Molly Warsh’s American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire 1492-1700 was published through the Omohundro Institute at UNC Press.
Wim Klooster has been appointed Robert H. and Virginia N. Scotland Endowed Chair in History and International Relations at Clark University.
Karen Kupperman has published two books with NYU Press this year, the monograph Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia and a new edition of Henry Spelman's Relation of Virginia: A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and Patawomecks. This edition is the first from the original manuscript to be published since 1872.
Peter Mancall is the 2019-20 Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford University.
Laura Mitchell is Vice-President and President Elect of the World History Association.
Carla Pestana has been elected to a three-year term on the AHA Nominating Committee (2020-22).
Gabriel Rocha's essay, "Maroons in the Montes: Toward a Political Ecology of Marronage in the Sixteenth-Century Caribbean” has appeared in the collected volume Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies, edited by Cassander Smith, Nicholas Jones, and Miles Grier and published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Matt Romaniello has published the monograph Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia with Cambridge University Press, and has been named the new editor of The Journal of World History.
Rebecca Shumway's article “The Shared Legacy: Atlantic Dimensions of Gold Coast (Ghana) History in the Nineteenth Century” has appeared in Ghana Studies, volume 21.
Molly Warsh’s American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire 1492-1700 was published through the Omohundro Institute at UNC Press.
IN MEMORIAM
George Winius (1928-2018), founding member and first president of FEEGI, died in June in Gainesville, Florida. He taught Iberian history at the University of Florida, as well as at the University of Leiden and at Brown University. He authored The fatal history of Portuguese Ceylon: Transition to Dutch rule (1971); Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 (1971); Merchant Warrior Pacified, with Markus Vink (1991); Portugal the Pathfinder: Journeys from the Medieval Toward the Modern World, 1300-1600 (1995); as well as a memoir of his childhood.
To acknowledge his contribution to the genesis of FEEGI, we asked Norman Fiering, Director and Librarian, Emeritus, of the John Carter Brown Library, to write a remembrance available here.
To acknowledge his contribution to the genesis of FEEGI, we asked Norman Fiering, Director and Librarian, Emeritus, of the John Carter Brown Library, to write a remembrance available here.