Introduction
I. The Discovery of Modernity: Enlightened Statecraft, Discourses
of Reform, and Civilizational Narratives
1: The Politics of Improvement: European Models and Local
Traditions
2: National Projects and Civilizational Hierarchies
3: The Repercussions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
Wars
II. Spiritualizing Modernity: The Romantic Framework of Political
Ideas
4:
Balázs Trencsényi is Associate Professor at the Department of
History, Central European University Budapest. His research focuses
on the comparative history of political thought in East Central
Europe and the history of historiography. He is Co-Director of
Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies at CEU and Editor of the
periodical East Central Europe (Brill). He is the author of The
Politics of 'National Character': A Study in
Interwar East European Thought (Routledge, 2012), and co-editor of
Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe
(1775-1945), vols. I-II, and IV (CEU Press, 2006-7, 2014),
Narratives Unbound: Historical Studies
in Post-Communist Eastern Europe (CEU Press, 2007), Whose Love of
Which Country?: Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic
Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Brill, 2010), and
Hungary and Romania beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and
Entanglements (Peter Lang, 2013). Maciej Janowski works at the
Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, and is a
Visiting Professor at the Central European University Budapest. His
main
fields of interest are social and intellectual history of Central
Europe and the history of liberalism. He is Editor of the
periodical East Central Europe (Brill) and Deputy-Editor of
Kwartalnik Historyczny. He authored
Inteligencja Wobec Wyzwan Nowoczesnosci: Dylematy Ideowe Polskiej
Liberalnej Demokracji w Galicji 1889-1914 [The Intelligentsia and
the Challenges of Modernity: Ideological Dilemmas of Polish Liberal
Democracy in Galicia, 1889-1914], (Instytut Historii PAN, 1996),
Polish Liberal Thought before 1918 (CEU Press, 2004), Narodziny
Inteligencji 1750-1831[The Birth of the Intelligentsia] (Instytut
Historii PAN-Neriton, 2008, published in English with Peter
Lang).
Mónika Baár is Associate Professor at the University of Leiden. Her
research focuses on modern historiography, cultural history, and
political thought, with special attention to the problem of
marginality. She was the recipient of the ERC Consolidator Grant in
2015, and is Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers. She is the
author of Historians and the Nationalism: East-Central Europe in
the Nineteenth Century (Oxford UP, 2010), and other publications
include
'Wishful Thinking. Academic Competitions in National History', in
I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds.) Setting the Standards.
Institutions, Networks and Communities of National History
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Maria Falina is
currently a Lecturer and IRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University
College Dublin. Her main focus is the relationship of politics and
religion in Southeastern Europe. Michal Kopecek is Head of the
Post-1989 Democratic Transition History Department at the Institute
of Contemporary History in Prague. He also teaches at the Institute
of Czech History, Charles University. He is the author of Quest for
the Revolution's Lost Meaning: Origins of the Marxist Revisionism
in Central Europe,
1953-1960 (forthcoming Brill, 2016),Editor of Past in the Making:
Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989 (CEU Press,
2008); as well as Co-Editor of Discourses of Collective Identity in
Central and
Southeast Europe 1770-1945: Texts and Commentaries. Vol. I-II. (CEU
Press, 2006-07), and Thinking Trough Transition: Liberal Democracy,
Authoritarian Pasts, and Intellectual History in East Central
Europe afer 1989 (CEU Press, 2015).
This authoritative revision succeeds brilliantly thanks to the innovative and sophisticated approaches developed by its authors. Challenging traditional and recent conventions of intellectual history writing, they situate Eastern European political thought of the nineteenth century simultaneously in its local, regional, and transnational contexts. Rejecting tired nationalist teleologies, claims of an Eastern European Sonderweg, or binary structures that categorized political ideas as either local in origin or imported from an imagined West, the authors frame Eastern European political thought in fundamentally European terms, even as they elucidate its comparative local and regional dimensions. Pieter M. Judson, European University Institute This volume is the first comparative and transnational history of nineteenth-century political thought ever written about the broadly and challengingly defined region of East Central Europe that includes also relevant parts of the Balkans. Given the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic variety of the region, such work could only be accomplished as a team undertaking, which in this case has successfully overcome the usual sorting of national pigeon-holes next to each other. The book thus combines well-grounded local knowledge, paying due attention to the multilayered and multidirectional cultural transfers, while also being sensitive to the European social and political context. Miroslav Hroch, Charles University, Prague This impressive comparatist surveytwo centuries of political thought traced across a terrain of daunting political and linguistic complexitywill not only serve as a benchmark for future scholarship, but also as an inspiration. A shining example of what talented scholars can achieve through dedicated international cooperation, it restores a very important part of Europe to our understanding of European history. Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam
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