European Regions and Boundaries European Conceptual History
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European Regions and Boundaries European Conceptual History Editorial Board: Michael Freeden, University of Oxford Diana Mishkova, Center for Advanced Study Sofi a Javier Fernández Sebastián, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao Willibald Steinmetz, University of Bielefeld Henrik Stenius, University of Helsinki The transformation of social and political concepts is central to understand- ing the histories of societies. This series focuses on the notable values and terminology that have developed throughout European history, exploring key concepts such as parliamentarianism, democracy, civilization, and liberalism to illuminate a vocabulary that has helped to shape the modern world. Parliament and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of a European Concept Edited by Pasi Ihalainen, Cornelia Ilie and Kari Palonen Conceptual History in the European Space Edited by Willibald Steinmetz, Michael Freeden, and Javier Fernández Sebastián European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History Edited by Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi European Regions and Boundaries A Conceptual History ላሌ Edited by Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mishkova, Diana, 1958– editor. | Trencsenyi, Balazs, 1973– editor. Title: European regions and boundaries : a conceptual history / edited by Diana Mishkova and Balazs Trencsenyi. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2017014733 (print) | LCCN 2017024866 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785335853 (e-book) | ISBN 9781785335846 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Borderlands—Europe. | Regionalism—Europe. | Political geography—Europe. | Europe—History. | Europe— Historical geography. Classifi cation: LCC JC323 (ebook) | LCC JC323 .E98 2017 (print) | DDC 911/.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014733 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-584-6 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-585-3 ebook Table of Contents ላሌ List of Tables and Figures vii Introduction 1 Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi Part I. European Mesoregions chapter 1 Western Europe 15 Stefan Berger chapter 2 Scandinavia / Norden 36 Marja Jalava and Bo Stråth chapter 3 The Baltic 57 Pärtel Piirimäe chapter 4 The Mediterranean 79 Vaso Seirinidou chapter 5 Southern Europe 100 Guido Franzinetti chapter 6 Iberia 122 Xosé M. Núñez Seixas chapter 7 Balkans / Southeastern Europe 143 Diana Mishkova chapter 8 Central Europe 166 Balázs Trencsényi chapter 9 Eastern Europe 188 Frithjof Benjamin Schenk chapter 10 Eurasia 210 Mark Bassin vi Table of Contents Part II. Disciplinary Traditions of Regionalization chapter 11 European History 235 Stefan Troebst chapter 12 Political Geography and Geopolitics 258 Virginie Mamadouh and Martin Müller chapter 13 Economics 280 Georgy Ganev chapter 14 Historical Demography 300 Attila Melegh chapter 15 Linguistics 322 Uwe Hinrichs chapter 16 Literary History 350 Alex Drace-Francis chapter 17 Art History 372 Eric Storm Index 394 List of Figures and Tables ላሌ Figures 12.1 The geographical pivot of global history and the division of Europe into three zones (Mackinder 1904) 262 12.2 Hassinger’s (1917) division of Europe with Mitteleuropa at the center (black area) and a nascent, emerging Mitteleuropa depicted in the shaded area 264 12.3 Haushofer’s widely popularized map contrasting the German military area (according to the Treaty of Versailles, black) with the German Volks- und Kulturboden (large shaded area) (Haushofer 1934, 57) 267 15.1 The new Europe 323 15.2 The European Sprachbund, after König and Haspelmath (1999) 328 15.3 The improved European (SAE) Sprachbund, after Haspelmath (2001, 1054) 329 15.4 The Central Europe of today (after Ureland 2010) 335 15.5 Languages around the Baltic Sea (after Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2010, 504) 337 15.6 The distribution of Sprachbund features in the Danube Sprachbund (Pilarský 2001, 216) 339 15.7 The strength of the Danube Sprachbund according to distribution of features (Pilarský 2001, 217) 339 Introduction Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi KL The last three decades, marked by the collapse of the Cold War division of Europe and the accession of more than a dozen new member states to the European Union after 2004, have had a powerful impact on the study of re- gions and regionalism. The growing research interest in supranational and subnational regional frameworks was an important venue of innovation, even if these discussions were mainly taking place in political science (with a fo- cus on the institutional structures of cooperation “above” and “below” the nation-states) and in cultural history, where the rekindled interest in so-called nonnational historical spaces of interaction naturally pointed to the issue of multiethnic/transnational regions as specific lieux de mémoire. In a broader sense, all of this fits into a spatial turn in the social sciences, and to a certain extent also in the humanities, manifest in the growing interest in territorial- ity, landscape, and cartography, the introduction of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in various disciplines, and the rise of urban studies and en- vironmental history. Similarly, the last decades have brought an interest in developing new frameworks of historical research that could provide a com- mon intellectual and methodological framework for scholars coming from different national and linguistic contexts. One of the most important devel- opments along these lines was the collective effort to devise a nonnationally based conceptual history, a branch of historiography that has traditionally been rather nation-centered due to its concern with particular vernaculars and semiospheres. An important incentive for studying regionalizing concepts historically origi- nated with the assertive spatial turn in neighboring disciplinary fields.1 While the- orists of history, among others, have contributed to it by fleshing out the notion of mental mapping, it was geographers, anthropologists and economists who under- 2 Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi cut the “container” and “natural-scientifi c” concept of space, emphasizing instead the social production of spatial frameworks.2 Rather than assuming that space exists independently of humans and that historical processes unfold within it as in a closed vessel and are even predetermined by it, present-day theorists conceive of it as the product of human agency and perception, as both the medium and presupposition for sociability and historicity. Crucial to this understanding of space is not so much its material morphology as the premises of its social production, its ideological underpinnings, as well as the various forms of interpretation and representation that it embodies.3 Our aim in this volume, resulting from a long-term international research collaboration hosted by the Center for Advanced Study Sofi a and generously funded by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, is to bring in the methodological and thematic innovation of the spatial turn to the discussion on a trans-European conceptual history focusing on mesoregional terminol- ogies and discourses. The volume is based on a focus-group investigation of an overarching topic: how European transnational historical (meso)regions have been, and are being, conceptualized and delimitated over time, across diff erent disciplines and academic traditions, in diff erent fi elds of activity and national/ regional contexts. It seeks to reconstruct the historical itineraries of the con- ceptualization of regional frameworks and their frontiers in relation to polit- ical, historical, and cultural usages or discursive practices. Going beyond the usual taxonomic focus on the diff erent regional units, the volume is organized in two parts: European mesoregions (part I) and Dis- ciplinary traditions of regionalization (part II). The units of investigation are conceptual clusters rather than individual concepts: for example, Central Eu- rope, East Central Europe, Danubian Europe; or the Balkans, Southeastern/ Southeast Europe, Turkey-in-Europe; or Scandinavia, Norden. While the contributors focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century usages, earlier reg- isters of a given concept are also taken into account. Chapters are structured in view of several major directions of analysis: • The cultural, academic and political contexts of the use of a given re- gional terminology • The morphology of the conceptual clusters used for regionalizing the European space • Boundaries and delimitations • Discourses of othering and counter-concepts. Attention has been paid not only to local usages and regionalist discourses, but also to cross-regional conceptualizations and the occurrences of cross- references in diff erent conceptual clusters (e.g., the usage of the Balkans as Introduction 3 a counter-concept in Central European discourses, or of Western Europe in Eastern and Southern European discourses, or the