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.

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.

Textbook Conflicts in South Asia

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepa Nair
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
South Asia ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
National Memory ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
New Nation

The aftermath of World War II saw the emergence of many new nation-states on the Asian geopolitical map and a simultaneous attempt by these states to claim the agency of nationhood and to create an aura of a homogenous national identity. Textbooks have been the most potent tools used by nations to inject an idea of a national memory - in many instances with utter disregard for fundamental contradictions within the socio-political milieu. In South Asia, political sensitivity towards transmission of the past is reflected in the attempts of these states to revise or rewrite versions which are most consonant with the ideology of dominant players (political parties, religious organizations, ministries of education, publishing houses, NGOs, etc.) concerning the nature of the state and the identity of its citizens. This paper highlights the fundamental fault lines in the project of nation-building in states in South Asia by locating instances of the revision or rewriting of dominant interpretations of the past. By providing an overview of various revisionist exercises in South Asia, an attempt will be made to highlight important issues that are fundamental to the construction of identities in this diverse continent.

The integration of immigrants within the framework of the European Union: the field, the stakeholders, the strategies

1970 ◽  
pp. 247-274
Author(s):  
Luca Sebastiani
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Policy Tools ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Control Policies ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Integration Of Immigrants ◽  
The Way

Over the past decade the European Union has witnessed a process of increasing discursive production, as well as the development of soft policy tools around the concept of integration —thus occupying a political space which had been previously an exclusive domain of nation states. This paper focuses on the most significant moments of the aforementioned process, dealing with the most influential stakeholders involved in it and with their different perspectives, standpoints and strategies. By adopting a qualitative perspective and a deconstructive approach, it shows the way in which the currently hegemonic concept of integration is closely conditioned by a «Home Affairs approach» and linked to immigration-control policies. Far from being the necessary outcome of a predetermined dynamics, this situation is rather the overall result of the «moves» made by situated actors. 

The Meaning of Irish Freedom Constitutionalism in the Free State

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 45-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Townshend
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Free State ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Die Life ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Autonomous State ◽  
The Military

The performance of Ireland as an autonomous state since 1922 remains a contentious subject. Joseph Lee's withering critique of Irish economic backwardness and cultural parochialism, which he holds to be rooted in a narrow adhesion to the ‘possessor principle’ against the ‘performance ethic’, charts a long-term failure to rise to the challenge of statehood. It is not appropriate here to attempt even a summary of his sprawling, bristling account; I want to focus on an aspect highlit by Denis Donoghue when he reviewed it in die London Review of Books. ‘The first and most important fact about modern Ireland,’ Donoghue contended, ‘is that, after die Civil War, there was unquestioned transition to democracy.’ On this view, modern Irish history is, pace Lee, in essence a success story. As Brian Farrell put it, die capacity of die Irish parliamentary tradition to ‘encompass, neutralise and institutionalise’ the disastrous split of 1922 ‘makes die Irish experience unique among the new nation-states of the twentiedi-century world’. Tom Garvin has recendy reinforced this verdict by pointing to the surprising speed with which any tendency to military intervention in Irish politics disappeared. This after a Civil War in which die new Army—lacking any experience of subordination to the civil power— had saved die life of the infant Irish Free State. Indeed, far from witnessing the politicisation of the military, Ireland ‘rapidly became one of the most demilitarised societies in Europe’.

scholarly journals The Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-274
Author(s):  
Katalin Szende
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Project Phases

This article surveys the work carried out in the past two decades on the Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns in a Central European context. With its more than 550 atlases published in nineteen European countries in the last fifty years, the European Atlas of Historic Towns is one of the most comprehensive collaborative projects in the field of humanities. The countries of East Central Europe could join the project only after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and Hungary published its first atlas as late as 2010. In four subsequent project phases, the Hungarian atlas team has been working on nineteen atlases of eighteen towns, out of which eight have been published so far. The editors follow the standards set by the International Commission for the History of Towns and have adopted best practices represented by the Austrian, Polish and Irish atlas series. In addition to describing the source basis and the main methodological concerns, the article highlights examples of comparative urban research for which the atlases offer an unparalleled potential. The article also advocates a more extensive use of this exceptional resource.

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.

Weapons of Mass Instruction

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Ingrao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Uncritical Acceptance

History schoolbooks are part of a much broader legitimation process through which every society's ruling elite secures the uncritical acceptance of the existing political, social and economic system, together with the cultural attributes that re ect its hegemony. In central Europe, the need to justify the creation of nation-states at the beginning and end of the twentieth century has generated proprietary accounts that have pitted the region's national groups against one another. Post-communist democratization has intensi ed these divisions as political leaders feel obliged to employ hoary myths—and avoid inconvenient facts— about their country's history in order to survive the electoral process. In this way they succumb to the "Frankenstein Syndrome" by which the history taught in the schools destroys those who dare to challenge the arti cial constructs of the past. The article surveys history teaching throughout central Europe, with special emphasis on the Yugoslav successor states.

scholarly journals Trends in Investment Treaty Making: Finding Balance between National Sovereignty and Investment Protection

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Martin Karas
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
Investment Protection ◽  
The Past ◽  
Investment Treaty ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Investment Treaties ◽  
Investment Agreements ◽  
The Way

The debate over the prevalence of nation states as the main actors in the international arena has been going on for the past 40 years. This article focuses on a single aspect of the debate, namely the national sovereignty of states within the neoliberal investment regimes. The argument I make in this article is that while investment treaty-making in the past contributed to limiting the sovereign powers of governments in the domain of investment regulation, recent trends suggest that the states are actively seeking to increase their regulatory space. In order to demonstrate this, I develop a theoretical framework bases on the competing concepts of “right to regulate” and “investment protection”. This framework is subsequently used to compare investment treaties signed in the 1990s with some of the most significant recently signed investment agreements. The analysis shows the way in which the more recent investment treaties increase the regulatory space of the states, which strengthens their national sovereignty.

Forced Migrations in Central European History

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dariusz Stola
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Major Part ◽  
European History ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Central European ◽  
Involuntary Movements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
Migratory Movements

In Central Europe, forced migrations constitute a considerable and in some countries a major part of all migratory movements in modern history. They take place now and will probably affect the future of the region. This article presents the basic information on the major Central European involuntary movements of the last 200 years. It emphasizes the first half of this century, especially the “black decade” (1939–1949)—the apogee of forced migrations. The article indicates several factors, known from the past movements, which persist or re-emerge in today's Central Europe and may have impact on future migrations.

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