Call for Papers: European Gentry and the Post-feudal Perspectives

The conference will take place in Warsaw at the Faculty of Modern Languages ​​at the University of Warsaw
(ul. Dobra 55) on 25-27 September 2024 in a hybrid format with possible online participation.

The vital and complex role of the landed gentry in the political, economic, and cultural history of Europe has been extensively researched, resulting in a wealth of literature. However, the question of how this role has been remembered since the dissolution of the gentry as a social class, and what the implications of this memory and legacy are for contemporary European societies, has only recently been addressed by sociologists, historians, and anthropologists.

The opening hypothesis of the conference is that post-feudal social structures, which were a consequence of the power dynamics between the gentry and peasants, can be examined through a perspective of the longue durée. The existence of landowners as a class was brought to an end by political decisions and revolutionary movements, or gradually transitioned into social and political systems based on more democratic principles. This led to various legacies from the past, modes of remembrance, and finally, legal and economic circumstances. These diverse trajectories serve as a reminder of the East-West dichotomy in Europe, as in Central and Eastern Europe the end of the gentry’s domination came with bloodshed and violence, as part of the making of the ‘Bloodlands’. However, our aim is to go beyond this dichotomy and see whether schemes other than East-West can be employed to understand the diversity of the gentry’s history in Europe.

The full Call for Papers is available on the ENRS website.

Deadline for submissions: 19 May 2024