Pre-1959 Tibet was not a “closed off land” as is often assumed, but a place of dynamic economic structures and a diverse body of economic actors. The Trehor region, an area located in modern day northern Kardze Prefecture, was a center of trade, and due to its proximity to Sichuan and to Lhasa, the route through the Trehor area became a primary trade and communication route during the first half of the twientieth century. The Younghusband expedition (1903-1904), instigated by British India, and the forceful colonizing projects of General Zhao Erfeng (1908-1911) of the Qing, catalyzed new economic structures and strengthened long distance commercial ties between Tibet, China, and British India. The influx of goods and multiple currencies into Kham had a direct influence on Tibetan monasteries in the Trehor region. According to the Kardze Prefecture Gazetteer, in 1947, the monasteries and their “monastery merchants” (simiao shang) controlled roughly 60% to 70% percent of commercial pursuits in the Kham area. Monasteries in the Trehor area were able to take advantage of economic networks by stationing their monastic merchants throughout China, Tibet, and possibly India. They maintained sophisticated economic bureaucracies that were managed by high level monks with both business acumen and religious clout. Monasteries furthermore acted as money lenders, controlled a monopoly on tea imports in the area, imported and traded British Indian products, and some even printed their own paper currency which circulated inside and outside the monastery. By utilizing Chinese gazetteers, investigative reports from the 1950s as well as later Tibetan language surveys and a Tibetan language monastic history, this paper focuses on the Trehor area, paying particular attention to three Geluk monasteries Dargye, Kardze, and Drango. Overall, this paper investigates economic power of monasteries and demonstrates how monasteries maintained strong economic agency into the first decade of Communist rule. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr  
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Monasteries, Merchants, and Long Distance Trade: The Economic Power of Tibetan Monasteries in Northern Kham (1900-1959), Elizabeth Reynolds, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), Columbia University

As a member of a deeply-rooted traditional craft-making family in the Meshö (Sman Shod) Valley of Kham region, I will present the results of my ongoing fieldwork and academic study on the renaissance of Buddhist craft-making that is beginning to flourish in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Meshö is a remote valley in Dergé County (Kandze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture), Sichuan Province, where the majority of its 5,343 residents are agro-pastoralists. The area is famous for the monastery of Dzongsar, one of the largest monastic universities in Kham during the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1980s, when the renovation of the monastery was permitted, the lack of specialists in traditional handicrafts pushed the monastic authorities to establish workshops headed by the few remaining elderly craftsmen who retained traditional craft-making knowledge and skills. In the early twenty-first century, these workshops have become real schools of traditional crafts through local and foreign funding, and are now managed by a local NGO: Yuthok Yondengonpo Medical Association (YYMA). There are now more than 27 workshops, in which 13 different traditional crafts (lost-wax-casting, pottery, thangka painting, wood carving, etc.) are taught to around 450 apprentices. My paper will focus upon how new trade opportunities are transforming economic, familial, and community networks that surround these craft workshops. I will particularly deal with the demographic profile of teachers and apprentices, the challenges faced by local crafts workshops regarding modernization, and the raise of art and crafts entrepreneurs in Kham. I will also consider the reaction of local authorities to the rapid growth of the crafts industry. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr  
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, The Renaissance of Traditional Dzongsar Craft-making in the Meshö Valley: An Insider’s Perspective on New Economic Processes and Identity Transformations in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, Dawa Drolma, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), Bay Path University

Franck-Dominique Vivien shows that the sustainable development is a controversial subject for the economists since the seventies, and that this debate is centered around two notions: weak sustainability and strong sustainability. He presents those notions and shows their limits.
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : sustainable development, economics, weak sustainability, strong sustainability

Plenary : Dissertations Session (Amphithéâtre François Furet) - Chair: Ludovic Cailluet, Université du Littoral  Foreign Direct Investment and the Creation of Local Organizational Capabilities: An Assessment of the Impact of the United States on the Spanish Enterprise (1918-1975) - Adoración Álvaro-Moya, Complutense University Religion, Competition and Liability: Dutch Cooperative Banking in Crisis, 1919-1927 -  -Christopher L. Colvin, London School of Economics  Out of Norway Falls Aluminum: The Norwegian Aluminium Industry in the International Economy, 1908-1940 - Espen Storli, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : crise financière, banques, Pays-Bas, London School of Economics