Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Routledge History of East Central Europe offers a comprehensive, yet concise introduction to the history and historiography of the region, while also featuring some of the latest research and methodological innovation in the field. The book brings together an excellent team of historians from Europe and North America, representing some of the best recent work on the political, economic, gender, and cultural history of East Central Europe. Collectively, the diverse thematic chapters deliver a compelling narrative of three centuries of turbulent history in a region that was the epicenter of conflict between imperial and national forms of identification and governance. As the authors demonstrate through a full range of conceptual lenses, empire and nation themselves were historical artifacts, both shaped by and actively shaping economic, gender, political, demographic, and cultural history."
- Eagle Glassheim, University of British Columbia, Canada
"This impressive survey of the territory between German lands and those of Russia, including the Balkans, treats history and historiography. It is fully abreast of current scholarship and methodology, clearly written by a first-rate international team of contributors whose own research is evident, shows the region in all its complexities, and is well edited by Livezeanu (Univ. of Pittsburgh) and von Klimó (Catholic Univ.)."
-P. W. Knoll, University of Southern California
"The volume manages to convey and reflect on several of the dominant historiographic trends and key research findings in the English-language scholarship of recent decades, and it presents a rich, thoughtful, and accessible new history of a highly complex region over three centuries."
- Ferenc Laczó, Maastricht University in Hungarian Historical Review
"In terms of general conclusions, the volume has achieved its objective of becoming a reference work. It gives due weight to recent historiographical developments, as additionally reflected in the chapter endnotes and suggestions for further reading. Moreover, the authors take the welcome liberty of providing thought-provoking vignettes, which should be stimulating for established practitioners and especially graduate students. All told, this would be more than a worthwhile purchase for a research library..."
- Matei Costinescu, H-Net
"Scholars of the field and their graduate students will want this book on their office shelves. It is a pleasure to read a synopsis of the region that tries to de-essentialize east central Europe by appropriately highlighting constant change and development."
- Andrea Orzoff, Slavic Review
"The Routledge History of East Central Europe offers a comprehensive, yet concise introduction to the history and historiography of the region, while also featuring some of the latest research and methodological innovation in the field. The book brings together an excellent team of historians from Europe and North America, representing some of the best recent work on the political, economic, gender, and cultural history of East Central Europe. Collectively, the diverse thematic chapters deliver a compelling narrative of three centuries of turbulent history in a region that was the epicenter of conflict between imperial and national forms of identification and governance. As the authors demonstrate through a full range of conceptual lenses, empire and nation themselves were historical artifacts, both shaped by and actively shaping economic, gender, political, demographic, and cultural history."
Eagle Glassheim, University of British Columbia, Canada
Table of ContentsList of maps
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
List of contributors
Introduction
Irina Livezeanu and Arpad von Klimo
1 – Space: Empires, Nations, Borders
Bernhard Struck and James Koranyi
2 – Rural and Urban Worlds: Between Economic Modernization and Persistent Backwardness
Jacek Kochanowicz and Bogdan Murgescu
3 – Demography and Population Movements
Theodora Dragostinova and David Gerlach
4 – Religion and Ethnicity: Conflicting and Converging Identifications
Joel Brady and Edin Hajdarpasic
5 – The Cultures of East Central Europe: Imperial, National, Revolutionary
Irina Livezeanu, Thomas Ort and Alex Drace-Francis
6 – Women’s and Gender History
Krassimira Daskalova and Susan Zimmerman
7 – Political Ideologies and Political Movements
Ulf Brunnbauer and Paul Hanebrink
8 – Communism and Its Legacy
Malgorzata Fidelis and Irina Gigova
9 – Returning to ‘Europe’ and the Rise of Europragmatism: Party Politics and the European Union since 1989
Reinhard Heinisch
10 – Uses and Abuses of the Past
Patrice Dabrowski and Stefan Troebst
Index
