Europe reframed: regionalisms, sub-state nationalisms and the redrawing of state borders in the interwar period

Europe reframed: regionalisms, sub-state nationalisms and the redrawing of state borders in the interwar period

Veranstalter
NISE (National movements and Intermediary Structures in Europe); in collaboration with Consello da Cultura Galega and Nazioni e Regioni
Veranstaltungsort
Ort
Santia de Compostela
Land
Spain
Vom - Bis
02.06.2020 - 04.06.2020
Deadline
15.02.2020
Von
Joep Leerssen (University of Antwerpen) / Hanno Brand (NISE)

Overall questionnary

The European political landscape of the post-WWI period was faced with a relatively new phenomenon: the geographical outburst of nationalist and regionalist movements. Among the many factors that contributed to this phenomenon, which were closely aligned with the resolutions adopted by the 1919 Peace Treaties two are worth stressing. First, the legal embodiment of the new problematic category of ‘national minorities’, amounting to 25-30 million individuals, in other words 20-25% of the total population of the new States. Secondly, the validation of the principle of national self-determination, especially among the victorious powers. The purportedly Wilsonian slogan of self- determination itself was ambiguous, as there was not always a genuine correspondence between the idea advocated by its official proponents and the actual self-identification of the people concerned, as was demonstrated by numerous plebiscites organized in 1918. Moreover, as Eric Hobsbawm rightly observed, whilst the principle of self-determination had been highly valued until then by nationalist unification movements at the expense of multinational States, from 1919 it impugned the very essence of ‘nationalising States’ (Brubaker), thus becoming source of legitimacy for independence movements.

As the voluminous historiography on the consequences of the 1919 Treaties has confirmed, the implementation of the principles of nationality and national self- determination were fraught with inconsistency, often leading to contradictory and unjust solutions. Whenever a new boundary was drawn, this raised intractable problems at the regional, national and international level. The impossibility of drawing politico-ethnic borders indeed, only served to exacerbate ethnic/national rivalry, especially in the most reframed part of Europe, the former Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires; national minorities in the western States of the Old Continent also voiced their new-found aspirations for autonomy or independence.

The Santiago de Compostela conference follows and complements the one held in Warsaw in May 2019 which focused mainly on the problematics of reframing diversity as formalised in Minority Treaties. This follow-up raises three issues:

1. How regionalisms and sub-state nationalisms evolved in the interwar period, from the establishment of the 1919 Peace Treaties to the outbreak of Second World War. In this regard, we welcome papers about the fault lines and the continuities in these movements vis-à-vis their emergence moment in the immediate aftermath of WWI.

2. The considerable increase of new ‘irredentist’ minorities –(those which became so after their incorporation in new states (e.g., Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, Slovenes in Austria, Germans in Czechoslovakia)– as the new dominant nations that applied the same uniformity policies which pre-1919 had been rejected by the minorities of that period.

3. The various subsidiary minorities within regions claiming self- determination, re-unification with the nation or with lost territories.

Topics may include (but are by no means limited to):
- self-determination in the interwar years
- from region to nation
- the construction of de-centralized and subaltern structures
- secession and independent states
- irredentism and state concurrence
- irredentism and dissident minorities
- irredentism and emerging states

Subscription

Successful applicants for the 2020 Santiago-de-Compostela will give the right of first publication to the organizers of the conference.

Please send a 500 word abstract of your paper and a short academic biography of 5 lines to eva.bidania@nise.eu

Successful applicants are requested to send in a draft paper of max. 1500 words (that has not been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere) by 15 May 2020. These drafts will be circulated among the participants of the conference.

Additional Information

This conference welcomes reflections and case studies from across the field of the social sciences and the humanities. The aim is to publish an edited volume or a themed issue of NISE’s international and peer reviewed academic journal Studies on National Movements and to collect and collate data within the NISE digital research environment DIANE (Digital Infrastructure for the Analysis of National movements in Europe).

Programm

Kontakt

Eva Bidania

NISE
c/o ADVN
Lange Leemstraat 26
B-2018 Antwerpen

eva.bidania@nise.eu

http://www.nise.eu/call-for-papers-nise-conference-on-2-4-june-2020-santiago-de-compostela/
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Englisch
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