National indifference is the status of lacking a strong and consistent national identity. The concept was originated by scholars of the Bohemian lands, where many inhabitants historically resisted classification as either Czechs or Germans, around 2000. [1] It was outlined by Tara Zahra in her 2010 paper published in Slavic Review , "Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis". [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] In 2016, an academic conference was held in Prague to discuss the concept. [1]
Zahra notes that even as most scholars accept that nationalities are imagined communities, they continue to use national categories, such "the Czechs", "the Germans", etc. in an uncritical way. According to Zahra, national indifference is "a new label for phenomena that have long attracted the attention of historians and political activists" [9] —particularly negative attention from nationalists complaining about perceived disloyalty. [9] [10] Zahra intends the concept of national indifference to provide a means of studying history without assuming national identities of historical subjects. It also helps to study the resistance of pre-nationalist identities to nationalist activism, usually in cases where either one or multiple nationalism movements attempt to mobilize a population. She outlines three types of national indifference: [1]
She concedes that national indifference is difficult to study, because of such factors as nationalization of history, archives that are dedicated to national history, political apathy among nationally indifferent people, and censuses that do not recognize national indifference or bilingualism. [9]
Apart from Bohemia, the concept of national indifference has been applied to other Habsburg areas, in addition to the German–French and German–Polish borderlands. More recently it has been applied to parts of the Russian Empire such as Baltics and Bessarabia. [1]
Many instances of national indifference have been cited:
Critics of the concept argue that "indifference" is often associated with passivity, which may not be the case. Alternate terms have been proposed by other scholars such as Karsten Brüggemann or Katja Wezel, including "anationalism", "national ambiguity", and "hybridity". [1] According to Per Bolin and Christina Douglas, the concept may be useful when discussing demotic national movements, but is unlikely to be applicable to elite nationalism (such as Baltic Germans). [13]
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland to create a nation-state. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture. There are various definitions of a "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism.
Pan-Slavism, a movement which crystallized in the mid-19th century, is the political ideology concerned with the advancement of integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had ruled the South Slavs for centuries. These were mainly the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice.
Drang nach Osten was the name for a 19th-century German nationalist intent to expand Germany into Slavic territories of Central and Eastern Europe. In some historical discourse, Drang nach Osten combines historical German settlement in Central and Eastern Europe, medieval military expeditions such as those of the Teutonic Knights, and Germanisation policies and warfare of modern German states such as those that implemented Nazism's concept of Lebensraum.
Silesian or Upper Silesian is a West Slavic ethnolect of either the Lechitic group or the Czech–Slovak group, spoken by a small percentage of people in Silesia. Its vocabulary was significantly influenced by Central German due to the existence of numerous Silesian German speakers in the area prior to World War II and after. Some regard it as one of the four major dialects of Polish, while others classify it as a separate language, distinct from Polish.
Anti-Slavic sentiment, also known as Slavophobia, a form of racism or xenophobia, refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples, the most common manifestation is the claim that the inhabitants of Slavic nations are inferior to other ethnic groups. Anti-Slavism reached its peak during World War II, when Nazi Germany declared Slavs, especially neighboring Poles to be subhuman (Untermensch) and planned to exterminate the majority of Slavic people.
German nationalism is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one nation and one person. The earliest origins of German nationalism began with the birth of romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars when Pan-Germanism started to rise. Advocacy of a German nation-state began to become an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under Napoleon.
German Bohemians, later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia. Before 1945, over three million German Bohemians constituted about 23% of the population of the whole country and about 29.5% of the population of Bohemia and Moravia. Ethnic Germans migrated into the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electoral territory of the Holy Roman Empire, from the 11th century, mostly in the border regions of what was later called the "Sudetenland", which was named after the Sudeten Mountains.
Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has been nationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy and cultural identity. Nationalism has provided a significant framework for historical writing in Europe and in those former colonies influenced by Europe since the nineteenth century. Typically official school textbooks are based on the nationalist model and focus on the emergence, trials and successes of the forces of nationalism.
Moravian Wallachia is a mountainous ethnoregion located in the easternmost part of Moravia in the Czech Republic, near the Slovak border, roughly centered on the cities Vsetín, Valašské Meziříčí and Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. The name Wallachia used to be applied to all the highlands of Moravia and the neighboring Silesia, although in the 19th century a smaller area came to be defined as ethno-cultural Moravian Wallachia. The traditional dialect represents a mixture of elements from the Czech and Slovak languages, and has a distinct lexicon of Romanian origin relating to the pastoral economy of the highlands. The name originated from the term "Vlach", the exonym of Romanians, who migrated to the northern Carpathians in the Middle Ages and Early Modern times.
Russian nationalism is a form of nationalism that promotes Russian cultural identity and unity. Russian nationalism first rose to prominence in the early 19th century, and from its origin in the Russian Empire, to its repression during early Bolshevik rule, and its revival in the Soviet Union, it was closely related to pan-Slavism.
The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian and Hungarian territories.
The Chodové are an ethnic group living in western Bohemia. Today, the Chodové live in an arc of villages near the western border of the Czech Republic, including major population centers in Domažlice, Tachov and Přimda.
Kevin J. Hannan was an American ethnolinguist and slavicist.
Czechoslovakism is a concept which underlines reciprocity of the Czechs and the Slovaks. It is best known as an ideology which holds that there is one Czechoslovak nation, though it might also appear as a political program of two nations living in one common state. The climax of Czechoslovakism fell on 1918-1938, when as a one-nation-theory it became the official political doctrine of Czechoslovakia; its best known representative was Tomáš Masaryk. Today Czechoslovakism as political concept or ideology is almost defunct; its remnant is a general sentiment of cultural affinity, present among many Czechs and Slovaks.
Tomasz Kamusella FRHistS is a Polish scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity.
Austrian nationalism is the nationalism that asserts that Austrians are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Austrians. Austrian nationalism originally developed as a cultural nationalism that emphasized a Catholic religious identity. This in turn led to its opposition to unification with Protestant-majority Prussia, something that was perceived as a potential threat to the Catholic core of Austrian national identity.
Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (2007) is a book by the American historian Chad Bryant about how Czech nationalism developed in the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during World War II. It received mostly favorable reviews.
After World War I and during the formation of Czechoslovakia, a wave of anti-Jewish rioting and violence was unleashed against Jews and their property, especially stores.
Several scholars of nationalism support the existence of nationalism in the Middle Ages. This school of thought differs from modernism, which suggests that nationalism developed after the late 18th century and the French Revolution. Theories on the existence of nationalism in the Middle Ages may belong to the general paradigms of ethnosymbolism and primordialism (perennialism).
This is a select bibliography of post World War II English language books and journal articles about the History of Ukraine. Book entries have references to journal reviews about them when helpful and available. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below. See the Bibliography section for several additional book and chapter length bibliographies from academic publishers and online bibliographies from historical associations and academic institutions.