Roots Germania - A Personal Search for Identity

This lecture takes the history of monoculture at end of the nineteenth century as a jumping off point to explore the history of international security and its relationship to agriculture in the period between 1918 and 1945. Based on archival research in the archives of the League of Nations, the International Labour Organization as well as governmental and private papers, the lecture demonstrates the connections between ideas about food production in central and eastern Europe and Asia, and concludes with a consideration of the continuities and discontinuities between the inter-war period and the years after 1945.

Dr Patricia Clavin is a Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College Oxford and a member of the History Faculty of Oxford University. Her current book, Bread and Butter Internationalism: The World Economy and the League of Nations, 1919-1946, focuses on the work of the Economic and Financial Section of the League of Nations and will be published by Oxford University Press. Her new project, with Dr Sunil Amrith (Birkbeck, London), uses the history of international organizations as a means to explore the connections between war and peace, and the history of development in the Twentieth Century. She has written books on the history of the Great Depression in Europe, the history of international economic diplomacy between the two world wars, and, with Asa Briggs, the history of Europe from 1789 to the present.

The keynote lecture is part of the conference Feeding and Clothing the World: Cash Crops and Global History in the Twentieth Century. The lecture begins at 5:00 pm and refreshments will be served following the lecture from 6:00 to 7:00 pm.