From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe, 1^st Edition

Princeton University Press  |   2020   |   ISBN-13: 9780691189185

This book offers a sweeping narrative of European history, including German history, from the late eighteenth century to today. In the 1780s, the Habsburg monarch Joseph II decreed that henceforth German would be the language of his realm. He intended to forge a unified state from his vast and disparate possessions, but his action had the opposite effect, catalyzing the emergence of competing nationalisms among his Hungarian, Czech, and other subjects, who feared that their languages and cultures would be lost. In this sweeping narrative history of Eastern Europe since the late eighteenth century, the author connects the stories of the region's diverse peoples, telling how, at a profound level, they have a shared understanding of the past. An ancient history of invasion and migration made the region into a cultural landscape of extraordinary variety, a patchwork in which Slovaks, Bosnians, and countless others live shoulder to shoulder and where calls for national autonomy often have had bloody effects among the interwoven ethnicities. This book traces the rise of nationalism in Polish, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman lands; the creation of new states after the First World War and their later absorption by the Nazi Reich and the Soviet Bloc; the reemergence of democracy and separatist movements after the collapse of communism; and the recent surge of populist politics throughout the region. Because of this common experience of upheaval, East Europeans are people with an acute feeling for the precariousness of history: they know that nations are not eternal, but come and go; sometimes they disappear. This book tells their story.

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The History of Croatia and Slovenia, 1^st Edition

Greenwood Publishing Group  |   2020   |   ISBN-13: 9781440873232

The recent histories of Croatia and Slovenia have been relatively stable, as both countries have merged successfully into modern Europe. But how did these countries arrive at such a place? This book provides factual overviews of these countries' political systems, geographical details, significant individuals, and more. The volume opens with the prehistoric and ancient roots of these states, though this history predates their modern, ethnic, and linguistic identities as we know them. Chapters cover the Roman period, followed by barbarian waves and the countries' subsequent absorption into the Venetian, Hungarian, and Holy Roman Empires. The modern period of national awakening in the nineteenth century, when the ethnogenesis of modern Croatia and Slovenia began, is covered in great detail. The volume additionally covers subsequent turbulent events, such as World War I (1914–1918), World War II (1939–1945), the Holocaust, Communist Yugoslavia and its civil wars of the 1990s, through the events of 2019. Written in approachable yet scholarly language, this volume is ideal for high school and university students as well as any reader interested in Balkan or European history.

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Which European Union?: Europe after the Euro Crisis, 1^st Edition

Cambridge University Press  |   2015   |   ISBN-13: 9781316237472

The European debt crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis, is a multi-year debt crisis that has been taking place in the European Union (EU) since the end of 2009. Sergio Fabbrini argues that the EU is made up of states pursuing different aims, rather than simply moving in the same direction at different speeds. He describes the alternative perspectives on the EU (an economic community, an intergovernmental union, and a parliamentary union), that led to multiple compromises in its structure and shows how the Euro crisis has called them into question. The book argues that a new European political order is necessary to deal with the consequences of the crisis, based on an institutional differentiation between the EU member states interested only in market cooperation and those advancing toward a genuine economic and monetary union. Such a differentiation would allow the latter group to become a political union, conceptualized as a compound union of states and citizens while preserving a revised framework of a single market in which both groups of states can participate.

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