Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:30:28.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction: Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2010

JULIA EICHENBERG  and
JOHN PAUL NEWMAN
JULIA EICHENBERG
Affiliation:
Centre for War Studies, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland; eichenbj@tcd.ie.
JOHN PAUL NEWMAN
Affiliation:
School of History and Archives, Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield Campus, Dublin 4, Ireland; johnpaul.newman@ucd.ie.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This special issue deals with the phenomenon of the emergence of radical violence in what might be called ‘shatter zones’ of empires after the end of the First World War. It argues that the emergence of violence was due to the absence of functioning state control and facilitated by the effects of experiencing mass violence during the First World War. In the multi-ethnic regions of the former empires, the rising wave of nationalism directed this violent potential against ethnic and religious minorities.

Type
Introduction
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 19 , Issue 3: Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War , August 2010 , pp. 183 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The analysis of borderlands as ‘shatter zones’ was introduced into recent historical discussion by the interdisciplinary and international research project, ‘Borderlands: Ethnicity, Identity, and Violence in the Shatter-Zone of Empires since 1848’ (2003–7), at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, co-ordinated by Omer Bartov. The term has also been used in reference to the post-1918 period by Donald Bloxham; see Bloxham, , The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2009), 81 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, ‘Introduction’, in Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923 (forthcoming).

3 For a comparative survey of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Russian empire, and the Ottoman Empire beginning with the outbreak of the war, see Roshwald, Aviel, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, 1914–1923 (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar. For a study of the violent aftermath of the collapse of the Hohenzollern empire, see Waite, Robert, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Post-war Germany 1918–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952)Google Scholar.

4 On the particularities of the Soviet case see Pipes, Richard, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism 1917–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, and Suny, Ronald Grigor and Martin, Terry, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

5 The authors, following the practice usually followed in Western works, have set the end of the Russian Civil War as spring 1921 and the introduction of the New Economic Policy. Violence and aftershocks of war and revolution, however, continued until the end of the period under study, and beyond. See Pipes, Richard, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (London: Haverill Press, 1995), 343–81Google Scholar.

6 The standard military history of this front is still Stone, Norman, The Eastern Front 1914–1917 (London: Penguin, 2008)Google Scholar. See also Rachamimov, Alon, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (New York: Berg, 2002)Google Scholar.

7 Inspiring the activity of numerous communist parties in east–central Europe; see, e.g., Banac, Ivo and Kiraly, Bela, eds., War and Society in East Central Europe, Vol. 13: The Effects of World War One: The Class War after the Great War: The Rise of the Communist Parties in East Central Europe 1918–1921 (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

8 On revolution and counter-revolution see Mayer, Arno, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe 1870–1956 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)Google Scholar, and Mayer, , The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

9 See Ziemann, Benjamin, War Experiences in Rural Germany 1914–1923, trans. Skinner, Alex (Oxford: Berg, 2007)Google Scholar, and Banac, Ivo, ‘“Emperor Karl has become a Comitadji”: The Croatian Disturbances of Autumn 1918’, Slavonic and Eastern European Review, 70, 2 (1992), 284–305Google Scholar.

10 On the collapse of Austria-Hungary see Jaszi, Oscar, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (University of Chicago Press, 1929)Google Scholar; May, Arthur J., The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy 1914–1918 (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Zeman, Z. A. B., The Break-Up of the Habsburg Empire 1914–1918: A Study in National and Social Revolution (London: Octagon Books, 1961)Google Scholar.

11 On the German levée en masse see Geyer, Michael, ‘Insurrectionary Warfare: The German Debate about a Levée en Masse in October 1918’, Journal of Modern History, 73 (September 2001), 459–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Bessel, Richard, Germany after the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 45Google Scholar.

13 Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism, 106.

14 Ibid., 185.

15 Ibid. See also Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

16 Elias, Norbert, The Civilising Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982)Google Scholar.

17 Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

18 Baberowski, Jörg, ‘Gewalt verstehen’, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 5, 1 (2008), 5–17Google Scholar.

19 E.g. Research Centre for Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood (SFB 700), Freie Universität Berlin.

20 Kalyas, Stathis N., The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerwarth, Robert, ‘The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War’, Past and Present, 200 (2008), 175–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Geyer, Michael, ‘Some Hesitant Observations Concerning “Political Violence”’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4, 3 (2003), 695–708, 696CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Ibid., 697.

23 Wimmer, Andreas and Schetter, Conrad, ‘Ethnische Gewalt’, in Heitmeyer, Wilhelm and Hagan, John, eds., Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002), 313–329, 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also von Trotha, Trutz (ed.), Soziologie der Gewalt (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Special Issue 37) (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997)Google Scholar.

24 Wimmer and Schetter, ‘Ethnische Gewalt’, 317.

25 Ibid., 318.

26 Michael Hanagan, ‘Gewalt und die Entstehung von Staaten’, Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung (2002), 153–76, 156.

27 Breuilly, John, Nationalism and the State (Manchester University Press, 1982), 1–35Google Scholar.

28 On the successor states see Macartney, C. A., Independent Eastern Europe: A History (London: Macmillan, 1962)Google Scholar. On the Kemalist republic see Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

29 Brubaker, Rogers, ‘Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples: Historical and Comparative Perspectives’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18, 2 (1995), 194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See Mann, Michael, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 10–11Google Scholar.

31 Hayden, Robert M., ‘Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers’, Slavic Review, 55, 4 (1996), 732CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Naimark, Norman, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

32 Theweleit, Klaus, Male Fantasies, Vol. 1: Women, Bodies, Floods, History, trans. Conway, Stephan, in collaboration with Erica Carter and Chris Turner, foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985)Google Scholar, Theweleit, , Male Fantasies, Vol. 2: Male Bodies, Psychoanalyzing the White Terror, trans. Turner, Chris and Carter, Erica, in collaboration with Stephan Conway, foreword by Jessica Benjamin and Anson Rabinbach (Cambridge: Polity Press, in association with Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar; also Gerwarth, Robert, ‘The Central European Counter-revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria, and Hungary after the Great War, Past and Present, 200 (August 2008), 175–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Arendt, Hannah, On Violence (London: Allan Lane, 1970), 55Google Scholar.

34 Jaeger, Friedrich, ‘Der Mensch und die Gewalt. Perspektiven der historischen Forschung’, in Straub, Jürgen, ed., Was ist der Mensch, was Geschichte? Annaeherungen an eine Kulturwissenschaftliche Anthropologie (Bielefeld: transcript, 2005), 301–24, 311–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ibid., 313.

36 Geyer, ‘Political Violence’, 701–2.

37 Jaeger, ‘Der Mensch und die Gewalt’, 314.

38 Geyer, ‘Political Violence’, 707.