The lecture took up the 1972 UN Human Environment conference: the first example of the attempted global governance of environmental issues and climate change that foundered on the challenges of development and North-South antagonisms. That history connects Delos, the ancient capital of the Athenian League, with the club of Rome, and the New International Economic Order. The talk's specific aim was to recover the importance of business and intellectual networks, in all their problematic historical messiness and stir them back into our understanding of the changing character of ‘global’ imaginaries. This is a history that reconnects debates about the environment and development, as well as the interdisciplinary not always visible connections between scientists, humanists, women activists, and businessmen. It evokes the longer history of the international governance of economic problems, and of economic actors in international politics.
With Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History and Capitalism at the European University Institute, Florence and Visiting Professor at the Department of History, University of Sydney
Comment: Jan Jansen, Assistant Professor of Global History of Mobility (18th – 20th centuries), University of Duisburg-Essen
Moderator: Nina Schneider, GCR21 Research Group Leader
