Jan-Frederik Abbeloos
Blandijnberg 2, Lokaal 511, B-9000 Gent tel: +/32/(0)9/264 40 02 / fax: +/32/(0)9/264 41 83
Assistant to the courses of World History and World-Systems Analysis
Master in History / Master in Economics / Master in Journalism
Member of Research Group Communites Comparisons Connections
Member of CLIOHRES.net, Thematic Work Group “Europe and the World”.
Member of the European Business History Association
Research/Interests
- Phd-research: Controlling the copper: the governance of the copper production chain from a global perspective [case: the copper chain from
Katanga (1908-1970)]
My field of interest is the process of international economic integration and the role of states and enterprises in this process. I am currently preparing a Ph.D. on the production chain that the copper multinational Union Minière du Haut-Katanga set up and commanded within a global copper market between 1908 and 1970. The copper that was extracted in Katanga, the southern province of the former Belgian colony Congo, was melted, refined, treated and sold throughout different parts of the world [Congo, Belgium, the United States], which resulted in an international production or value chain. The main question of the research is why and how such a chain was organized and governed and how this affected and was affected by processes of political and economical development. This research wants to contribute to a better understanding of the aspirations and strategies of a multinational corporation and to offer an insight on how and why a certain industrial sector globalises. This way it can show how production processes in different political jurisdictions and geographical areas were integrated parts of a complex division of labour marked by phases of expansion and contraction.
Promotor and supervisors: Prof.dr. Eric Vanhaute, Prof.dr. Guy Vanthemsche (VUB), Prof.dr. Peer Vries (Universität Wien)
- Globalization, economic integration and (under)development: how to measure and how to explain?
- Nations, networks and people in world history, in search for a unit of analysis.
Selected Articles
"Antiglobalization Movement" & "Value Chains", entries in C. Wankel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Business in Today's World, London, Sage, 2009.
"Belgium’s expansionist history between 1870 and 1930: imperialism and the globalisation of Belgian business", in: C. Lévai (ed.), European Empires and the Empires of Europe, Pisa, Plus, 2008.
"Honderd jaar na datum: een Belgische onderzoeksagenda met betrekking tot de Belgische koloniale geschiedenis?", in: BVNG/ABHC, volume 30, issue 2, 2008, pp. 8-14.
"Copper in the
Review of Giovanni Arrighi's Adam Smith in Beijing. Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. In English at Geschichte Transnational. In French in La Revue Internationale des Livres et des Idées, issue 8, 2008, pp. 28-31.
Click here for a full list of publications.
Papers in progress
“Imperialism versus globalisation in the long twentieth century”, paper presented at the second European Congress in World and Global History,
The current debate on the nature of globalisation led to a renewed interest in the historical functions of state and capital in the creation of a world economy characterized by specific patterns of economic and political interconnectedness. How the expansionist tendencies of state power and capitalist accumulation relate to each other in this process has been a central point of discussion during the long twentieth century, from John Hobson’s “Imperialism: A Study” (1902) to David Harvey’s “New Imperialism”(2003). It is also central to Giovanni Arrighi’s “The Long Twentieth Centruy”, in which he distinguishes between the operations of the networks of power and the networks of accumulation as the driving agents behind capitalist expansion. In this paper the Arrighi-thesis will be presented on state power and capitalist accumulation and connected to the historic and present-day debates on the nature of imperialism and globalisation.
“Explaining the spatial transformations of the world copper market during the long twentieth century”, paper presented during the Conference Honouring Andre Gunder Frank's Legacy of Critical Social Science, Pittsburgh, 11-13 April 2008. The topic was viewed from the perspective of globalisation during The 2nd annual workshop of the Commdoities of Empire Project.
This paper looks at the evolution of the spatial connections within the sphere of a global copper market during the long electric twentieth century. We can explain the evolution of these spatial connections by looking not only at the geographical availability of copper ores but also at the political, economic and technological transformations within a world system in which these copper ores could be commoditised. As such, the mining, smelting, refining and consumption of copper happens within a political economic framework made up of states and firms. As such, the globalisation of the copper business serves as a metaphor for a complex historical process that shaped the way in which copper was mined, smelted and refined ona global scale. Next to this attention is paid to the benefits and dis-benefits these spatial connections had for different regions and states whose national economies were strongly dependent on their copper sector. This paper connects to the idea of André Gunder Frank that location and spatial relations are of crucial importance for the absolute and relative welfare of people, societies, economies and countries within the world system, which itself shapes these spatial relations.
“Whose multinational? The relationship between British and Belgian national interests in the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (1906-1925)”, paper presented at the Seventh European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, 26 February 2008 and during the Posthumus-congres 2008, Groningen, 22-23 May, 2008.
This paper evaluates the relationship between British and Belgian interests in and manegement of the copper multinational Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), a company that was set up in 1906 to valorise the rich mineral ores in
"In search of valuable (re)sources): the copper multinational Union Minière du Haut-Katanga", paper presented at the Graduate workshop on new approaches to sources in World History (Oxford University, 7 march 2007)."
A central focus in the field of world history is that of the interconnections between cultures, economies and peoples through time. As business historians such as Mira Wilkins point out, a multinational enterprise is an appropriate unit of analysis to study such interconnections sicne it not only serves as a channel for a foreign direct investment but it also becomes a framework for different sorts of interchanges, including the mobilisation of investments, technology, labour, knowledge and management across borders through the commanding of a production chain. Company archives offer a lot of different sources to investigate this ‘globalising’ agenda such as correspondence, court papers, legal documents and financial, production and organizational records. I will briefly demonstrate the potential of these sources to study the commanding of such a production chain by looking at the operations of the Belgian copper multinational Union Minière du Haut-Katanga.
