Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most indigenous elites tended to possess religious, ethnic, or status-based identities rather than national identities. Why then did the desires of a typically small number result in wave after wave of new states? The answer has customarily centered on the actions of "nationalists" against weakening empires during a time of proliferating beliefs that "peoples" should control their own destiny. This book upends conventional wisdom by demonstrating that nationalism often existed more in the perceptions of external observers than of local activists and insurgents. Lynn M. Tesser adds nuance to scholarship that assumes most, if not all, pre-independence unrest was nationalist and separatist, and sheds light on why the various demands for change eventually coalesced around independence in some cases but not others.
This book offers the first multi-case analysis of the politics of ethnic remixing in an expanding EU, including studies on Central Europe, the Balkans and Cyprus. Tesser explains the politics of minority return in a post-national Europe, with particular attention to the long-term aftermath of minority removal as a conflict resolution policy.
Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most indigenous elites tended to possess religious, ethnic, or status-based identities rather than national identities. Why then did the desires of a typically small number result in wave after wave of new states? The answer has customarily centered on the actions of "nationalists" against weakening empires during a time of proliferating beliefs that "peoples" should control their own destiny. This book upends conventional wisdom by demonstrating that nationalism often existed more in the perceptions of external observers than of local activists and insurgents. Lynn M. Tesser adds nuance to scholarship that assumes most, if not all, pre-independence unrest was nationalist and separatist, and sheds light on why the various demands for change eventually coalesced around independence in some cases but not others.
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