Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands [Paperback]

Shatterzone of Empiresis a comprehensive analysis of interethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe's eastern borderlands over the past two centuries. In this vast territory, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically widespread, multicultural region at several levelslocal, national, transnational, and empireand through multiple approachessocial, cultural, political, and economicthis volume offers informed and dispassionate analyses of how the many populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and how and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this specific region will help readers grasp the preconditions of interethnic coexistence and the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands both past and present.

How violence came to define the central and East European borderlands

Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University. His books includeErased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day UkraineandMirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity.

Eric D. Weitz is Dean of Humanities and the Arts and Professor of History at City College, City University of New York. His books includeA Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and NationandWeimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands \ Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz

Part 1. Imagining the Borderlands
1. The Traveler's View of Central Europe: Gradual Transitions and Degrees of Difference in European Borderlands \ Larry Wolff
2. Megalomania and Angst: The Nineteenth-Century Mythicization of Germany's Easte