The emergence of nation-states from the dissolution of empires continues to orient the historiographies of early modern and modern Europe as well as the global and regional histories of the post-European world. Overlooked in this general paradigm are the counter-histories and historiographies of federative or confederative, multinational political structures. In the long European context, the Holy Roman Empire and the post-Napoleonic Holy Alliance remain the canonic examples of confederative proposals as well as the guardians of their reactionary reputation. The end of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 generated federal, multinational proposals from a liberal perspective, but these foundered under the pressure of Wilsonian national self-determination as well as suspicions of imperial or neo-imperial resurgence. In our own day, a partially federative structure governs the European Union. In the politics of the Middle East, confederative models are being advanced as alternatives to one-state and two-state solutions to the Israel/Palestine/Arab conflict.

This roundtable discussion will reconsider the history and historiography of confederative ideas in the context of important new books by two of the participants and the contributions of all of the participants to perspectives on the usefulness of the confederative paradigms to newer methods and regions, such as the politics of gender and the politics of the contemporary Middle East. We foresee a broad audience of scholars and teachers of history.The open discussion will invite session attendees to introduce additional regional and methodological areas where federative paradigms have been advanced, such as for example the historiography of post-colonial Africa.