Negotiating post-imperial transitions: from remobilization to nation-state consolidation. A comparative study of local and regional transitions in post-Habsburg East and Central Europe

Project Information

NEPOSTRANS

Grant agreement ID: 772264

DOI

10.3030/772264

Project closed

EC signature date 7 February 2018

Start date 1 March 2018

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 963 075,00

EU contribution

€ 1 963 075,00

Coordinated by

POLITIKATORTENETI INTEZET KOZHASZNU NON PROFIT KFT
Hungary

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - NEPOSTRANS (Negotiating post-imperial transitions: from remobilization to nation-state consolidation. A comparative study of local and regional transitions in post-Habsburg East and Central Europe)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

At the end of WWI several smaller states replaced large imperial constructs in the East of Europe. For a century, this event was seen as a manifestation of a better world, bringing historical justice and freedom for the people – despite all the subsequent ills and horrors this principle inflicted on the same people. Our project challenges this interpretation at its foundation – seeking answer for the question what exactly the population experienced between the middle of WWI and the end of the 1920s. How their local worlds interacted with nation-states, how much they were willing to preserve what they considered important from empires.
It is not simply about redeeming the memory of a world long lost. We aim at understanding better how modern states and societies engage with and shape each other. In turn we analyse nine regions from Austria-Hungary and go over how statehood became reality, how elites dealt with the changes, how much ethnicity – the principle of nationality – was a social reality in this process, and how discourses situated those local, often backward worlds. Through their comparison, we hope to develop a typology of transition, and grasp the factors and aspects of local diversity of statehood in transformatory moments.
We have found that post-WWI nation-states consciously used the legacy of imperial statehood for their own consolidation. In this process local elites - old or new - were important players who could gain important concessions, deviations from the formal rules of he homogeneous nation state. Informality became a structural constituent of statehood and the state's sovereignty resembled a patchwork in its application. The local turned out to be crucial for grounding states - a lesson for today too.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project we held regular bi-weekly or weekly online meetings and two workshops per year. We had a thematic project conference every year, two in the last one and we co-organized events with other projects regularly. Looking for synergies with the broader field of imperial and post-imperial history of Central and Eastern Europe we had a seminar series that highlighted relevant ongoing or recent work.
We prepared three thematic journal issues on the state, on elites and locality and on the transition in general. A popularizing volume was published in Open Access in ten languages, and four thematic volumes and a final monograph is in the making.
The project was the partner of a contemporary art exhibition on Central Europe (Bordeland case?). Based on the popularizing volume we organized workshops with history teachers to discuss how our results could be integrated in education the most efficiently. Finally, we held an international secondary school competition.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We challenge the triumphalist and teleological narratives of the inevitability of nation states but not simply claiming the opposite. We want to understand how people gain agency and define their worlds, and also how long-established practices, habits, institutions survive watershed moments. They were crucial, we presume, for the success or failure of the new states.
We expect to craft a new, more individual-centred and diverse narrative of 20th century history, together with a more elaborate, complex and flexible interpretation of the state and statehood, state-society relationship. Finally, with a typology of transitions in the East of Europe we not only promise to change how we think of crucial moments in history: with models of transition as an interpretative tool for all regions, we place the East of the continent at the centre of its history.

The Nepostrans team in action at the book manuscript workshop in Zebegény