Focusing on nation-building challenges in Silesia between 1848 and 1918, the book examines how the German ethnic model influenced Polish and Czech nationalisms. It highlights Silesia as a contested region, sought after by Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, revealing the complexities of identity and cultural claims during this transformative period in Central Europe.
This book discusses historical continuities and discontinuities between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, interwar Poland, the Polish People’s Republic, and contemporary Poland. The year 1989 is seen as a clear point-break that allowed the Poles and their country to regain a ‘natural historical continuity’ with the ‘Second Republic,’ as interwar Poland is commonly referred to in the current Polish national master narrative. In this pattern of thinking about the past, Poland-Lithuania (nowadays roughly coterminous with Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and Ukraine) is seen as the ‘First Republic.’ However, in spite of this ‘politics of memory’ (Geschichtspolitik) – regarding its borders, institutions, law, language, or ethnic and social makeup – present-day Poland, in reality, is the direct successor to and the continuation of communist Poland. Ironically, today’s Poland is very different, in all the aforementioned aspects, from the First and Second Republics. Hence, contemporary Poland is quite un-Polish, indeed, from the perspective of Polishness defined as a historical (that is, legal, social, cultural, ethnic and political) continuity of Poland-Lithuania and interwar Poland.
Focusing on the evolution of Slavic languages, this insightful work highlights the fluidity of language classification and its deep ties to political dynamics in Central Europe. By examining how language decisions reflect broader political contexts, it offers valuable perspectives for scholars interested in the intersection of linguistics and regional politics, making it a critical resource for understanding these complex relationships.
A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe
308 stránek
11 hodin čtení
The atlas presents a detailed exploration of Central Europe's languages through forty-two annotated maps, revealing their historical and political significance. It intertwines linguistics, history, and cartography to provide insights into dialects, alphabets, and migrations from the tenth century onward, with a focus on the last two centuries. The narrative highlights the development of nation-states, emphasizing the connection between language and cultural identity. Ultimately, it encourages readers to view languages as human-made constructs shaped by societal influences.
After the end of communism and the breakups of the studiously anational polities of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia into successor nation-states, nationalism and ethnicity returned to the fore of international politics. Earlier these forces had been relegated to the back burner of history when the Cold War struggle unfolded. But even then the process of decolonization had been none other but the gradual globalization of the nation and nation-state as the most legitimate forms of modern-day peoplehood and statehood. At present, nationalism is the sole uncontested global ideology of statehood legitimization. The ethnic variety of this ideology also forms the basis upon which stateless groups reinvent themselves as nations in order to be able to lay claim to territorial autonomy or separate statehood. This volume inaugurates a new Peter Lang book series, Nationalisms across the Globe , devoted to these burning issues, which shall influence the near future of the world. From a geographical perspective, this collection focuses mainly on Central and Eastern Europe and also Southern Africa. Significantly it also proposes novel theoretical approaches to the phenomena of nationalism and ethnicity.
