Roii Ball (Los Angeles): Colonisation in the German-Polish borderlands, 1880s-1920s: work-in-progress between environment, landscape, agrarian, and social history

Vortrag von Roii Ball (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Zeit: 18.00 (c.t.) - 20.00 Uhr

Abtract:
In this talk I present the current state of my dissertation work-in-progress, and consider different ways in which environmental history inform and challenge my work.

My dissertation, tentatively titled "Constructing the Imperial Frontier: social history of the Prussian colonisation in the German-Polish borderlands, 1880s-1920s," deals with a settler-colonial project in the eastern provinces of Prussia that was officially about changing the demographic and socio-economic composition of a border area that had a significant Polish population. The main aspect of this project was agrarian settlement on previously bought estates that were divided into smaller settlement plots. My research deals with two such estates and their transformation into villages, tracing the changing social relationship and interactions between state, settlers, and local populations. I try to move back and forth between this micro-historical perspective and a broader consideration of the colonisation project, looking at landscape, knowledge, and the cultural and social ‘production’ of settlers.

Roii Ball is a PhD Candidate at the department of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, working in the fields of German, settler-colonial and environmental histories. In summer semester 2017 he will be an ARTES International Research Fellow at the Historical Institute, University of Cologne. Roii completed his BA at Tel-Aviv University and is since 2013 at UCLA.

Ein Vortrag im Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquium für Umweltgeschichte Sommersemster 2017 der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Kooperation mit dem Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF).