Region and State in Nineteenth-Century Europe

In the decades before 1914, local movements within various European states increasingly demanded political autonomy, home rule or even independence. This is often seen as a more or less logical development, as more self-confident ethnic minorities or 'oppressed nations' started to apply the national [...]
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In the decades before 1914, local movements within various European states increasingly demanded political autonomy, home rule or even independence. This is often seen as a more or less logical development, as more self-confident ethnic minorities or 'oppressed nations' started to apply the nationalist programme to their own situation. However, it has recently been shown that in many similar regions more culturally inspired movements appeared which did not reject but supported the centralised efforts to build up a nation-state. This collection of essays is the first to compare the emergence and development of these different types of regional identities. In thirteen stimulating essays eminent specialists from all over Europe explore the interaction between states and regions in a range of countries in the long nineteenth century and analyse why some of them came to consider themselves part of the new national self-image of the existing states, while others developed separatist tendencies.