Rubicon Grant for historian Erik de Lange
NWO funding to do research abroad
Historian Dr Erik de Lange received a Rubicon Grant to do research at King鈥檚 College London (KCL) for two years. The grant gives him the opportunity to gain international research experience.
Who controls the waters of the sea?
Who controls the waters of the sea? In the Mediterranean, the question is now more pressing than ever. Environmental change, resource extraction, and the human drama of unregulated migration make the sea an international focal point. The EU upholds cooperation between navies as a solution to these issues and as a means of creating order at sea. While much has been written on cooperation and the creation of order on land, we know close to nothing about their workings at sea.
International cooperation at sea
The sea covers the vast majority of the earth鈥檚 surface, carries most global trade, and is crucial to the exercise of power. To understand how states try to create order together it is necessary to focus on the sea. "My project will show how international cooperation at sea worked by looking at the past," De Lange explains. "Focusing on the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century, it will uncover the historical roots of attempts to order the sea."
De Lange's research will show how navies first began to work together in 1815-1870, a period of both peace and imperial expansionism in the Mediterranean. In so doing, he will focus on Great Britain鈥檚 Royal Navy, the largest military presence in the nineteenth-century Mediterranean, and show how it depended on cooperating partners.
"The central research problem is therefore: how did the Royal Navy cooperate with other maritime actors in the Mediterranean to create and maintain order at sea, between 1815 and 1870?" In answering that question, De Lange will show how international cooperation worked. In doing so, he will enrich dominant theories of seapower by highlighting its cooperative, non-military sides.
Imperial history from a new, multilateral perspective
Though the settings of his work shifted, De Lange essentially remains intrigued by the same questions: how were European politics perceived beyond the continent? How did local encounters and interactions affect their implementation? "During my PhD research I discovered that peace between the European powers and international cooperation opened the door to imperial expansionism and colonial rule. This link between cooperation and imperialism is something that I want to explore in greater depth at KCL." In a broader sense, this would allow De Lange to further develop a unique line of research that looks at imperial history from a new, multilateral perspective.
I aim to venture beyond my previous work and publications, using new contacts and archives in London to gain a better understanding of cooperation at sea and nineteenth-century imperialism.
King's College Londen
KCL is a world-renowned university in history and war studies, which perfectly matches De Lange's project's unique merger of historical methodologies with theories of war studies. At the Department of History, he will collaborate with David Todd, a senior lecturer in world history and an internationally renowned expert on post-1815 French imperialism. His work is particularly concerned with cooperation between France and other empires throughout the nineteenth century.
At the Department of War Studies, De Lange will get the opportunity to cooperate with professor Andrew Lambert. He is one of Great Britain鈥檚 most renowned naval historians and one of the world鈥檚 senior authorities on the Royal Navy. He has published extensively on theories of seapower, covering all of the nineteenth century. "The expertise of Andrew Lambert would bring an unparalleled impulse to my work, both in terms of his knowledge of the naval subject matter and on the theoretical level."