Download or read book Small Towns in Early Modern Europe written by Peter Clark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the great wave of publications on European cities and towns in the pre-industrial period, little has been written about the thousands of small towns which played a key role in the economic, social and cultural life of early modern Europe. This collection, written by leading experts, redresses that imbalance. It provides the first comparative overview of European small towns from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century, examining their position in the urban hierarchy, demographic structures, economic trends, relations with the countryside, and political and cultural developments. Case studies discuss networks in all the major European countries, as well as looking at the distinctive world of small towns in the more 'peripheral' countries of Scandinavia and central Europe. A wide-ranging editorial introduction puts individual chapters in historical perspective.

Download or read book The Politics of Ethnic Survival written by Gary B. Cohen and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German-speaking inhabitants of the Bohemian capital developed a group identification and defined themselves as a minority as they dealt with growing Czech political and economic strength in the city and with their own sharp numerical decline: in the 1910 census only seven percent of the metropolitan population claimed that they spoke primarily German. The study uses census returns, extensive police and bureaucratic records, newspaper accounts, and memoirs on local social and political life to show how the German minority and the Czech majority developed demographically and economically in relation to each other and created separate social and political lives for their group members. The study carefully traces the roles of occupation, class, religion, and political ideology in the formation of German group loyalties and social solidarities.

Download or read book Creating the Other written by Nancy M. Wingfield and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historic myths of a people/nation usually play an important role in the creation and consolidation of the basic concepts from which the self-image of that nation derives. These concepts include not only images of the nation itself, but also images of other peoples. Although the construction of ethnic stereotypes during the "long" nineteenth century initially had other functions than simply the homogenization of the particular culture and the exclusion of "others" from the public sphere, the evaluation of peoples according to criteria that included "level of civilization" yielded "rankings" of ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy. That provided the basis for later, more divisive ethnic characterizations of exclusive nationalism, as addressed in this volume that examines the roots and results of ethnic, nationalist, and racial conflict in the region from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives.

Download or read book The Idea of Galicia written by Larry Wolff and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Galicia was created at the first partition of Poland in 1772 and disappeared in 1918. Yet, in slightly over a century, the idea of Galicia came to have meaning for both the peoples who lived there and the Habsburg government that ruled it. Indeed, its memory continues to exercise a powerful fascination for those who live in its former territories and for the descendants of those who emigrated out of Galicia. The idea of Galicia was largely produced by the cultures of two cities, Lviv and Cracow. Making use of travelers' accounts, newspaper reports, and literary works, Wolff engages such figures as Emperor Joseph II, Metternich, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, Stanisław Wyspiański, Tadeusz "Boy" Żeleński, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, and Bruno Schulz. He shows the exceptional importance of provincial space as a site for the evolution of cultural meanings and identities, and analyzes the province as the framework for non-national and multi-national understandings of empire in European history.

Download or read book Together and Apart in Brzezany written by Shimon Redlich and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-03 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ". . . by reconstructing the history/experience of Brzezany in Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish memories [Redlich] has produced a beautiful parallel narrative of a world that was lost three times over. . . . a truly wonderful achievement." —Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors Shimon Redlich draws on the historical record, his own childhood memories, and interviews with Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians who lived in the small eastern Polish town of Brzezany to construct this account of the changing relationships among the town's three ethnic groups before, during, and after World War II. He details the history of Brzezany from the prewar decades (when it was part of independent Poland and members of the three communities remember living relatively amicably "together and apart"), through the tensions of Soviet rule, the trauma of the Nazi occupation, and the recapture of the town by the Red Army in 1945. Historical and contemporary photographs of Brzezany and its inhabitants add immediacy to this fascinating excursion into history brought to life, from differing perspectives, by those who lived through it.

Download or read book Focusing on Galicia written by Yiśraʼel Barṭal and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1772-1918 Jews were concentrated more densely in Galicia than in any other area in Europe. Bartal (modern Jewish history, Hebrew U. of Jerusalem) and Polonsky (Judaic and social studies, Brandeis U.) are joined by a number of other scholars of Judaism to explore the Jewish community in Galicia and its relationship with the Poles, Ukranians, and other ethnic groups. Essays include discussions of the consequences of Galician autonomy; Galician Jewish migration to Vienna; the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the 18th century, the assimilation of the Jewish elite; and levels of literacy among Poles and Jews. This volume also include 13 book reviews. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book The Lost World of the Sarmatians written by Maria Bogucka and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A History of East European Jews written by Heiko Haumann and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history of East European Jewry from its beginnings to the period after the Holocaust. It gives an overview of the demographic, political, socio-economic, religious and cultural conditions of Jewish communities in Poland, Russia, Bohemia and Moravia. Interesting themes include the story of early settlers, the 'Golden Age', the influence of the Kabbalah and Hasidism. Vivid portraits of Jewish family life and religious customs make the book enjoyable to read.

Download or read book The Shtetl written by Gennady Estraikh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is no possibility of entering the world of Yiddish, its literature and culture, without understanding what the shtetl was, how it functioned, and what tensions charged its existence. Whether idealized or denigrated, evaluated as the site of memory or mined for historical data, scrutinized as a socio-economic phenomenon or explored as the mythopoetics of a rich literature, the shtetl was the heart of Eastern European Jewry. The papers published in this volume - most of them presented at the second Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish organized by the Oxford European Humanities Research Centre and the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies (July 1999) - re-examines the structure, organization and function of numerous small market towns that shaped the world of Yiddish. The different perspectives from which these studies view the shtetl trenchently re-evaluate common preconceptions, misconceptions and assumptions, and offer new insights that are challenging as they are informative."

Download or read book Territories Boundaries and Consciousness written by Anssi Paasi and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1996 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Finnish-Russian border has a long history as a fundamental dividing line between contrasting cultural and political systems. This text provides a geographical analysis of how this critical border evolved, tracing the changing role of the boundary in re