Geography and Nationalist Visions of Interwar Yugoslavia

This book is the first historical work to examine the notion of national territories in Yugoslavia - a concept fundamental for the understanding of Yugoslav history. Exploring the intertwined histories of geography as an emerging discipline in the South Slavic lands and geographical works describing interwar Yugoslavia, the book focuses on the engagement of geographers in the on-going political conflict over the national question. Duancic shows that geographers were uniquely equipped to address the creation of the new country and the numerous problems it faced, as they provided accounts of Yugoslavia's past, present, and even future, all of which were understood as inherently embedded in geography. By analyzing a large body of geographical narratives on the Yugoslav state, the book follows both the attempts to "naturalize" and present Yugoslavia as a sustainable political and cultural unit, as well as the attempts to challenge its existence by pointing to unresolvable, geographically conditioned tensions within it. The book approaches geographical discourse in Yugoslavia as part of a wider European scientific network, pointing to similarities and specifically Yugoslav characteristics.

Auteur
Vedran Duani is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Contenu

1. Introduction

Geographers as Nation Builders

Nationalist Geographical Narratives

A Time of Geographers in East Central Europe

Multi-leveled Geographies of Yugoslavia

Spatial Dimension of a Nation

2. The Emerging Geographical Network in Yugoslavia

Institutionalization of Geography in the Yugoslav Lands

Anthropogeography Between History and Ethnology

Trapped Between Primitiveness and Civilization

Studying Race

Teaching Geography at Universities

3. Jovan Cvijic and the Anthropogeography of the Balkans

The Center of the Network

A Geomorphologist's Vision of Anthropogeography

Shifting Attention from Serbian to Yugoslav Lands

The War That Changed the Perspective

The Proof That Yugoslavia Exists

4. Geographical Narration of Yugoslavia

Creating Yugoslavia in Paris

Croatian and Slovenian Geographical Narratives of Yugoslavia

Disillusionment of Cvijic

Early Works of Filip Lukas: The Yugoslavist Phase of a Croatian Nationalist

Unity Built on Fragments

Slovenian Perspectives on the Geography of Yugoslavia

A Beneficial Cohabitation: Slovenia and Yugoslavia

If Only Yugoslavia Could Become Like France

5. Geopolitical Visions of Yugoslavia

Improving the Geographical Literacy of the Nation

Ivo Pilar on the Trauma of 1918

Embracing the Geopolitik

Czechoslovak and Polish Lessons for Yugoslavia

The Reluctant Geopolitics of Anton Melik

Challenging the Geopolitical Paradigm

6. The Fight of Filip Lukas Against Yugoslavia

Echoes and Definitions

Denaturalizing Yugoslavia, Naturalizing Croatia

Toward a Right-Wing Geographical Vision of the Croatian Nation

Ethnology Against Geopolitics

Geography in the Time of Fascism

7. Conclusion