This book examines patterns of national integration and the mobilisation of the peasantry across two historical regions, Central and Eastern Europe, over a long historical timeframe, spanning from the 1848 Revolution to the outbreak of the Second World War. It discusses how national elites in these regions interacted with the peasantry during the process of building modern nation-states and democratic political systems, and how political integration occurred by transforming peasants from subjects of various public actors into active citizens. The authors focus on the mechanisms employed by nation-states to achieve the socio-political integration of the peasantry, including land redistribution, universal suffrage, state-sponsored education, taxation, and military conscription, and on diverse channels of communicating the state's agenda of modernisation, such as the church, the press, political parties, and other types of intermediaries. This book promotes interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to the question of the social and political integration of peasants within the various societies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emerging nation-states of Central and Eastern Europe.

Autorentext

Sorin Radu is Professor at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu in Romania. He has also been the Convenor for Romania of ICHRPI since 2013. He specialises in the history of Romania during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Constantin Iordachi is Professor at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria, and President of the International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies. He is also Co-editor-in-Chief of East Central Europe, and Consultant Editor of Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies.

Andrei Florin Sora is Associate Professor in the Faculty of History at the University of Bucharest, Romania. His research focuses on the relationship between the continuities of social structures and the dynamics of historical change.

Ovidiu Buruiana is Associate Professor in the Faculty of History at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi in Romania. His research explores the history of political groups during the interwar period, the history of political and economic ideas in modern Romania, as well as the relations between majorities and minorities after the year 1918.