National indifference is one of the most innovative notions historians have brought to the study of nationalism in recent years. The concept questions the mass character of nationalism in East Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Ordinary people were not in thrall to the nation; they were often indifferent, ambivalent or opportunistic when dealing with issues of nationhood. As with all ground-breaking research, the literature on national indifference has not only revolutionized how we understand nationalism, over time, it has also revealed a new set of challenges. This volume brings together experienced scholars with the next generation, in a collaborative effort to push the geographic, historical, and conceptual boundaries of national indifference 2.0.

Nationalism has been, without question, one of the most potent political and cultural forces within Europe since the late-18th century. Placing particular emphasis on transnational and comparative links, Nationalism in Modern Europe provides a clear and accessible history of the development of nationalism in Europe from the French Revolution to the present. The book situates nationalist ideas and movements in Europe firmly within the context of other signifiers of identity and belonging – such as religion, race, and gender – while also providing comprehensive geographic coverage across Europe. It incorporates recent historiographical trends and debates as part of the discussion and includes 13 images, 9 maps and a range of primary source excerpts for classroom use. It is an essential volume for all students of the history of nationalism in modern Europe and a useful text for anyone seeking to know more about modern European history in general.

Derek Hastings's Nationalism in Modern Europe is the essential guide to a potent political and cultural phenomenon that featured prominently across the modern era. With firm grounding in transnational and global contexts, the book traces the story of nationalism in Europe from the French Revolution to the present. Hastings reflects on various nationalist ideas and movements across Europe, and always with a keen appreciation of other prevalent signifiers of belonging – such as religion, race, class and gender – which helps to inform and strengthen the analysis. The text shines a light on key historiographical trends and debates and includes 20 images, 14 maps and a range of primary source excerpts which can serve to sharpen vital analytical skills which are crucial to the subject. New content and features for the second edition include: - A chapter examining region, religion, class and gender as alternative 'markers of identity' throughout the 19th century - An enhanced global dimension that covers transnational fascism and non-European comparatives - Additional primary source excerpts and figures - Historiographical updates throughout which account for recent research in the field

Throughout the nineteenth and into the early decades of the twentieth century, it was common for rural and working-class parents in the Czech-German borderlands to ensure that their children were bilingual by sending them to live with families who spoke the "other" language. As nationalism became a more potent force in Central Europe, however, such practices troubled pro-German and pro-Czech activists, who feared that the children born to their nation could literally be "lost" or "kidnapped" from the national community through such experiences and, more generally, by parents who were either flexible about national belonging or altogether indifferent to it. Highlighting this indifference to nationalism—and concerns about such apathy among nationalists—Kidnapped Souls offers a surprising new perspective on Central European politics and society in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on Austrian, Czech, and German archives, Tara Zahra shows how nationalists in the Bohemian Lands worked to forge political cultures in which children belonged more rightfully to the national collective than to their parents. Through their educational and social activism to fix the boundaries of nation and family, Zahra finds, Czech and German nationalists reveal the set of beliefs they shared about children, family, democracy, minority rights, and the relationship between the individual and the collective. Zahra shows that by 1939 a vigorous tradition of Czech-German nationalist competition over children had created cultures that would shape the policies of the Nazi occupation and the Czech response to it. The book's concluding chapter weighs the prehistory and consequences of the postwar expulsion of German families from the Bohemian Lands. Kidnapped Souls is a significant contribution to our understanding of the genealogy of modern nationalism in Central Europe and a groundbreaking exploration of the ways in which children have been the objects of political contestation when national communities have sought to shape, or to reshape, their futures.

The Everyday Nationalism of Workers upends common notions about how European nationalism is lived and experienced by ordinary people—and the bottom-up impact these everyday expressions of nationalism exert on institutionalized nationalism writ large. Drawing on sources from the major urban and working-class centers of Belgium, Maarten Van Ginderachter uncovers the everyday nationalism of the rank and file of the socialist Belgian Workers Party between 1880 and World War I, a period in which Europe experienced the concurrent rise of nationalism and socialism as mass movements. Analyzing sources from—not just about—ordinary workers, Van Ginderachter reveals the limits of nation-building from above and the potential of agency from below. With a rich and diverse base of sources (including workers' "propaganda pence" ads that reveal a Twitter-like transcript of proletarian consciousness), the book shows all the complexity of socialist workers' ambivalent engagement with nationhood, patriotism, ethnicity and language. By comparing the Belgian case with the rise of nationalism across Europe, Van Ginderachter sheds new light on how multilingual societies fared in the age of mass politics and ethnic nationalism.

`A major addition to the curent literature on the challenging topic of how national identities are moulded.' - Michela Biddiss, Department of History University of Reading

"This is a fascinating local story with major implications for studies of nationalism and regional identities throughout Europe more generally." ---Dennis Sweeney, University of Alberta "James Bjork has produced a finely crafted, insightful, indeed, pathbreaking study of the interplay between religious and national identity in late nineteenth-century Central Europe." ---Anthony Steinhoff, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Neither German nor Pole examines how the inhabitants of one of Europe's most densely populated industrial districts managed to defy clear-cut national categorization, even in the heyday of nationalizing pressures at the turn of the twentieth century. As James E. Bjork argues, the "civic national" project of turning inhabitants of Upper Silesia into Germans and the "ethnic national" project of awakening them as Poles both enjoyed successes, but these often canceled one another out, exacerbating rather than eliminating doubts about people's national allegiances. In this deadlock, it was a different kind of identification---religion---that provided both the ideological framework and the social space for Upper Silesia to navigate between German and Polish orientations. A fine-grained, microhistorical study of how confessional politics and the daily rhythms of bilingual Roman Catholic religious practice subverted national identification, Neither German nor Pole moves beyond local history to address broad questions about the relationship between nationalism, religion, and modernity.