Nations, States, and Conflict in Central Europe

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-32
Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
National Project ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Long Run ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Democratic Nation ◽  
The Great War

Chapter 1 describes the rise of nations in Central Europe, with an emphasis on developments in the tripartite Polish lands under German, Austrian, and Russian rule. Following a recent trend in historiography, it questions the nationalistic master narrative of “oppressive empires” in decline and “democratic nation states” on the rise. With the notable exception of armed insurrections and revolutions, in the long run their relation was one of negotiation rather than of antagonism. Between the Congress of Vienna and the outbreak of the Great War, the area witnessed a century of relative calm. Nevertheless, ethnic nationalism challenged the multinational imperial order. With the empires gone, from 1918 onwards, the new nation states of Central and Southeastern Europe divided their respective populations into titular nations versus minorities, thus defining who was part of the “national project,” and who was not. This exclusive nationalism led to ethnic conflict and war.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Military Units

In Central Europe, 1918 marked not only the demise of the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires, but also the rise of a multitude of nation states. Poland, re-erected after 123 years of partition, was at the center of events, independence having been the dream of its elites since the nineteenth century. But the formation of the Polish Second Republic was not the result of a united effort of the whole Polish nation, its political leaders, and military units—first and foremost the legendary “Legions”—during and after the Great War. In reality, in late 1918, there was no united Polish nation, leadership, or army to speak of. The rural masses did not take up the call to arms, the political factions were at war with one another, and the country was on the brink of a domestic war, while marauding soldiers killed Jews and harassed the whole civilian population.

The Central European Civil War

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-145
Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Central European ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
The Way

Between 1918 and 1921, Central Europe witnessed several military conflicts which in the past were regarded as rather isolated. Chapter 3 argues that we learn much more about their nature if we underline their similarities rather than their differences. Actually, they can be interpreted as part of a Central European Civil War, which served the new nation states to secure their share of the imperial heritage. Civil war is thus defined as a common experience of fratricidal war in postwar Central Europe. Subsequently, the conflicts at Poland’s borders from the northeast to the southwest are described with an emphasis on their paramilitary character and the way they affected the civil population which was caught in their crossfire. Simultaneously, inner conflict threatened the state’s existence: its leadership prepared for a domestic war, and even the Soviet invasion of 1920 did not motivate Polish peasants to join the colors.

“Scramble for Adria”: Discourses of Appropriation of the Adriatic Space Before and After World War I

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 16-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Borut Klabjan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Adriatic Sea ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Space ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Before And After ◽  
New Nation ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Local Narratives ◽  
Shed Light

This essay aims to shed light on the ways in which several empires, states, and nationalist movements competed for political power in the Adriatic space. In particular, it analyzes the ways in which international, national, and local narratives converged in the critical political and economic space of the Adriatic Sea both before and after World War I to justify territorial appropriation. The possibility of geopolitical changes triggered by the Great War whetted the territorial appetites of the new nation-states that had established themselves on the ruins of multinational empires in 1918. At the same time, the same possibilities spurred Italian irredentist aspirations, as Italy directed its imperial policy increasingly toward the East. Hence, the phrase “Scramble for Africa,” which prompted the title of this article, can also be applied to the Adriatic space in the same period.

Post-imperial Europe: Integration through Disintegration

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-75
Author(s):  
Vladimir Biti
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Nation State ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Nation States ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Cross National

In the post-imperial East Central Europe after the dissolution of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires, disappointment was commonplace. The imperial successor states were involved in revengeful animosities with neighbouring states, torn by their majority population’s hatred of domestic minorities, bereft of tens of millions of their co-nationals who had remained in now foreign nation-states, exposed to huge influxes of refugees, and embittered by the territorial concessions that they were forced to make. By contrast, the newly established nation-states were plagued by miserable social and economic conditions, poor infrastructures, unemployment, inflation, rigid and immobile social stratification, and corrupt and inefficient administrations. Such developments gave rise to huge and traumatic deportations and migrations of populations, which, paradoxically, simultaneously immensely increased the mobility of their imagination. Using the technique of ‘subversive mimicry’, these nationally indistinct elements established cross-national transborder communities as the zones of ‘national indifference’ within the new nation-states. Carried by the energy of their longing, these communities introduced imbalances, fissures, and divisions into the nation-state communities, which determined their belonging.

Toward an Inventory of Basic Trends and Patterns in Comparative and International Politics

1960 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl W. Deutsch
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
General Context ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The World ◽  
New Nation ◽  
The Masses

Recent decades have seen a vast increase of research in international relations, as in all fields of political and social science. We have more facts and many more expressions of opinion, and we are facing increasingly serious problems of reorientation. We know that much in the world of relations among nations has changed and is still changing, but what is the nature of this change? Is the world becoming more international? Is it turning into one world in which even the United States and the Soviet Union are influencing each other ever more, or at least into two worlds of two rival and ever more tightty integrated Communist and non-Communist blocs? Is the nation-state being superseded by the rise of new continent-wide or ocean-wide treaty organizations or federations?And what is happening within most of the old and new nation-states, as they enter upon these new arrangements? Are their governments becoming more stable or less? Are their political and administrative capabilities rising or declining? Are power and prestige within these states shifting toward the elites or toward the masses of their populations? Are political controls of economic life in the long run growing or receding? Are we moving toward a world of “garrison states” or toward a world of “open societies,” or is the world moving in uncharted directions for which not even images have yet been found?Surely, these seem sweeping questions. Scholars and men of affairs might be tempted to put them aside, and to turn their attention to the immediate business at hand. They may prefer the study of some particular conflict between two countries, or of the interests of this or that state, or of the merits of this or that policy at some particular moment. All serious questions, it has been argued, are particular and perhaps unique, and any broader and more general answers might be neither warranted nor wanted.Such a retreat into the exclusive study of small-scale and short-range problems is based upon a fallacy. We cannot think about particular problems without making assumptions about the general context of the world in which they occur. Usually these assumptions are intuitive and vague. We form some indefinite conception of how states of a particular size and type of government and culture are expected to behave at particular times and places, and we feel surprised when some particular country departs strikingly from these half-formed expectations.

Comments: Contesting And Constructing National Identity in Central Europe

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-497
Author(s):  
Daniel Unowsky
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Nation States ◽  
School Text ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Political Economic

With his contingent of geographers, historians, and other academic “experts” collectively known as The Inquiry in tow, Woodrow Wilson arrived in Paris in January 1919 to redraw the map of Europe. Wilson wanted to fulfill his Fourteen Points and guarantee national self-determination to the peoples of Europe. A peaceful community of ethnically homogeneous nation-states was to replace the great multinational empires (defined by central European nationalists as prisons of the peoples) that had previously dominated central and eastern Europe. During the inter-war period, the governing elites of central Europe, their new “nation-states” legitimated by the post-war settlement, created new national holidays, national anthems, and nationalist school text books lauding the history and achievements of the state-bearing nation. These simple and seemingly coherent national narratives elided the messy, confusing, and jumbled past of multiple identities, mingled ethnic groups, and alienated social orders, and legitimized political, economic, and territorial claims made in the name of the “national community” lending its name to the new state.

Civil War in Central Europe, 1918-1921

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
Central European ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Great War

The Great War had come to an end in Europe in November 1918, but Central Europe did not come to a rest. The demise of the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires had left a geographical void, a theatre of armed conflicts between the imperial heirs for years to come: the Central European nation states. The Second Republic of Poland was one of them. Historiography has described these postwar struggles as rather unrelated conflicts. This book argues that they were much more part of one Central European Civil War. Since re-erected Poland was at the center of events, it provides a perfect case study and tells the story of this civil war in a nutshell. It challenged its neighbors on all frontiers: Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Soviets to the northeast, Germans to the west, and Czechs to the south. A concise history of these related conflicts questions their common perception as moments of national bravado. In the embattled borderlands, nationality was not a constant, and national independence therefore not a matter of course. The people living there experienced the Central European Civil War rather as a tragedy, when brothers had to fight against brothers. Clearly defined nations did not exist in late 1918 Central Europe, they were rather forged in the fires of a civil war which shook the area for almost three years. Furthermore, in the leeway of these conflicts, Poland—like many other parts of Europe—witnessed a wave of paramilitary violence, with its own soldiers running wild beyond the battlefields.

scholarly journals Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Case of Central Europe

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3415
Author(s):  
Bartosz Jóźwik ◽  
Antonina-Victoria Gavryshkiv ◽  
Phouphet Kyophilavong ◽  
Lech Euzebiusz Gruszecki
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Environmental Kuznets Curve ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Kuznets Curve ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Ekc Hypothesis ◽  
Central European ◽  
Long Run

The rapid economic growth observed in Central European countries in the last thirty years has been the result of profound political changes and economic liberalization. This growth is partly connected with reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, the problem of CO2 emissions seems to remain unresolved. The aim of this paper is to test whether the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis holds true for Central European countries in an annual sample data that covers 1995–2016 in most countries. We examine cointegration by applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag bound testing. This is the first study examining the relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth in individual Central European countries from a long-run perspective, which allows the results to be compared. We confirmed the cointegration, but our estimates confirmed the EKC hypothesis only in Poland. It should also be noted that in all nine countries, energy consumption leads to increased CO2 emissions. The long-run elasticity ranges between 1.5 in Bulgaria and 2.0 in Croatia. We observed exceptionally low long-run elasticity in Estonia (0.49). Our findings suggest that to solve the environmental degradation problem in Central Europe, it is necessary to individualize the policies implemented in the European Union.

International Human Rights, Religious Pluralism and the Future of Chieftaincy in Ghana

Exchange ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abamfo Atiemo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Customary Practices

AbstractA revolutionary development that resulted from Africa's experience of colonialism was the emergence of the nation-state made up of previously separate ethnic states. By the end of the colonial period the rulers of these ethnic states — the chiefs — had lost most of their real political and judicial powers to the political leaders of the new nation-states. But in spite of the loss of effective political power the chiefs continued to wield moral influence over members of their ethnic groups. The limited reach of the nation-state in the post-colonial era has also meant a dependence on the chiefs, in many cases, for aspects of local governance. This, for example, is the case of Ghana. However, in the modern context of religious pluralism the intimate bond between the chiefs and the traditional religion exacerbates tension in situations of conflict between people's loyalty to the traditional state and their religious commitment. In some cases, chiefs invoke customary laws in attempt to enforce sanctions against individuals who refuse to observe certain customary practices for religious reasons. But this has implications for the human rights of citizens. This article discusses the implications of this situation for the future of chieftaincy as well as prospects for the protection of the human rights of citizens who for religious reasons choose to stay away from certain communal customary practices.

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