Szarka, László–Pók, Attila (eds.): Nationalisms in Action: The Great War and Its Aftermath in East-Central Europe

The aim of this volume is to analyze the regional specificities of East-Central and Southeast Europe during the First World War and its aftermath. The First World War was not unanticipated and without any antecedents, still it constituted a historical watershed in several respects. The conflict, which gradually attained global dimensions, had been foreshadowed by the malleability of European political and military relations at the beginning of the twentieth century. The struggle of the great powers for positions in Europe, Asia and Africa exacerbated the tensions that had accumulated between the two alliance systems. The relationship between the Central Powers and the Entente became extremely fragile from 1908, Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia, and this instability aggravated due to the crises in Morocco, and the subsequent Balkan Wars. The Balkan crises further stimulated the already growing nationalist and separatist movements in the multi-ethnic empires of East-Central and Southeast Europe, where large segments of public opinion and foreign policy makers were alarmed by the challenges posed by national minorities.