Seventh International Conference on the History of Transport, Traffic
and Mobility (T2M)
Lucerne, Switzerland

November 5–8, 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

– Energy and Innovation –

The International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic
and Mobility (T2M) invites proposals for papers to be presented at its
Seventh International Conference to be held at the Verkehrshaus der
Schweiz (Swiss Museum of Transport), Lucerne, Switzerland from
November 5th till the 8th, 2009.

The conference is organised by historians from different universities
as well as by the Swiss Museum of Transport. Switzerland’s most
visited museum celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009 and is being
rebuilt and expanded for this occasion at the time. This year the
conference theme is ‚Energy and Innovation’. The CfP asks for papers
in this thematic field but it is at the same time open to all subjects
in the history of transport, traffic, and mobility.  The language of
the conference is English.

Traffic is motion and therefore energy is imperative. It doesn’t
matter what, how or where to one moves – performance, or the
conversion of energy into motion, is always preconditioned. The
modernisation of traffic since the 18th century can be seen as a
process in the course of which means of transport that relied in the
end on solar energy were replaced by means of transport that relied on
nonrenewable energy. Thus, the focus was shifted from the likes of
walking, rowing, sailing, horseback riding and the usage of animal
traction to mechanical means of transport such as the steam engine,
the combustion engine and rocket propulsion.Where did the question of
energy figure in the acceleration and intensification of traffic?
Where in the choice of a means of transport, in the question ’street
or ship’? How was energy efficiency for new machines increased?
Conversely, how was their environmental pollution reduced? Why did one
choose a specific propulsion? How did the price of energy affect the
price of transport and mobility? How big was the influence of private
traffic and energy business thereby, how great the weight of
governmental politics?

According to economist Joseph Schumpeter, innovations are elementary
improvements that shake the economy and the community which means in
this case that they produce new means of transport such as train, car
or plane. Which economical, social, cultural and political conditions
leveraged which means of transport? Innovations never were the result
of mere business calculations and engineering efforts. Behind those
were always sociocultural factors such as the ideology of freedom, the
appetite for adventure and discovery or the play instinct and surge
for fame. Also, new combinations of existing means of transport could
lead to innovation.

Proposals which connect the two conference topics (energy and
innovation) are eminently favoured: How was the velocity of a means of
transport increased without a multiplication of energy consumption? Do
new means of transport prevail mainly in times of war and crisis?
Could premodern and antiquated means of transport increase their
efficiency under the pressure of competition of new modes of drive as
for example the fast sailing ships that came up under the pressure of
the steam boat around 1850? Is a renaissance of premodern and
environmentally sound means of transport imaginable?

Participants are encouraged, though not required, to organize panels
on these themes. A panel consists of a chair and normally up to three
speakers; no commentator is required. We especially encourage
transnational, comparative and transmodal approaches, and welcome
proposals exploring theoretical or methodological issues as well as
those of a more empirical nature. Relevant contributions are welcome
from historians as well as from cultural geographers, sociologists,
anthropologists, economists, and other scholars who do not define
themselves as historians. We especially invite recent entrants to the
profession and doctoral students to submit proposals.

T2M 2009 wants to invest more energy into communication. Posters of
all oral presentations will be exhibited in the public area of
Switzerland’s most visited museum. This innovation will contribute to
better promotion of the history of transport, traffic and mobility as
a scientific discipline and as a public service. Submission of a fully
completed poster form (1 page A4) is mandatory for all speakers.
Posters will be judged. Poster forms will be made available later on
the website of the programme committee.

The deadline for abstracts and a short CV (max one page each; Word or
rich text format only) is the 15th of April, 2009. Session proposals
should also include a one-page overview of the session. Please send
proposals to: t2m_cont…@verkehrshaus.ch. Submitters will be notified
by the programme committee during the first week of May 2009 on the
success or status of their submission. The full paper of all accepted
submissions and of the posters must be delivered on or before August
15th, 2009. These papers will be copied onto a conference CD-ROM for
distribution in advance to all conference participants. Individual
presentations at the conference are therefore to be limited to a
fifteen-minute summary to allow for debate and discussion within the
session. All participants are required to register.

For details of T2M and of previous conferences, please visit:
www.t2m.org

. Further details of the conference (including the poster
form) will be posted on a website of the Programme Committee which is
currently under construction and will go online later.
Programme Committee:

Laurent Tissot (University of Neuchâtel) (Chair); Stéphanie von Erlach
(sbb historic/Bern); Ueli Haefeli (University of Bern); Gisela
Huerlimann (University of Zurich/Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology); Christoph Maria Merki (University of Bern); This
Oberhaensli (Swiss Museum of Transport); Christian Pfister (University
of Bern); Hans-Ulrich Schiedt (ViaStoria/University of Bern); Henry
Wydler (Swiss Museum of Transport)

Scientific Committee (for paper acceptance):

Laurent Tissot (University of Neuchâtel), Gisela Huerlimann
(University of Zurich/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology);
Hans-Liudger Dienel (Berlin University of Technology, Germany), Garth
Wilson (Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa/Canada)

Wall Street Journal, 29th. Dec. 2008.
By ANDREW OSBORN

MOSCOW — For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he’s been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. “It’s a record,” says Prof. Panarin. “But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger.”

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.But it’s his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin’s views also fit neatly with the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin’s ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country’s top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin’s apocalyptic vision “reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today,” says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. “It’s much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union.”

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin’s predictions. “Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people,” says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin’s theories don’t hold water.

Mr. Panarin’s résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are “classified.”

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

“When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise,” he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. “They didn’t believe me.”

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls “The Californian Republic,” and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of “The Texas Republic,” a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an “Atlantic America” that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls “The Central North American Republic.” Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

“It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time.” A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. “It’s not there for no reason,” he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia’s biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt “a pyramid scheme,” and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington’s role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama “can work miracles,” he wrote. “But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles.”

The article prompted a question about the White House’s reaction to Prof. Panarin’s forecast at a December news conference. “I’ll have to decline to comment,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino’s response was significant. “The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully,” he says.

The professor says he’s convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union — 15 years beforehand. “When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him,” says Prof. Panarin.