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AbstractIrredentism is a crucial, yet understudied phenomenon of nationalism. Most scholars emphasise how irredentist thinking and practices function as a geopolitical instrument for inter‐state formation, resulting in radical nationalism. This article sheds light instead on the cultural preoccupations underlying irredentist discourses. It focusses on irredentist claims on the Adriatic city of Fiume (Rijeka) among Italian nationalists in the 19th and 20th centuries, emphasising how they were driven by cultural imaginaries of a spiritual borderland for the nation. These imaginaries continued to inform irredentist arguments during the phase of political mobilisation. This sheds light on contemporary European politics, in which irredentist imaginaries are once again shaping nationalist discourses.

When the Irish constitution was amended after the 1998 Good Friday agreement to replace an apparent claim to jurisdiction over Northern Ireland by an aspirational statement, it seemed that many of the issues of conflict in the North–South relationship had been resolved. This article traces the process by which ideological change and policy shift in southern Ireland during the course of the twentieth century facilitated this agreement and the associated constitutional reformulation, looking at three areas within which change is obvious. First, demands for Irish unity, vigorously expressed but confined substantially to the domain of rhetoric, were softened in the early 1970s when the fuller implications of Irish unity became clearer, and in the context of a possible British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Second, distaste for North–South institutions such as a Council of Ireland, on the ground that they implied recognition of partition, was replaced by acceptance of a modest level of institutionalised cross-border cooperation. Third, reluctance to recognise the legitimacy of Northern Ireland was reversed, with Irish governments moving progressively towards recognition of the principle of "consent" in the late twentieth century. Together, these changes amounted to a reversal of traditional irredentist policies and a formal acceptance of partition.

This article explores Adriatic irredentism, a complex political, cultural, and social movement, by specifically analyzing the unique role it played in the legitimization of Italian territorial claims over "language frontiers" such as Trieste and its hinterland. Through a close reading of first-hand sources, it examines how Italian irredentist intellectuals, public press, and associations purposefully utilized anti-Slav and anti-German arguments to shape public perception of both the Italian nation as well as Trieste's Italian identity or "Italianità." Although recent historiographical interpretations have emphasized continuities in local understandings of "Italianità," this article examines the discontinuities in the debate over its identity. It suggests that although Italian identity was first conceived as an expression of cultural and linguistic autonomy within the broader intellectual framework of Adriatic multi-nationalism, this idea gradually vanished amidst the structural crisis triggered by the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 and then inexorably faded on the eve of the Great War. Thus, notions of Italian national identity took an exclusionary and sometimes xenophobic meaning that was publicly used by a wide set of political actors to justify the territorial reincorporation of the "unredeemed" land within the borders of the new Italian state. The fascist regime, especially, utilized Italianness to further its aggressive and chauvinist agenda toward the Adriatic borderland. Consequently, Italian language and culture became instruments as well as symbols of repression and imperialism that were used to fulfill the regime's ambitions of "fascistization" of the Slavic population living in the region.

This article deals with the threat of irredentism for the Czech Republic, mostly from the comparative historical perspective. It analyses contemporary situation and possible future development of territorial claims in relation to the Czech Republic. It defines the term irredentism and its dimensions. The irredentist threats for the Czech Republic in the first half of the 20 century are described. Contemporary threats are conceptualized (new dimension of traditional threats with direct connection to the Czech territory, new dimension of traditional threats in regional security environment and new forms of irredentist threats). Author comes to conclusion that the substance of irredentist threat has been changed - from "hard security" threat to "weak security" threat, however, in the future can be the risk potential of some forms of irredentism again higher than today.

"… the Turks, public servants or soldiers, remained in sum what they've always been, Barbarians making a life out of plunder and robbery..." The above statement reveals how one of the finest institutions of Ottoman Greek letters and sciences, the Hellenic Literary Society at Constantinople, described the Turks in a petition to its honorary members, academics, university professors, and learned societies in the Allied countries and in those that had remained neutral during the Great War, just a month into the deliberations of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The picture of the Turk as a barbarian permeates the petition and juxtaposes that of the Greek as the bearer of civilization. In this way, the society attempted to elicit the support of Western intellectuals in favor of Greek irredentism. Such an approach was not unique to the Ottoman Greeks, as Armenians also employed a similar distinction between the Turks and themselves to enhance their national aspirations.2 Yet, such a snapshot of the society in the post-Armistice period can be misleading as to its sixty-odd year-long lifetime. The society had remained, for the most part, in favor of Ottomanism, and its endorsement of Greek irredentism tells us more about how and why multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empires can fail rather than providing an accurate depiction of the society throughout its existence.