Paper short abstract:

Contrary to later official recollections, until the US changed its course and earnestly engaged in the Antarctic Treaty talks, the UK played a precursory role in presenting the internationalisation of Antarctica as a solution for both its colonial heritage and Cold War challenges.

Paper long abstract:

In 1970 Paul Daniel, former special adviser on Antarctica to State Secretary Dulles, ascribed to the US Government the initiative of calling countries active in Polar research during the International Geophysical Year to verify the possibility of an international agreement on Antarctica. Contrary to such claims, the analysis of the decision-making process in Whitehall shows a different picture. Confronted with the urgings of a spendthrift Treasury, the departments more directly involved - namely the Lord President of the Council for science policy and the Foreign Office – early developed the idea of making the most of scientific internationalism to solve three interconnected issues. In the domestic realm, finding a way out from the competing scientific agendas of biologist Colin Bertram, director of the Scott Polar Institute, and geologist James Wordie, former director of the Scott institute and influent member of the British National Committee to the IGY, both being able to appeal to political discourse of national prestige and interest to attract money. At the international level, the older issue of supporting by Antarctic scientific activities a British territorial claim which overlapped with the ones by Argentina and Chile was now compounded with the anxiety for Soviet presence in Antarctica and possible reactions by the US. An international administrative authority, which would freeze the status quo and guarantee the prosecution of scientific cooperation, could let the UK to save money and a measure of control on Soviet activities, while avoiding the extension of the Cold War to the Southern Continent.

Paper short abstract:

Many narratives about the production of knowledge address specific national contexts. Deliberately comparative approaches—transnational history embracing multiple perspectives, co-written by several scholars—have great promise in exploring national security, colonization, conservation, and more.

Paper long abstract:

How can we best narrate the history of recent science? In his classic 1992 essay, historian Bill Cronon declared that “narrative is the chief literary form that tries to find meaning in an overwhelmingly crowded and disordered chronological reality” and “is fundamental to the way we humans organize our experiences” (Cronon, “A Place for Stories,” J. Amer. Hist. 78, 4 (1992): 1347-1376). This approach has allowed individual historians to communicate key insights about the production of knowledge and its cultural influences, often within specific national contexts. But what approaches can enhance our understanding of scientific developments that take place within global contexts, where key developments and insights occur at the intersection of what would otherwise be narrow national narratives?

Historians in the “Colony, Empire, Environment” team—supported by the European Science Foundation’s bold 2006 initiative “BOREAS—Histories from the North” initiative—faced this challenge as its nine members sought to create “a comparative international history of changing conceptions of the Arctic landscape during the twentieth century.” What could Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Danish, Canadian, and U.S. scholars learn while exploring changing conceptions of military patronage and national security, colonization and nature conservation, indigenous knowledge, and Western science?

Our team ultimately published co-written articles in a special edition of the Journal of Historical Geography deliberately embracing comparative approaches—what John V. Pickstone called constructive histories building “upon multiple perspectives” and C.A. Bayly et al and A. Iriye termed “transnational history” (Doel/Wråkberg/Zeller, “Introduction,” JHG 2014, n. 22). This paper extends our discussions.

Paper short abstract:

In what ways can scholars address large undertakings in the environmental sciences—involving multiple national actors and developments? Do ‘Big science’ undertakings demand ‘big history’ approaches? This round-table discussion explores he production of knowledge in broadest terms.

Paper long abstract:

How can scholars approach the histories of large global-spanning projects, and analyze research undertakings that involved dozens of nations, including the International Polar Year II (1932-33) and the International Geophysical Year (1957-58), which ultimately gained participants from sixty-six nations? How to understand trends and developments occurring at the same time in several distinct nations? Recently historians have argued that the ‘lone wolf’ approach to writing history may not be enough to meet the challenge of interpreting major developments—including in the environmental sciences. Collaboration can become “a means to producing knowledge that would otherwise never happen.” What models for such scholarship exist; what can be achieved? This round-table (including researchers who have pursued these approaches) will explore this issue broadly and welcome ideas and experiences from audience members.

Paper short abstract:

The high-arctic islands of Svalbard are used as a case to demonstrate the need for comparative historical research into the ways scientific communities have influenced national as well as the international agenda of polar matters over the last centuries

Paper long abstract:

Since the 18th century colonial and sea-route oriented polar exploration has been informed by natural sciences and ethnographic scholarship. In the following century agitation appeared to coordinate Arctic research among states. This led to a series of multilateral endeavors called the Polar Years, with the first one undertaken in 1882-83 and the latest one in 2007-08.

In the negotiations around WWI, on the legal status and land uses on the then uninhabited terra communis of the Svalbard archipelago, scientists and pioneers of the environmental movement including Hugo Conwentz, played important roles. So did scientists from several of the nations engaged in the Spitsbergen negotiations in Oslo and Paris. Environmental and political agendas alike were presented by scientists, acting as advisors as well as lobbyists and de facto diplomats. This pattern showed continuity in the establishment of the Antarctic Treaty in the 1950s. It is a legacy that largely remains to be studied historically, including the 1996 establishment and activities of the Arctic Council.

Science diplomacy is at work in Arctic and Antarctic governance while the Western colonial heritage is identified as an obstacle by many representatives of emerging world economies. Indigenous peoples’ representatives articulate the need for post-colonial revisions of the hegemonic relation of science to traditional knowledge and livelihood in the Arctic.

International comparative projects can contribute insights into the ways scientific communities have steered agreements on polar matters, and their continuing role as advisor on national military and economic interests.

Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses efforts in science diplomacy and conflicts around international research in the Barents Sea. It compares two case-studies: mid-1920s cooperation between German and Soviet scientists, and late- 1950s between Soviet and Norwegian in a situations of Cold War, and their legacies.

Paper long abstract:

The Barents Sea was defined as a see for international science in the research programme developed by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (1902). Although main research was done by Russian scientists all data were stored internationally. After the WWI a main tendency of Soviet diplomacy in that time, including science diplomacy, was cooperation with Germany. Both countries lost their membership in ICES so were keen for cooperation with each other. Germany with its rapidly growing off-shore fisheries was interested in doing research in the northern waters and thus organized a cruise to the Barents Sea in 1926. By that time Germany managed to return to ICES while the Soviet Union did not, in spite of many efforts by Nikolai Knipowitsch, a leading Soviet marine biologist and oceanographer, who was one of the vice-presidents of ICES before the WWI and thus had numerous international connections.

The paper analyses a conflict that this cooperation caused among Soviet scientists: one part like Knipowitsch were anticipated very positively cooperation with German scientists, while others considered that as a threat, especially because there was no well-defined agreement on how to share the data. This conflict juxtaposed with a more easy-going cooperation around the Barents Sea resources, cooperation between Soviet and Norwegian scientists in a very different political situation of the early Cold War, 1956 – 58, that provided a long-lasting legacy in activity of Joint Norwegian-Soviet (later Russian) Commission founded in 1974.

Paper short abstract:

Today's institutions and politics of climate science have a lot in common with European meteorological campaigns at the eve of the First World War. I will focus on the establishment of German upper atmospheric weather stations and expeditions from the Atlantic to the Arctic, ca. 1900-1930.

Paper long abstract:

Scientific diplomacy often has a predilection for international institutions and peaceful intentions. However, today's 'vast machine of climate science' is not only the result of formal international cooperation, but also the result of ad hoc diplomacy, conflict and colonialism within the context of a continuously shifting global balance of power.

Although some would like to see the rivalry between the US and China as a new Cold War, the current geopolitical multilateral environment often looks very similar to the era before the 1930s. In my paper I will not only focus on several aerological expeditions, but also on the establishment of several German aerological stations in the Atlantic (Tenerife, Ottoman Empire) and the Arctic (Svalbard, Greenland) between the beginning of the twentieth century to the period of the World Wars. German imperialism -even during the Weimar period- was not so much a top down process emanating from Berlin, but a bottom-up result of competing meteorological institutions in the Germanspeaking world, sometimes creating alliances with other European powers (such as Spain, the prince of Monaco, the Ottoman Empire, and even France) and sometimes in conflict with them. But it was always about colonizing the atmosphere.

Before planes, weather balloons created a new political environment of the upper air in the same way that satellites and computers opened up space and cyberspace. I will draw comparisons between China as an emerging global actor in the North and its connected trade routes and Germany's political role at the beginning of the twentieth century.