Raum 116/I
My main research interest is history of globalization. I received my PhD from the University of Mannheim in 2009 with a transnational, trans-confessional, and diachronic study on Christian colonial mission enterprises in different parts of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I considered, from a cultural history perspective, how missionaries conceived a social and territorial order in different colonial contexts. The role and the future of historiography of Europe in a context of globalized historiographical discourse is one important aspect of my research: in publications I continue to elaborate my ideas to reassess local and interlocal histories in a globalized world. One of my MPIWG projects is "Convivencia. From Iberian to Global Dynamics (500–1750)," where I investigate encounters between members of indigenous communities and Catholic missionaries.
My main research project is on mineral coal and the transformation of energy systems. I study changes in knowledge, politics, economy, and society during the period between 1700 and 1920. Coal is the main agent of energy and resource transformations in the industrialization process and shaped patterns of energy provision and consumption for the past 300 years—this is why I explore how coal mining and the use of coal developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Projekte
Selected Publications
Wendt, Helge (2023). “Review of: Turner, David M. and Daniel Blackie: Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2018.” The Journal of Modern History 95 (1):…
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2023). “Kohlebäume: Darstellungen von Industrie und Wissenschaft in politischen Dimensionen (1900–1945).” Themenportal Europäische Geschichte, February 2023. https://www.europa.clio-online.de/essay/id/fdae-117896.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2023). “Review of: Thiel, Ulrich: Die Bergakademie Freiberg und das koloniale Montanwesen: eine Studie über den Einsatz von Absolventen einer deutschen Hochschule in Kolonien vom Beginn des Lehrbetriebes 1766 bis zum Ausbruch des…
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2022). Kohlezeit: eine Global- und Wissensgeschichte (1500–1900). Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
Read More
Renn, Jürgen, Manfred Dietrich Laubichler, and Helge Wendt (2015). “Energietransformationen zwischen Kaffee und Koevolution.” In Willkommen im Anthropozän : unsere Verantwortung für die Zukunft der Erde ; Katalog zur Sonderausstellung am Deutschen Museum, ed. N. Möllers, C. Schwägerl, and H. Trischler, 79–82. Munich: Deutsches Museum.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2014). “Scientific cooperation between the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW) and Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s.” In The history of physics in Cuba, ed. A. Baracca, J. Renn, and H. Wendt, 387–393. Dordrecht: Springer.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2012). “Interkulturelle Essensgeschichte am Beispiel zweier deutschsprachiger Jesuitenmissionare in Südamerika (18. Jahrhundert).” Zeitsprünge : Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 16 (3/4): 198–224.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2011). “Mission transnational, trans-kolonial, global. Perspektivverschiebungen in der Missionsgeschichtsschreibung,.” 2011.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2012). “Interkulturelle Essensgeschichte am Beispiel zweier deutschsprachiger Jesuitenmissionare in Südamerika (18. Jahrhundert).” Zeitsprünge : Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 16 (3/4): 198–224.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2012). “Migration in Missionen : drei Fallbeispiele räumlicher und sozialer Mobilität im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Migration und Reisen : Mobilität in der Neuzeit, ed. E. Taddei, M. Müller, and R. Rebitsch, 283–294. Innsbruck [u.a.]: Studien Verlag.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2013). “The Lettres édifiantes et curieuses : the politics of history in different nineteenth-century editions.” In Missions and Media : the politics of missionary periodicals in the long nineteenth century, ed. F. Jensz and H. Acke, 97–112. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Read More
Wendt, Helge (2012). “Moralisches Wissen : der Umgang mit der Frage der Ehe in unterschiedlichen Missionskontexten im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Missionsgeschichte als Geschichte der Globalisierung von Wissen : transkulturelle Wissensaneignung und -vermittlung durch christliche Missionare in Afrika und Asien im 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. U. van der Heyden and A. Feldtkeller, 429–440. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Read More
Past Events
Workshop
- Institute Event
Natural Resources in Early Modern Economies of Knowledge
MOREConference
Alexander von Humboldt: Circulation of State Knowledge in Europe and Latin America
MOREWorkshop
Kohletag: A Multi-Disciplinary Workshop on the Past, Present, and Future of Coal Use in Germany and Beyond
MOREPremodern Conversations Series
- Institute Event
Coal in the Early Modern History of Resources
MOREWorkshop
Open Access to Convivencia: People and their Representations in the Iberian World and Beyond
MOREWorkshop
- Institute Event
Resources and Economies of Knowledge in the Anthropocene
MOREKonferenz
- Institute Event
Transfer of Knowledge in the Iberian Colonial World
MOREPresentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
Harnack Haus, Berlin
Carbon cycles: coal, knowledge and global industrializations
Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf
Vermischung oder das Problem einer Globalgeschichte Europas
Wroclaw University, Academia Europaea, Wroclaw
Central European Missionaries in Sudan. Geopolitics and Alternative Colonialism in Mid-Nineteenth Century Africa
MPIWG, Berlin
Why History of Resources? Approaches from a Fossil Coal Perspective
SciencesPo / IHEAL, Paris
Coal and coal mining in XIXth Century Latin America: Geology, Industry and Mining before and after A.v.Humboldt.
ESHS, Lisbon
Coal: A Global Object of Knowledge Circulation
MPIWG
Cuban Coal and the Perspective of New Energy Resources in Late Spanish Colonialism