Lars BEHRISCH Stay at the Collegium de Lyon : From september

Lars BEHRISCH
Stay at the Collegium de Lyon :
From september 2011 to june 2012
I studied history, Russian and Islamic studies at the universities of Hamburg and Berlin
(Humboldt University), where I also wrote my PhD on crime and crime control in a 16thcentury German city (finished in 2001). Following this, I worked as a researcher and
teacher at Bielefeld University, and in 2009 became Assistant Professor for Political History
at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. I specialise in early modern History, particularly
of Germany and France, but also of Russia and of Europe in a comparative perspective. I
am now working on a second monograph on the political and cultural implications of the
use of statistics in the 18th century. My teaching and publication interests focus on early
modern politics and political culture, but also include the Reformation, urban history, the
history of crime and social control and the comparative history of identities.
Project : « Le discours politique des chiffres en France et en Allemagne à la fin
de l’Ancien Régime »
I try to find out how and why governments both in France and Germany started, during
the 18th century, to count and calculate the human and the material resources of their
states. Why did statistics, as we know it today, become an important political tool and
argument at this time – and what consequences did it have? I want to show that
statistics was central to ‘Enlightened Absolutism’ and to its contribution to the modern
world: In visualising abstract entities such as ‘production’ or ‘consumption’ in clear-cut
figures, tables and graphs, statistics seemed to make more sense of the world – and
asked for political action promising economic growth and, indeed, worldly happiness.
Keywords :Political history of early modern Germany and France; history of statistical
knowledge; crime, criminal justice and social control in the early modern period.
MAJOR PUBLICATIONS :
Books
- (ed.) Vermessen, Zählen, Berechnen. Die politische Ordnung des Raums im 18.
Jahrhundert [Mesurer, compter, calculer: l’ordre politique de l’espace au 18e siècle /
Measuring, Counting, Calculating. The Political Organisation of Space in the 18th
Century], Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus 2006
- Soziale Kontrolle und städtische Obrigkeit: Görlitz 1450-1600 [Contrôle social et autorité
urbaine : Goerlitz 1450-1600 / Social Control and Urban Government: The Case of
Goerlitz, 15th and 16th Centuries], Epfendorf: Bibliotheca Academica 2005
Articles
- «Des chiffres politiques» : La statistique, dispositif politique et activité pratique à la fin
de l’Ancien Régime [„Political Figures“: Statistics as a Political Device and a Practical
Activity at the End of the Ancien Régime], in Pascal Laborier/Jakob Vogel (eds.), Les
sciences camérales: activités pratiques et dispositifs publics, Paris: PUF [in print]
- ‚Statistics and Cartography’ [avec/with Christian Fieseler], History of Cartography, vol.
4 [in print]
- ‚Sozialdisziplinierung’, Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, vol. 12, Stuttgart 2010
- Agrarian Statistics in late Ancien Régime France and Germany, in Nadine Vivier (ed.),
The State and Rural Societies. Policy and Education in Europe 1750-2000, Turnhout:
Brepols 2008
- Ville, criminalité et contrôle social en Allemagne (XVe-XVIe s.) – Görlitz, un cas à part?
[City, Crime and Social Control in Germany during the 15th and 16th Centuries: Goerlitz, a
special case?], Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 55 (2008)
- Zu viele Informationen! Die Aggregierung des Wissens in der Frühen Neuzeit [Trop
d’informations! Les processus d’agrégation du savoir à l’époque moderne / Too Much
Information! The Aggregation of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period], in Arndt
Brendecke/Markus Friedrich/Susanne Friedrich (eds.), Information in der Frühen Neuzeit.
Status, Bestände und Strategien, Münster: LIT 2008
- [avec/with Christian Fieseler] Les cartes chiffrées: L‘argument de la superficie à la fin
de l’Ancien Régime en Allemagne [Maps in numbers: Surface Area as a Political Argument
in Germany at the End of the Ancien Régime], Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire 68
(2007)
- Social Control and Urban Government: The Case of Goerlitz, Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries, in Joachim Eibach/Raingard Esser (eds.), Urban Stability and Civic Liberties:
Crime Control and Conflict in Early Modern European Towns, Cambridge: CUP 2007
- Protestantische Sittenzucht und katholisches Ehegericht: Die Stadt Görlitz und das
Bautzner Domkapitel im 16. Jahrhundert [Discipline ecclésiastique protestante et tribunal
matrimonial catholique: la ville de Goerlitz et le chapitre de Bautzen / Protestant Church
Discipline and Catholic Ecclesiastical Court: The City of Goerlitz and the Diocesan Chapter
of Bautzen], in Vera Isaiasz et al. (eds.), Stadt und Religion in der Frühen Neuzeit:
Soziale Ordnungen und ihre Repräsentationen, Frankfurt a.M./NY: Campus 2007
- „Politische Zahlen“. Statistik und die Rationalisierung der Herrschaft im späten Ancien
Régime [«Des chiffres politiques». La statistique et la rationalisation du pouvoir à la fin de
l’Ancien Régime / „Political Figures“. Statistics and the Rationalisation of Politics in the late
Ancien Regime], Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31 (2004)
- Social Discipline in Early Modern Russia, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, in Heinz
Schilling (ed.), Institutions, Instruments and Agents of Social Control and Discipline in
Early Modern Europe, Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann 1999