Concentrating on the politics of the Habsburg Monarchy's self-proclaimed "cultural mission" in occupied Bosnia in the period from 1878 to the outbreak of war in 1914, Taming Balkan Nationalism addresses two related issues: the impact of "Europeanization" in a backward society and the crystallization of the identities which have since dominated Bosnian life.
On the basis of wide reading in the Austrian, Hungarian, and south Slav sources, including the Hungarian-language papers of the two leading administrators of Bosnia, Benjamin von Kallay and Istvan Burian, Robin Okey provides fresh and wide-ranging perspectives on a whole range of issues, including the "Orientalist" assumptions of Austrian policy, the struggle of administrators for the moral high ground with nascent Serb and Croat intelligentsias, Kallay's controversial policy of the "Bosnian nation," and the strategy and personality of the intriguing Burian. He also opens up the hitherto unexplored background to student terrorism in the secondary schools of pre-1914 Bosnia, from which the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to emerge.
Beyond this immediate historical context, the book also sheds much light on wider issues such as the construction of Serb and Croat nationhood in Bosnia, the beginnings of the Europeanization of Bosnian Muslims, and the new divisions created by the rapid pace of social, economic, and intellectual change as the nineteenth turned into the twentieth century.

The multi-national Habsburg empire has never lost its fascination since its fall in 1918. Robin Okey's book shows how the Habsburg peoples experienced the same social, economic and political processes as most other Europeans, in ways that cast interesting light on these processes from both the European and the Habsburg angle. Opposing views that the national problem was therefore subordinate to underlying socio-economic backwardness, Okey argues for the inextricable entanglement of the two themes, as nationalism emerged from a process of social mobilisation which threatened the position of dominant Austro-Germans and Magyars. Robin Okey brings a distinctive approach to an intriguing subject, in a comprehensive study based on wide reading in most of the Monarchy's languages.

In 1989 communism crumbled in eastern Europe and with it one of the most conspicuous legacies of the Second World War. This book charts the demise of east European communism and analyses the failure of the communist experiment, the revolutionary events of 1989 and the post-communist aftermath as the legacy of both these processes. Starting from the premise that communism's proclaimed egalitarian, modernizing goals always enjoyed more support than the one-party politics through which these goals were pursued, Robin Okey explains communism's initial ability to survive crises but then its cumulative decline in the face of dissidence, economic weakness and reform movements, and, after 1989, the growing divergence between the northern and Balkan states, the revival of ex-communist parties as the new liberalism faltered, and the repeated failure of academics to anticipate these shifts. By analysing these issues in the context of the region's drive since the nineteenth-century to catch up with western Europe, this book concludes that the events of 1989 can cast light more widely still, on the fortunes of the three great ideas that the continent as a whole derived from revolutionary France: liberalism, socialism and nationalism.

Organised around the twin themes of modernisation and nationalism, this book offers a historical survey of territories between the Baltic and the Aegean, occupied by Modern Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, from 1740 to the present.

This book is a pioneering comparison of Wales with another small people, the Slovenes, over the formative period for national development in modern Europe. Language, religion and social conflict figured in both countries, but the determinant issue for national mobilisation was language equality for Slovene speakers, and religious equality for Welsh Nonconformists. Both options reflected their respective state contexts: the Habsburg empire’s acceptance of public multilingualism, and the religious pluralism long crucial in the British isles. British economic power, shown in the dramatic industrialisation of south Wales, strengthened a Welsh profile; relative Habsburg weakness detracted from Slovene language progress. The wartime premiership of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist, Lloyd George, was no fluke – language-orientated East European scepticism about Welsh nationhood overlooks this context. The Welsh process was indeed more diffuse than the Slovene, involving the dual assimilation of immigrant workers to Welsh nationality, but also, less completely, Welsh language loss. The stories of Wales and Slovenia fascinate in themselves. They suggest, too, that alongside the ‘hard power’ of larger units, the ‘soft power’ of smaller communities’ traditions, linguistic, religious or other, is also a vital historical factor.

`A fascinating book, readable and illuminating.' Times Literary Supplement

In 1989 communism crumbled in Eastern Europe and with it one of the most conspicuous legacies of the Second World War. This book charts the demise of East European communism and analyses the failure of the communist experiment, the revolutionary events of 1989 and the post-communist aftermath as the legacy of both these processes. Starting from the premise that communism's proclaimed egalitarian, modernizing goals always enjoyed more support than the one-party politics through which these goals were pursued, Robin Okey explains communism's initial ability to survive crises but then its cumulative decline in the face of dissidence, economic weakness and reform movements, and, after 1989, the growing divergence between the northern and Balkan states, the revival of ex-communist parties as the new liberalism faltered, and the repeated failure of academics to anticipate these shifts. nineteenth century to catch up with Western Europe, this book concludes that the events of 1989 can cast light more widely still on the fortunes of the three great ideas that the continent as a whole derived from revolutionary France: liberalism, socialism and nationalism.