A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe

This authoritative revision succeeds brilliantly thanks to the innovative and sophisticated approaches developed by its authors. Challenging traditional and recent conventions of intellectual history writing, they situate Eastern European political thought of the nineteenth century simultaneously in its local, regional, and transnational contexts. Rejecting tired nationalist teleologies, claims of an Eastern European Sonderweg, or binary structures that categorized political ideas as either local in origin or imported from an imagined West, the authors frame Eastern European political thought in fundamentally European terms, even as they elucidate its comparative local and regional dimensions. Pieter M. Judson, European University Institute This volume is the first comparative and transnational history of nineteenth-century political thought ever written about the broadly and challengingly defined region of East Central Europe that includes also relevant parts of the Balkans. Given the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic variety of the region, such work could only be accomplished as a team undertaking, which in this case has successfully overcome the usual sorting of national pigeon-holes next to each other. The book thus combines well-grounded local knowledge, paying due attention to the multilayered and multidirectional cultural transfers, while also being sensitive to the European social and political context. Miroslav Hroch, Charles University, Prague This impressive comparatist surveytwo centuries of political thought traced across a terrain of daunting political and linguistic complexitywill not only serve as a benchmark for future scholarship, but also as an inspiration. A shining example of what talented scholars can achieve through dedicated international cooperation, it restores a very important part of Europe to our understanding of European history. Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam