The Engelsberg Seminar 2019
June 13th – 15th 2019 Engelsberg Ironworks, Sweden
In 1912 the American historian and political scientist Benjamin Franklin Shambaugh wrote:
‘Applied History views the past as a vast social laboratory in which experiments
in politics and human welfare are daily being set and tested on a most elaborate scale. Moreover, in this human laboratory the conditions are real conditions, the factors are real men and women, and the varied relations and combinations or conditions and factors are always those of real life […] To wisely use the results of all these experiments in efforts to solve the problems which confront each generation is to carry out a program of Applied History.’
Shambaugh, once a renowned scholar in America but largely forgotten today,
was convinced that we can learn from history. A child of his time, he had a strong belief in the progress of mankind and the scientific method. In his writings he also echoed Thucydides’ ideal of a history that could be ‘judged useful by those who will want to have a clear understanding of what happened – and, such is the human condition, will happen again at some time in the same or a similar pattern.’
In this seminar we will enter into Shambaugh’s ‘vast social laboratory’ of human experience and apply history to today’s pressing issues of international relations, geopolitics, and economics. We will start our seminar by examining the role of the individual in history and discuss human nature from both the perspective of evolutionary psychology and of ideology, as well as the history of ideas. Can the individual as historical actor overcome an inherited tribal instinct? And what role has western civilisation played in defining and refining human nature? We will continue by investigating the possibilities and pitfalls of using the past to understand the present. We will also ask ourselves what lessons Thucydides and the classical world can teach us regarding both democracy and international power competition.
On the second day we will turn our attention to problems of the Middle East and discuss how the long and short history of the region has shaped the present, and how historical analogies can map a way forward. We will then focus on the future of Europe and the role of three major European powers: Germany, France, and the UK. How can we best understand the present European crises? And what do we make of the rising populism in Europe?
The afternoon will be devoted to the question of continuity and discontinuity
in Russia and how to best deal with the Russians. We will also address how fake
history is today used to legitimise authoritarian regimes and what it means for
international relations. We will end the day by asking how we should understand capitalism and if we, by applying economic history, can cultivate and refine a system that has delivered historically unprecedented prosperity but also has its ills.
The Engelsberg seminar 2019 will conclude by looking at China and a new world order that is shaped by the past but changing in the present. Can an American-led world order be saved, and will the democratic system as we know it prevail? Time will tell.
Human Nature and the Individual in History
Maurizio Viroli
Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Lecture: Learning from the Past: Historic Examples and Civic Consciousness
Cory Clark
Assistant Professor of Social Psychology, Durham University
Lecture: Tribalism is Human Nature
Janne Haaland Matlary
Dr. Philos, DM, Professor, University of Oslo, Norwegian Defence University College
Lecture: The Greatness of European Civilisation: Defining and Refining Human Nature
Vernon Bogdanor
Professor, King’s College
Lecture: The Individual in History
Applying History
Fredrik Logevall
Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University
Lecture: The Uses and Misuses of the Past
Michael Burleigh
Engelsberg Chair at LSE IDEAS, London School of Economics
Lecture:Pitfalls and Perils of History and Politics
Erica Benner
Dr, Writer
Lecture: Democratic Crisis: Lessons from Ancient Athens
Graham Allison
Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Lecture: Applying History to US-China Relations Today
Middle East
Nathan Shachar
Journalist and Author
Lecture: Are We Really Someone Else?
Rob Johnson
Dr, Director of the Changing Character of War Centre, University of Oxford
Lecture: Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ on War
Brendan Simms
Professor, Forum on Geopolitics, University of Cambridge
Lecture: A Westphalia for the Middle East?
Emma Sky
Director, Yale World Fellows, Yale University
Lecture: In a Time of Monsters
Elisabeth Kendall
Senior Research Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Pembroke College, University of Oxford
Lecture: Making Sense of the Yemen War: Past, Present (& Future)
Europe
Josef Joffe
Dr, Editor, Publisher, Die Zeit
Lecture: Germany in Europe: The Engine That Couldn’t
Peter Ricketts
Lord, House of Lords
Lecture: Modern France and the Ghosts of the Past
Karin Svanborg-Sjövall
Director, Timbro
Lecture: Authoritarian Populism as an Ideology
Fraser Nelson
Editor, The Spectator
Lecture: Brexit for Europhiles
Russia
Gudrun Persson
Deputy Research Director, Swedish Defence Research Agency
Lecture: Russia: the Return of History
Andrew Monaghan
Director of Research on Russia and Northern European Defence and Security, Oxford Changing Character of War Centre
Lecture: How the Past Informs and Shapes Contemporary Russian Grand Strategy
Calder Walton
Dr, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Lecture: Spectre of the Cold War: Russian Disinformation, Past and Present
Christopher Coker
Professor, London School of Economics
Lecture: The Civilizational State and Fake History
Understanding Capitalism
Jesse Norman
Paymaster General and Financial Secretary to the Treasury
Lecture: Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why it Matters
Iain Martin
Columnist, The Times
Lecture: Make Capitalism Great Again
Niall Ferguson
Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Lecture: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Revisited
China
Jonathan Fenby
Author; Chairman, China Service, TS Lombard
Lecture: China: Return of the Empire
Rana Mitter
Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, University of Oxford
Lecture: How China’s History is Changing its Past: and Future
Yu Jie
Dr, Asia-Pacific Research Fellow, Chatham House
Lecture: Money, Might and Mindset: China’s Self-centred Global Ambition
World Order
John Bew
Professor of History and Foreign Policy, King’s College
Lecture: World Order: Many-headed Monster or Noble Pursuit?
Philip Bobbitt
Professor, Columbia Law School
Lecture: The Crisis of Democracy or The Crisis of the State
Kori Schake
Deputy Director-General, International Institute for Strategic Studies
Lecture:Saving the American-led World Order