ABSTRACT

This set of essays introduces readers to new historical research on the creation of the new order in East-Central Europe in the period immediately following 1918.

The book offers insights into the political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural conditions out of which the New Europe was born. Experts from various countries take into account three perspectives. They give equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts; they recognise that on 11 November 1918, the War ended only on the Western front and violence continued in multiple forms over the next five years; and they show how state-building after 1918 in Central and Eastern Europe was marked by a mixture of innovation and instability. Thus, the volume focuses on three kinds of narratives: those related to conflicts and violence, those related to the recasting of civil life in new structures and institutions, and those related to remembrance and representations of these years in the public sphere.

Taking a step towards writing a fully European history of the Great War and its aftermath, the volume offers an original approach to this decisive period in 20th-century European history.

part 1|61 pages

Patterns of violence

chapter 1|12 pages

Imperial collapse, state-building and attempts at stabilisation

East Central Europe after the Great War

chapter 2|13 pages

An age of revolutions

Eastern and Central Europe at the end of the First World War

chapter 3|8 pages

Violence and the New Europe

The war that didn't end

chapter 4|11 pages

After the peace settlement

Frustrations and possibilities

part 2|114 pages

Recasting public life

chapter 7|9 pages

Boundaries of imagination

Geographers and territories in East Central Europe

chapter 8|23 pages

To ‘acquire the right place among the nations’

Cultural diplomacy and the new order in East Central Europe

chapter 10|13 pages

New cities in new states

chapter 11|19 pages

Doctors and diplomats

Health services in the New Europe, 1918–1923

part 3|50 pages

The New Europe in memory and history

chapter 14|18 pages

Wars over war memory

East Central Europe, 1918–1989

chapter 15|12 pages

The modernist turn

The New Europe and the arts, 1918–1923