Suchergebnisse

Since the 1990s, the use of consultation and research techniques linked to computers and the web has pervaded historical research. This has impacted upon the way historical sources are produced, published, stored and analysed.

Book review of R. McMahon (ed.), National races. Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences and Politics of Human Diversity, 1840-1945

Delegates attending the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 were given the arduous task of establishing the terms of the peace after WW1, including the criteria by which to determine the boundaries of new states emerging from the collapse of the old multinational empires. Given that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had laid so much emphasis on the principle of 'self determination', language was considered by many as the best element to establish nationality in ethnically mixed territories. A legacy of the nineteenth century, the apparently straightforward identification between language and nation was nevertheless complicated by pervasive ideas about race, as the taxonomies of language and race became increasingly entangled.
By presenting selected works by two scholars – Leon Dominian, a geographer, and Antoine Meillet, a linguist –, this paper analyses the main and most widespread arguments propounded in support of the identification between language and nation during the Great War. It also explains why this principle turned out to be exceedingly problematic at the time of the redrawing the political map of Europe, and how the ambiguous relationship between language and race persisted during the early years of twentieth century.

AbstractThis article reconstructs Vasile Alecsandri's political and cultural activities at an international level, as he attempted to raise public awareness (particularly in France and Italy) for the Romanian national cause, namely, by staking claim to the 'Latinity' of Romanians. It takes account of the European historical and political context in which the process took place, against the cultural backdrop of a growing interest in Romania, its people and language, and the development of the pan‐Latin ideal (and of macro‐nationalisms in general). In 1878, Alecsandri participated in the Fêtes Latines in Montpellier, competing for the best 'Song of the Latin race', illustrating his ability to use all available communication channels to further the Romanian Latin cause and bolster pan‐Latinism.

In 1851, in his famous lecture Della nazionalità come fondamento del diritto delle genti, the Italian jurist Pasquale Stanislao Mancini (1817-1888) formulated the so-called 'dogma of the Independence of Nations' – a fundamental principle of the political ideologies of the Risorgimento. In it, he defined nationality as 'a natural society of individuals' based on 'unity of territory, origins, habits and language, and conformed to a commonality of life and social conscience.' Although he is well known among scholars of international law, Mancini is far less known among historians. Yet his 'dogma of the independence of nations' proved to be fundamental during the 1919 Peace Treaties, when the rights of nationality became the criterion redesigning the map of Europe – nationality being officially attached to the promise of self-determination by President Woodrow Wilson.

This article intends to present the principle of nationality advocated by Mancini and how it became the basis of relations between states in international law in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also aims to analyse how the principle of nationality was transposed, formulated and interpreted in the 1919 Peace Treaties to support the rights of national minorities.

The purpose of this thesis is to formulate a coherent history of Roussillon in the nineteenth century in an attempt to explain the causes for the weaknesses underpinning its Catalan cultural revival. In order to do so, I will commence by broaching the subject of the French process of nation-building, to illustrate how the initial Roussillonese studies were stimulated by research and inquiries into "national antiquities". Such studies were indeed promoted by consecutive French governments with the aim of classifying, documenting and preserving all the artistic, linguistic and architectural "monuments" of the French nation. My research then proceeds to examine the Occitan-Catalan cultural context, within which the Roussillonese linguistic and cultural revival should be inserted and analysed. Moreover, I shall attempt to quantify the contribution made by Roussillonese scholars to the reflection on the Catalan language during the nineteenth century, as well as the extent and type of knowledge they possessed of Catalan and how they investigated it. ; El objetivo de esta tesis es establecer una historia coherente del Rosellón en el siglo XIX con el objetivo de explicar las causas de la "debilidad" del renacimiento cultural en catalán. Para ello, empezaré planteando la cuestión del proceso francés de construcción de la nación con el fin de ilustrar cómo los primeros estudios roselloneses fueron estimulados por las investigaciones y estudios sobre las "antigüedades nacionales". Estos estudios fueron promovidos por varios gobiernos franceses con el objetivo de clasificar, documentar y preservar todos los "monumentos" artísticos, lingüísticos y arquitectónicos de la nación francesa. A continuación, mi investigación procederá a examinar el contexto cultural Occitano-Catalán, dentro del cual debe inserirse y analizarse el renacimiento lingüístico y cultural rosellonés. Además, pretendo valorar la contribución hecha por los eruditos roselloneses a la reflexión sobre la lengua catalana durante el siglo XIX, así como el ...

Book review of Andreu Xavier & Mónica Bolufer (eds.), European Modernity and the Passionate South. Gender and Nation in Spain and Italy in the Long Nineteenth Century.