WEHC 2025
Lund, Sweden · 28 July - 1 August
The theme for the Congress is "Equality and Sustainability Challenges", which highlights some of the central issues facing humanity today and also connects to a broad and diverse range of historical problems. To address both the challenges and to find insights from the historical record for that endeavour, a range of perspectives will be necessary.
IEHA Organization
The IEHA is an organization composed of national, regional and international associations in the field of economic history, broadly defined, and other related disciplines. It currently has 45 member organizations from almost 40 countries around the world. Today the seat of the Association is in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
1923
Establishment of the Comite International des Sciences Historiques (CISH). Congresses included a small session of no more than a day on economic history
1949
Economics, sociology and political science all had organizations under the social sciences department of UNESCO
1955
Dissatisfaction with limited presence led Michael Postan and Fernand Braudel to discuss a separate organization at the CISH Congress in Rome
1960
First IEHA Congress held in Stockholm alongside the CISH Congress, hosted by Professor Ernst Soderlund, professor of economic history at the University of Stockholm
1949-69
Inaugural programme focused on debates between Marxist and non-Marxist historians
1962
Second IEHA Congress, held in Aix-en-Provence. First IEHA constitution, which vested leadership in a small committee H.J. Habbakkuk, Professor of Economic History at Oxford, became Secretary. First Executive Committee included eight permanent members from the UK, the US, France, the Soviet Union and another 5 members elected as individuals.
1965
Third IEHA Congress, in Munich. Constitution of the IEHA formalized
1965-66, 1972
Planning meetings for the IEHA held in Villa Berbelloni at Bellagio, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation
1968
Fourth Congress held in Bloomington, IN
1970
Fifth Congress held in Leningrad
1974
Sixth Congress held in Copenhagen. New format introduced to include A themes ("Debates and Controversies), B themes (current research on major topics), and C themes (workshops on specialized topics. This was used to structure Congress programmes until 1998.
1975
Helsinki Accords paved the way for wider Eastern European and Society participation
1978
Seventh Congress held in Edinburgh. Constitution changed to allow re-election only once.
1982
Eighth Congress held in Budapest
1986
Ninth Congress held in Bern
1990
Ninth Congress held in Leuven
1994
Ninth Congress held in Milan
1998
Ninth Congress held in Madrid
2002
Thirteenth Congress held in Buenos Aires, first in South America
2006
Fourteenth Congress held in Helsinki
2009
Fifteenth Congress held in Utrecht. Adopts name World Economic History Congress for the first time to reflect global reach of economic history
2012
Sixteenth Congress held in Stellenbosch, South Africa. The first Congress to be held in Africa.
2015
Seventeenth Congress held in Kyoto. First Congress to be held in Asia
2018
Eighteenth Congress held in Boston
2022
Nineteenth Congress held in Paris, after a year's delay due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
2025
Twentieth Congress to be held in Lund, Sweden
This timeline is based on the history of the IEHA published by Maxine Berg, "East-West Dialogues: Economic Historians, the Cold War, and Detente", Journal of Modern History 87 (2015): 36-71. and on other documents held by the IEHA Secretary General. This is a work in progress which will be expanded.
For videos of a panel on the early history of the IEHA from the 2009 WEHC in Utrecht, see here.