History Derailed
Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century
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by Ivan Tibor T. Berend
University of California Press
Due/Published
February 2005, 408 pages,
paper
ISBN
0520245253
New in paper (S05) Berend focuses his attention to the modern history of central and eastern Europe, specifically the turbulent "long" nineteenth century, extending up to World War I, an era that contained the seeds of developments and crises that continue to haunt the region today. The book begins with an overview of the main historical trends in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, during which time the region lost momentum and became the periphery, no longer in step with the rising West. It concludes with an account of the persisting authoritarian political structures and the failed modernization that paved the way for social and political revolts. "I do not think it possible to understand the troubles and instabilities of Central and Eastern Europe today without reading Ivan T.Berend, the finest comparative historian of this region. In History Derailed, he has produced a characteristically lucid and masterly synthesis of its economic, social, political and cultural history in the 'long nineteenth century' which every reader of his much admired study of inter-war Central and Eastern Europe, Decades of Crisis, will need to read, and anyone interested in the continuing problems of the region will want to read." - Eric J. Hobsbawm Contents Introduction: The Emerging West as Ideal and Model for the East
1. The Challenge of the Rising West and the Lack of Response in the "Sleeping" East
2. Romanticism and Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe
3. Uprisings and Reforms: The Struggle for Independence and Modernization
4. Economic Modernization in the Half Century before World War I
5. Social Changes: "Dual" and "Incomplete" Societies
6. The Political System: Democratization versus Authoritarian Nationalism
Epilogue: World War I Bibliography
Index |
