Professor Erica Charters
University of Oxford
Knowledge between War and Peace: French and British Paperwork After the Conquest of Canada
Please register for the event here.
When:
Wednesday 11 December, 2024: 16:15 – 17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture by Professor Erica Charters (University of Oxford), entitled “Knowledge between War and Peace: French and British Paperwork After the Conquest of Canada”. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Professor Erica Charters: “The ending of a conflict encourages accounting and bureaucratic paperwork. This is particularly the case when such conflicts involve the transfer of political authority over territory. In this paper, I outline the process by which war became peace and the handover of colonial territory by examining the case of the British conquest of French Canada in 1760. Using cartography and censuses, two emerging scientific disciplines of the eighteenth century, I argue that the end of war encourages particular forms of stocktaking – ones that focus on accurate and precise knowledge of the population. Contrary to characterisations of mapping and censuses as forms of imperial domination, the conquest of French Canada serves as a reminder that knowledge is produced through collaboration, even in military and colonial contexts.”
About Professor Erica Charters
Professor Erica Charters is a Professor of the Global History of Medicine at the University of Oxford and Academic Lead in Medical Humanities. She holds a Leverhulme Fellowship for her project Excess Death: Counting the Costs of Eighteenth-century War, Disease, and Empire. Her research examines the intersections of war, disease, and empire, focusing on the history of measurement, early statistics, and how disease environments influenced military and imperial strategies in the early modern world. Her work also explores European theories of medicine and race shaped by overseas experiences.
Professor Charters is the author of Disease, War, and the Imperial State (winner of the 2016 George Rosen Prize), which investigates how responses to disease influenced military strategy, medical theory, and British imperial authority. She has co-edited volumes on prisoners of war, the cultural history of violence, and the role of civilians in early modern warfare. As part of the Body Counts/les pertes project, she examines the history of quantifying wartime casualties and the evolving concept of ‘acceptable’ losses.
In addition to her research, Professor Charters serves on the Executive Committees of the Navy Records Society and the Society for the History of War and on editorial boards, including the British Journal of Military History. She coordinates the Oxford and Empire project, integrating military and imperial history into global historical narratives.
About Prof. Dr Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC start-up grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
