Armour - A History of Eastern Europe 1740-1918: Empires, Nations and Modernisation

Empires, Nations and Modernisation

SECOND EDITION

Ian D. Armour

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC

First published by Hodder Education in 2006

This edition published in 2012 by

Bloomsbury Academic

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Copyright Ian D. Armour 2012

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ISBN 978-1-84966-488-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-84966-660-2 (ebook)

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Cover design: Adam Yeldham
Cover images: Alamy and Raven Design

It is now over five years since A History of Eastern Europe was first published by Hodder Arnold, and I am grateful to Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to update it for a second edition. I am also grateful to Bloomsbury for agreeing to restore the original subtitle, which neatly summarises the books underlying thematic preoccupations.

Writing a general textbook of this nature is a sure-fire antidote to academic hubris. While the freedom to range far and wide, rummaging about in other peoples specialisms, is in many respects liberating, the further one goes down this route, the more obvious it becomes how limited is ones own knowledge and understanding. At the end of several years labour on this inherently impossible packaging exercise, I could only hope, in 2006, that readers would bear in mind the difficulties of the genre, and that students in particular would find the book of use. As it has since been adopted as a recommended text by several history departments teaching East European history, it appears to be filling a particular need.

The book had its origins in my experience teaching the survey course Quest for Modernity, on Eastern Europe since 1740, at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London between 1993 and 1996. I shall always be grateful to Dr Mark Wheeler, who initially asked me to help with the teaching of the course, and to the late Professor Lindsey Hughes, then head of department, who gave me the opportunity to continue teaching it on my own when Mark Wheeler left SSEES. At the time it struck both me and my students that while twentieth-century Eastern Europe was already well served by a number of texts, the preceding, but crucially formative, century and a half or so was less adequately covered. The present text is the result.

Rather against the wise advice of one of Hodder Arnolds readers of the original proposal, who commented that a thematic or conceptual approach would have made the task easier, I opted for an essentially narrative structure, dealing with individual empires or regions in turn, in the belief that a textbook must fulfil certain practical and informative functions, and that a primarily undergraduate readership would profit from this most. While the structure of the book has not been changed for this second edition, I have to some extent expanded the discussion of nationalism, and of how multinational empires coped with nationalism, to take account of some of the more recent literature on these subjects. In addition, the notes and bibliography have been substantially added to, a reflection of the volume of new work that continues to appear in this field. I am grateful to the four anonymous readers of the revised text, whose helpful suggestions have been incorporated as far as possible.

Many people assisted in translating the original idea into publishable form. I am grateful to Christopher Wheeler, commissioning editor for what was then Edward Arnold, for positively inviting me to undertake the project, and to a succession of Hodder Arnold editors for their indulgence, notably Jamilah Ahmed, Tiara Misquitta and Liz Wilson. Former colleagues at Staffordshire University, especially Martin Brown and Don MacIver, were generous with constructive criticisms, and I was indebted to the History team at SSEES (by then part of University College London) for providing a temporary but extremely congenial academic home during 20056. Thanks also go to Esther MacKay for repeatedly putting up with me on research trips to London. At Grant MacEwan College, now Grant MacEwan University, since 2006, I have benefited from the stimulating and friendly company, not only of the History team but also of colleagues from other disciplines, as well as from the excellent resources of the institution. It is also worth noting that the second edition has profited from being used as the set text for three successive versions of my course on Nationalism vs. Empire: The Multinational Empires of Eastern Europe 18041918; I am also indebted to the excellent work done by many of my students on this course. The team at Bloomsbury, in particular Emily Salz and Jennifer Dodd, has been extremely helpful as well as patient over the past year, as this second edition took shape.

Finally, my wife Jane Leaper was a constant intellectual companion in the writing of this book as well as a searching critic of successive chapters; her patent scepticism as to whether I would ever finish was a major stimulus to doing so. As the book goes into its second edition, I can only apologise to her for the fact that it has not yet funded our early retirement. Can-Can, Kissy, Spud and Small all helped by leaving their paw-prints on the original manuscript; Spud and the obnoxious newcomer, Zed, continue to supply all our cat needs.

Ian D. Armour
Edmonton, Alberta
7 July 2011

DEFINITION

Where is Eastern Europe? Does the term have any meaning at all, now that the cold war has ended and the literally physical division of Europe between East and West has disappeared? The premise of this book is that the answer to the latter question must still be yes. Why that is so, however, depends on how one answers the first question, on the definition of Eastern Europe.

For the purposes of this book, Eastern Europe is defined as the area stretching from the present-day Baltic states of

In terms of todays political boundaries, the above definition is a geographical one only. The governments of some of the states listed above, not to mention their inhabitants, would object bitterly to being classified as part of Eastern Europe. Put differently, therefore, the present work is a pre-history of those states which emerged in this region by, or since, 1918 and of their peoples.

It was only in the twentieth century that the concept of Eastern Europe was formulated, when it was generally perceived that this area was different from Western, and to some extent Central, Europe. This was not just because of the foundation or expansion of states on territory formerly subsumed within the much larger

The rationale for the present work is that this East European difference was forged in the century and a half preceding 1918, in a period when, conceptually at least, Eastern Europe did not exist. Instead, the area was originally divided between conglomerate, multinational empires. Yet throughout the period in question, all these empires and the nation-states and nationalities which with time emerged from them had to come to terms with their backwardness as powers as well as their own rivalries and the way in which the nationalism of their constituent peoples complicated both internal affairs and international relations.