World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED date: THU 22, 11.30 am-1.30 pm

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Centre of Studies 'Antoni de Capmany', University of Barcelona (Spain)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Ángel Calvo

· NOT_DEFINED language: English / Français

· NOT_DEFINED description: Mediterranean has been a crossroads of the big communication and commercial routes from the Ancient Times and a privileged space for the circulation of men, knowledge and technology. Mediterranean has been cradle of big urban civilizations of the Minoan traders, the commercial civilizations of the Phoenicians, the Greek and Roman cultures and territory of expansion of the Muslim science, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy; agrarian economies and pottery technology; the galley, the Greek trireme and lighthouse technology, as the development of nautical technology. Economic and social ties throughout the basin have persisted even through such upheavals as the Muslim ascendancy during the early Middle Ages, when they received the naval techniques from Byzance until securing the control of the sea. Mediterranean was vital for the traffic of the great European trade with the India before the discovery of the route for the end of Good Hope. The area assisted to the diaspora of Jews in search of lands and new places for business. Mediterranean was an important center for the diffusion of techniques and uses of silk, cotton and wool, glass-working, sugar, hydraulic technology and water management, as well as innovation in organization. With the role played by the Mediterranean in the diffusion of knowledge and techniques in mind, the Panel tries to attract the attention on the last three centuries, a period of increasing globalization of the world-wide economy. Its concentrates especially in Knowledge, Manufacturing, Energy and Telecommunications and public works.

Chair: Ángel Calvo (Centre of Studies ‘Antoni de Capmany’, University of Barcelona)

Paper Presenter: Claudia Pancino (Alma Mater Studiorum - Università Di Bologna) “Mélanges méditerranéennes dans l’histoire de la science médicale et circulation des connaissances thérapeutiques”

Aujourd’hui il est essentiel de reconnaître, grâce à la recherche historique, le mélange, le réseau méditerranéen, de parcours et de connaissances, dont sont sorties les sociétés et les cultures des pays des deux cotés de la Méditerranée. A propos des savoirs thérapeutiques, des traces de connaissances et de pratiques venant des pays de l’autre coté de la Méditerranée, se rencontrent parfois dans des usages et des gestes dont l’origine nous échappe, chez des populations européennes méridionales. La pensée analogique, la connaissance des propriétés des herbes et des minéraux, le commerce (durant l’Ancien Régime) d’amulettes, de pierres et d’arbres, tout cela évoque des voies de communication ayant conduit à des façons diversifiées d’agir sur le corps humain, de se représenter son fonctionnement et de le soigner (et aussi d’interpréter les rôles thérapeutiques).Il convient ici de rappeler que à la Faculté de médecine de l’Université de Bologne l’enseignement reposait au XVIe siècle presque exclusivement sur les œuvres d’Aristote, Hippocrate, Galien, Avicenne. C’est-à-dire des savants dont le moins lointain dans le temps était justement le médecin islamique (980-1036). On ne doit pas s’en étonner, compte tenu du fait que le Canon d’Avicenne, disparaîtra des programmes universitaires bolonais précisément au XIX siècle. De plus, les lectures sur Avicenne, pouvaient soit porter sur des thèmes généraux -tels les parties du corps humain, ou les médicaments- soit traiter seulement d’un sujet précis : par exemple la quatrième fen du Canon d’Avicenne, ou on parle de flebotomie. On lisait Avicenne avec Aristote, y compris pour étudier l’influence des planète sur le corps humain, ou pour se documenter sur l’origine hépatique du sang et des autres humeurs. Par ailleurs, l’université bolonaise elle-même faisait paraître, chaque année, jusqu’au 1796, un «calepin astrologique» à l’usage des médecins.De différents exemples tirés des pratiques thérapeutiques soit officielles, soit populaires, (que j’irai présenter) suggèrent deux problématiques différentes.D’une part, il faut supposer l’existence d’itinéraires culturels et de chemins géographiques, qui ont transmis d’un côté à l’autre de la Méditerranée des croyances et des usages relatifs au soin du corps. Cependant, on n’en trouve aucune mention dans les textes de la médecine savante, mais ils sont documentés dans les traditions populaires thérapeutiques, et dans les témoignages d’observateurs. Parfois, on peut facilement avancer l’hypothèse d’origines méditerranéennes extra-européennes, compte tenu de l’origine géographique de certains composants. En plus, la recherche historique et anthropologique met en évidence les formes de transmission de la connaissance : à travers les voyages plutôt que par des livres, dans certains premier cas ; de la culture savante à la tradition populaire, dans des domaines culturels et géographiques éloignés, dans d’autres.Il faut non seulement rappeler l’importance de la médecine arabe et islamique pour l’histoire de la pensée médicale occidentale, mais surtout pour réfléchir sur la rupture culturelle (opérée a posteriori) qui est parvenue à nier un passé culturel commun aux deux rives de la Méditerranée. Une telle rupture est en effet aussi intervenue dans le domaine de l’histoire des traitements médicaux, et généralement dans celui de l’histoire des connaissances sur le corps humain.En conclusion, on remarque, pour une part, qu’en ce qui concerne la culture thérapeutique populaire, l’histoire des pratiques relatives à la santé se trouve ponctuées de traces d’usages, de croyances et de comportements qui viennent de la culture arabe (du sud de la Méditerranée) dont les itinéraires culturels et géographiques ne nous sont pas connus, et mériteraient d’être étudiés. On remarque, par ailleurs, la permanence de fragments de la tradition savante d’origine arabe dans la culture thérapeutique populaire européenne. De plus, il est évident que, dans la période préscientifique, la culture médicale savante prenait en compte la richesse des traditions de la rive sud de la Méditerranée. Les savants européens reconnaissaient ce qui relevait à leurs yeux d’un patrimoine culturel commun qui produisait: la curiosité et le désir de connaissance (le voyage Prospero Alpino et de la Médecine des Égyptiens) ; ils étaient conscients de leurs dettes indiscutables à l’égard de la tradition arabe. La fracture entre les traditions culturelles -à la fois arabe et européenne d’une part, populaire et savante de l’autre- apparaît ainsi comme le résultat d’un processus initié au XVIe siècle qui s’est achevé au XVIIIe siècle. Parallèlement, la médecine académique, qui en est venu à détenir le monopole des connaissances et des compétences thérapeutiques, s’est figée dans ses modalités de connaissance et dans ses institutions ; elle nie ses origines communes avec la médecine arabe sans parvenir à effacer les traces d’un complexe et long passé culturel qui n’était pas euro-centré.

Paper Presenter: Esteve Deu and Montserrat Llonch (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), “Textile Technological Transfer from a non innovative country: Spain during the XXth Century”

During the first third of the XXth Century, a latecomer country created some of the most important textile technological innovations of this century. Moreover, these inventions were the base of the Textile Machine-Making Industry of multinational companies: Casablancas High Draft Co.Ltd. and Weefautomaten Picanol N.V.The focus of this paper is to understand how entrepreneurship of the innovators was set in a difficult socioeconomic context. The main hypothesis tested is that, to be successful, transfer of technology needed to be articulated outside this context, which meant abroad from Spain. Methodologically, two of the most relevant and significant inventors are analysed (Ferran Casablancas and Picañol brothers), which reveal to be exceptional cases in joining invention, innovation and successful business.

Paper Presenter: Jesús Sánchez Miñana (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), “The international adventures in wireless telegraphy of Austrian-French engineer Victor Popp (1846 - 1912) and its epilogue in Spain”

Popp is relatively well known as a pioneer in the use of compressed air as a source of mechanical power. In Paris and the last quarter of the 19th century his company produced and distributed the fluid, first to a network of pneumatic street clocks and then to a variety of users, and also obtained the concession to supply electricity to one of the sectors in which the municipality divided the city to this effect. The paper will deal with Popp's later entrepreneurship in wireless telegraphy, a subject that has not received, to the author's knowledge, any direct attention, the engineer appearing here and there in studies about Édouard Branly, his one time associate, or the French policies in Morocco, where some of his stations were established before the Protectorate. Popp had the ambition to put France at the level of Great Britain or Germany in the emergent field of radio communications but lacked adequate support from the French government and, apparently, a technology of his own. His swan song was a large contract (1908) with the Spanish government to set up the first coastal stations in the country, a responsibility that he handed over to Marconi after failing to meet its terms on time.

Paper Presenter: Angel Calvo (Centre of Studies ‘Antoni de Capmany’, University of Barcelona), “High technologies for the Mediterranean periphery: the telecommunications in Spain”

Telecommunications in Spain: high technologies for the periphery The international bibliography has devoted considerable attention to the two main channels of international technology transfer -the multinationals and the market- and also to the role of the state in these processes (Keller, ‘International Technology’, 752-82; Dunning and Cantwell, ‘The changing’; Pack and Kamal, ‘Inflows’, 81-98; Glass and Kamal, ‘Multinational firms’, 495-513; Xu and Chiang, ‘Trade’, 115-35; Fotopoulos and Louri-Dendrinou, ‘Corporate’; Carr Jr., ‘Technology’; Mayanja, Is FDI’). Scholars have also established the development of national systems of innovation, a concept deeply rooted in Schumpeter’s later work, and its nuanced variant of national styles, as an area of research in its own right(Nelson and Winter (1977); Dosi (1999); Edquist and McKelvey (eds.) (2000); Lundvall (1988); Mowery and Oxley (1995); Nasierowski and Arcelus (2003): 215-234; Castellaci (2009): 321-47; Freeman, Technology and ‘The National’; Lundvall, ed. National; Metcalfe, ‘The Economic’; Nelson, National Innovation; Patel, P. and K. Pavitt, ‘The Nature’.). However, certain gaps remain in our knowledge of the processes that allowed technological innovation to spread either inside or between firms. This is an important issue if we accept that the constant process of innovation is a key explanatory variable of economic development (L. Galambos). Among Spanish specialists the interest in the processes of technology transfer has been at best uneven (Molero, Multinational and Internationalization). The efforts to understand the spread of the Second Industrial Revolution (SIR), for example, have centred mainly on the generation and transport of electricity, to the detriment of telecommunications equipment. This paper tries to correct this imbalance and examines the tortuous process of the arrival in Spain of telephone technology -that is, equipment for telephone exchanges, transmission, and users- sets(The complexity of the processes was stressed by Jeremy, International Technical, 2; Fransman, ‘Evolution’; Fleury and Fleury, ‘The evolution,’ 949-965; Ypsilanti and Plantin, Telecommunications, 15). From the theoretical point of view, the article settles itself in the confluence of the institutional approach (Anderson-Skog) and several streams very in vogue in the last times, as they are the national innovation system (NIS) approach, the Marshallian concept of externalities (1925) in its variants of spillover, interdependence (Dornbusch and Fischer, 1990, 788) or indirect effects (Lee, Johnson and Joyce, 2004, 207), as well as by-products of industrial progress (Mishan, 1970, 18), and the import substitution industrialization frame. It pleads moreover for a micro-based study as a response to a greater learning about innovation systems especially at the national level. In fact, a national innovation system, political and other social institutions affecting learning, searching and exploring activities, such as nation’s universities and research bodies, financial system, economic policies, and internal organization of firms (Hanusch and Pyka (2007), p. 864; Roos (2005), on-line; Fagerberg, Mowery and Nelson (2005), pp. 220-221).


Paper Presenter: Antoni Roca Rosell (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), “The origin of ‘scientific’ engineering in Barcelona”

In Barcelona, during the Eighteenth century there were several attempts to establish scientific training for engineers, architects, and technicians. First, there was the Royal Military Academy for Mathematics, a centre promoted in 1720 by the Army to teach mathematics to military officers. The Academy was opened to civilians and several artisans and architects took advantage of the courses of the Academy.
Second, the Noble College of Cordelles promoted in 1756 a Public Chair of Mathematics in which nobles, bourgeois, and artisans were taught.
Third, several chairs on chemical and mechanical engineering were created in the first decade of the Nineteenth century. In this case, the promoter was the Junta de Comercio (Board of Commerce). Directly or indirectly, these three initiatives resulted in the starting point of industrial engineering in Barcelona.