This set of essays introduces readers to new historical research on the creation of the new order in East-Central Europe in the period immediately following 1918. The book offers insights into the political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural conditions out of which the New Europe was born. Experts from various countries take into account three perspectives. They give equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts; they recognise that on 11 November 1918, the War ended only on the Western front and violence continued in multiple forms over the next five years; and they show how state-building after 1918 in Central and Eastern Europe was marked by a mixture of innovation and instability. Thus, the volume focuses on three kinds of narratives: those related to conflicts and violence, those related to the recasting of civil life in new structures and institutions, and those related to remembrance and representations of these years in the public sphere. Taking a step towards writing a fully European history of the Great War and its aftermath, the volume offers an original approach to this decisive period in 20th-century European history.

This book presents a multi-layered analysis of the situation in Central Europe after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The new geopolitics emerging from the Versailles order, and at the same time ongoing fights for borders, considerable war damage, social and economic problems and replacement of administrative staff as well as leaders, all contributed to the fact that unlike Western Europe, Central Europe faced challenges and dilemmas on an unprecedented scale. The editors of this book have invited authors from over a dozen academic institutions to answer the question of to what extent the solutions applied in the Habsburg Monarchy were still practiced in the newly created nation states, and to what extent these new political organisms went their own ways. It offers a closer look at Central Europe with its multiple problems typical of that region after 1918 (organizing the post-imperial space, a new political discourse and attempts to create new national memories, the role of national minorities, solving social problems, and verbal and physical violence expressed in public space). Particular chapters concern post-1918 Central Europe on the local, state and international levels, providing a comprehensive view of this sub-region between 1918 and 1923.

On 24 July 1923 the last Treaty ending hostilities in the Great War was signed at Lausanne in Switzerland. That Treaty closed a decade of violence. Jay Winter tells the story of what happened on that day. On the shores of Lake Geneva, diplomats, statesmen, and soldiers came from Ankara and Athens, from London, Paris, and Rome, and from other capital cities to affirm that war was over. The Treaty they signed fixed the boundaries of present-day Greece and Turkey, and marked a beginning of a new phase in their history. That was its major achievement, but it came at a high price. The Treaty contained within it a Compulsory Population Exchange agreement. By that measure, Greek-Orthodox citizens of Turkey, with the exception of those living in Constantinople, lost the right of citizenship and residence in that state. So did Muslim citizens of Greece, except for residents of Western Thrace. This exchange of nearly two million people, introduced to the peace conference by Nobel Prize winner and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, provided a solution to the immense refugee problem arising out of the Greek-Turkish war. At the same time, it introduced into international law a definition of citizenship defined not by language or history or ethnicity, but solely by religion. This set a precedent for ethnic cleansing followed time and again later in the century and beyond. The second price of peace was the burial of commitments to the Armenian people that they would have a homeland in the lands from which they had been expelled, tortured and murdered in the genocide of 1915. This book tells the story of the peace conference, and its outcome. It shows how peace came before justice, and how it set in motion forces leading to the global war that followed in 1939.

Why is Eastern Europe still different from Western Europe, more than a quarter-century after the collapse of Communism? A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present shows how the roots of this difference are based in Eastern Europe's tortured 20th century. Eastern Europe emerged in 1918 as the 'lands between', new states whose weakness vis-à-vis Germany and Soviet Russia soon became obvious. The region was the main killing-field of the Second World War, which visited unimaginable horrors on its inhabitants before their 'liberation' by the Soviets in 1945. The imposition of Communist dictatorships on the region, ironically, only deepened Eastern Europe's backwardness. Even in the post-Communist period, its problems continue to make it a fertile breeding-ground for nationalism and political extremism. A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present explores the comparative backwardness of Eastern Europe and how this has driven strategies of modernisation; it looks at the ways in which the region has served as a giant test-tube for political experimentation and, in particular, at the enduring strength of nationalism, which since 1989 has re-emerged more virulent than ever. This book in the essential textbook for any student of 20th-century Eastern Europe.

France was interwar Poland’s main ally, and the biggest source of the country’s foreign investment. The two roles were closely connected: Paris used its position in Warsaw to win preferential treatment for its firms, while Polish authorities depended on France to finance their modernization policies and military spending. The relationship’s asymmetric character bred conflict, and in the 1930s dissenting voices compared French actions in Poland to imperialism and colonial expansion. This book untangles the complex mix of economics, policy, and politics in Franco-Polish relations. Based on government and company-level sources, it evaluates the part played by French capital in Poland and discovers the mechanisms ruling French FDI and public loans. Exploring case studies of specific sectors and themes, it asks questions about the modernizing potential of FDI, interwar economic imperialism, the workings of asymmetric investment, and the interactions between investments and politics. Understanding the unequal footing of Warsaw and Paris, it goes beyond imperialistic interpretations, and examines the leeway available to the weaker partner of the relationship. The book contributes to economic history of Central and Eastern Europe, and, more generally, to our understanding of the position of peripheral countries in the interwar global system.

The volume focuses on the years following the First World War (1918–1923), when political, military, cultural, social and economic developments consolidated to a high degree in Eastern Europe. This period was shaped, on the one hand, by the efforts to establish an international structure for peace and to set previously oppressed nations on the road to emancipation. On the other hand, it was also defined by political revisionism and territorial claims, as well as a level of political violence that was effectively a continuation of the war in many places, albeit under modified conditions. Political decision-makers sought to protect the emerging nation states from radical political utopias but simultaneously had to rise to the challenges of a social and economic crisis, manage the reconstruction of the many extensively devastated landscapes and provide for the social care and support of victims of war.

This book discusses the active relationship among the mechanics of memory, visual practices, and historical narratives. Reflection on memory and its ties with historical narratives cannot be separated from reflection on the visual and the image as its points of reference which function in time. This volume addresses precisely that temporal aspect of the image, without reducing it to a neutral trace of the past, a mnemotechnical support of memory. As a commemorative device, the image fixes, structures, and crystalizes memory, turning the view of the past into myth. It may, however, also stimulate, transform, and update memory, functioning as a matrix of interpretation and understanding the past. The book questions whether the functioning of the visual matrices of memory can be related to a particular historical and geographical scope, that is, to Central and Eastern Europe, and whether it is possible to find their origin and decide if they are just local and regional or perhaps also Western European and universal. It focuses on the artistic reflection on time and history, in the reconstructions of memory due to change of frontiers and political regimes, as well as endeavours to impose some specific political structure on territories which were complex and mixed in terms of national identity, religion and social composition. The volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, history and visual studies.

This book discusses how societies, groups and individuals remember and make sense of global neoliberal change in Eastern Europe. Such an investigation is all the more timely as the 1990s are increasingly looked to for answers explaining the populist and nationalist turn across the globe. The volume shows how the key processes that impacted many lives across the social spectrum in Eastern Europe, such as deindustrialization, privatization, restitution and abrupt social reorganization, are collectively remembered across society today and how memory narratives of the 1990s contribute to current identities and political climate. This volume establishes the memory of economic transformation as a research focus in its own right. It investigates different levels of memory, from the national through the local to the cultural, analysing key myths of the transformation, giving special recognition to the social space and vernacular memories of the transformation period and reflecting on how the changes of the 1990s are mediated in cultural representations. Given the book’s interdisciplinary scope that covers several fields, it will prove to be of interest to those working in memory studies, contemporary history, sociology, East European area studies and literary and film studies. It will also serve as a significant point of reference for those researching the interdisciplinary and rapidly expanding field of transformation studies and thus is an invaluable source across different fields.

The book argues that religion is a system of significant meanings that have an impact on other systems and spheres of social life, including cultural memory. The editors call for a postsecular turn in memory studies which would provide a more reflective and meaningful approach to the constant interplay between the religious and the secular. This opens up new perspectives on the intersection of memory and religion and helps memory scholars become more aware of the religious roots of the language they are using in their studies of memory. By drawing on examples from different parts of the world, the contributors to this volume explain how the interactions between the religious and the secular produce new memory forms and content in the heterogenous societies of the present-day world. These analyzed cases demonstrate that religion has a significant impact on cultural memory, family memory and the contemporary politics of history in secularized societies. At the same time, politics, grassroots movements and different secular agents and processes have so much influence on the formation of memory by religious actors that even religious, ecclesiastic and confessional memories are affected by the secular. This volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, religious studies and history.

Danubian Europe presented constant and serious security risks for European peace and stability and, for that reason, contrary to conventional wisdom, it commanded the attention of British diplomacy with a view to appeasing local conflicts. Britain and Interwar Danubian Europe examines the manner in which the Foreign Office perceived and treated the antagonism between the Little Entente, comprised of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, and Hungary, on the one hand, and revisionist Bulgaria and her neighbours in the Balkans, on the other, and the impact that these local conflicts had in connection with Franco-Italian rivalry in Central/South-Eastern Europe. With Hitler's accession to power, Danubian Europe was viewed in Whitehall in relation to its place in the prospective policy for preserving Austrian independence and containing German aggression. Dragan Bakic argues that the British approach to security problems in Danubian Europe had certain permanent features which stemmed from the general British outlook on the new successor states -the members of the Little Entente- founded on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy. This book shows that it was the lack of confidence in their stability and permanence, as well as the misperceptions about the motives and intentions of the policies pursued by other Powers towards Central/South-Eastern Europe, which accounted for the apparent sluggishness and ineffectiveness of the Foreign Office's dealings with security challenges. Based on extensive, original archival research, this is a fascinating volume for any historian keen to know more about the 20th-century history of East-Central Europe or British foreign policy in the interwar years.