ETHNICGOODS Postdoctoral Researcher Emre Amasyali and his co-author John A. Hall from McGill University, Canada, have just published a brand new piece of work.
The article called “War as the catalyst of nationalism, or, the demise of the Habsburg, Romanov and Ottoman empires” challenges the common assumption that nationalist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, as stated by the authors, “pushed the empires into war.”
Amasyali and Hall, not only refute this claim but, in addition, they offer an alternative view articulated through a threefold claim: first, they argue that nationalist movements were rather weak during the 19th century and they mainly challenged elite’s mindsets; second, and derivatively, it was the change in thinking of political elites due to nationalist movements and subsequent growing fear what made the case for war; and finally, thirdly, that war, and in particular WWI, was ont only an opportunity for nationalist movements, but it greatly changed identities. In sum, the authors contribute to the debate by offering a geopolitical view of nationalism during the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires as they collapsed after WWI.
The article can be access at the following link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07255136221141514
