At the invitation of Professor José Luis Peset, President of the ICHS, the “Bureau restreint” met in Madrid on February 24, 2006, at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, in order to discuss ICHS operations between the regular Bureau meetings in Sydney (July 2005) and Santiago de Compostela (October 2006).

Present: José Luis Peset, President, Pierre Ducrey, Treasurer, Jean-Claude Robert, Secretary General.

Agenda:

1.	Welcome
2.	ICHS Operations
3.	Treasurer's Financial Report
4.	ICHS-UNESCO Relations
5.	2010 Congress
6.	Miscellaneous

1. Welcome
 
The President opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to Madrid. He reported on the recent conference held in Rome from September 21-24, 2005, to mark the 50th anniversary of the 10th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome (1955). He highlighted some of the contacts he made, namely with the Italian National Committee and the Vatican.

2. ICHS Operations

Bulletin, Vol. 31 (2005) and Web page

At 258 pages, Bulletin 31 (2005) is quite extensive. In addition to the minutes of the General Assemblies in Sydney and of the Bureau meetings, it contains a list of ICHS archives held at the National Archives of France and in Lausanne. These two locations hold almost all the ICHS’s archives for the 1926-2000 period. The archival guides will also be posted on our Web page. The Bulletin was printed in 700 copies and sent out in mid-December using surface mail to reduce costs, but the size of the Bulletin was still an additional expense. In the future, it would be better to publish no more than 200 pages.

The Web site should be updated by early March, after a small technical problem is solved.

Meetings

Bureau meeting in Santiago de Compostela, 2006
The meeting in Santiago will be shorter than was planned during the last Bureau meeting in Sydney. It will begin on Thursday evening, October 5 and end in the late afternoon of Saturday, October 7. Two full days should be sufficient to cover the agenda.

2007 General Assembly
The General Assembly will be held in Beijing in mid-September 2007. Preparations will soon be underway to set up the logistics related to visa requirements and define the scientific program.

Secretariat and miscellaneous

The post-Sydney period was devoted to extensive work preparing the final report for the workshops organized by the Joint Committee ICHS-UNESCO and the financial report. The Secretary General had signed a service contract with UNESCO on behalf of the ICSH, and our organization was responsible for managing the entire grant.

The Secretary General is concerned with the relative apathy of some members of the ICHS. Some of the National Committees, Organizations and Commissions do not appear to be holding any activities, and their membership appears to be purely nominal. This quinquennium will be devoted to remedying the situation through contacts with the less active members of the ICHS.

In Santiago, Bureau members will take stock of the Sydney Congress and discuss the architecture of the next Congress. The report on the Sydney Congress, prepared by Martyn Lyons, will be sent to all Bureau members. The Secretary General has contacted the Sydney organizers and discussants to ask for their views and suggestions. As soon as all the data is gathered, he will send a brief outline to Bureau members before the meeting.

The Sydney General Assembly gave the Bureau the mandate to report on two issues in Beijing: broadening the ICHS, and preparing the program for the next Congress. To accelerate the process, the Bureau restreint formed two subcommittees to prepare these two dossiers. Each subcommittee will include some Bureau members as well as representatives from National Committees and specialized Commissions. It has been agreed that the first subcommittee responsible for studying the broadening of the ICHS and the question of dues will be chaired by the Treasurer of the ICHS and composed of two Bureau members and two members of the General Assembly. The second subcommittee, which is responsible for studying the preparation of the Congress program and defining the roles of the National Committees and Commissions, will be chaired by the Secretary General and composed of two Bureau members and two members of the General Assembly.

3. Treasurer's Financial Report

The Treasurer presented the provisional accounts for the 2005 operating period, which ended with a deficit of CHF 35’081.25. This outcome is due to the unanticipated cost overruns related to the Sydney Congress, despite the fact that several Bureau members were unable to attend. The Treasurer expressed his concerns about the rising costs of Bureau meetings, which will be increasing again in 2006 given the Bureau’s composition for the 2005-2010 period. He also pointed out that the accounts of the Congress organizing committee are not yet closed and that a few discrepancies remain which Bureau restreint members are working to resolve. Once the discrepancies are eliminated, it will be possible to present the final accounts for 2005.

The Bureau restreint confirmed that the Secretary General and the Treasurer received CHF 7,000 and CHF 3,000 respectively in 2005 to cover administrative costs. These amounts will rise to CHF 9,000 and CHF 3,000 respectively in 2006. It was pointed out that the universities of the Secretary General and the Treasurer contribute a great deal of support.

4. ICHS-UNESCO Relations

ICPHS

The ICPHS is continuing to publish the journal Diogène but has changed its arrangements with the editorial staff. The last issue was devoted to the theme of urban rumours and legends. To read the indexes for the volumes, go to http://www.unesco.org/cipsh/eng/diogene.htm. The CIPSH is also granting a subsidy of approximately U.S.$2,000 for the Sydney Congress to help cover the travel expenses incurred by colleagues from emerging countries. However, this grant to the ICHS has decreased consistently since the Madrid Congress in 1990.

ICHS-UNESCO Joint Committee

As expected, UNESCO pursued its change of policy, and the budget of the Joint Committee has not been renewed for the upcoming biennium. This decision therefore marks the end of the work of this committee, begun in 1997. Nevertheless, Committee Chair Professor Jerzy Kloczowski is expected to contact the members of the UNESCO executive committee to see whether it might be possible to resume the project.

5. 2010 Congress

6. Miscellaneous