A sweeping narrative history of Eastern Europe from the late eighteenth century to today In the
1780s the Habsburg monarch Joseph II decreed that henceforth German would be the language of
his realm. His intention was to forge a unified state from his vast and disparate possessions
but his action had the opposite effect catalyzing the emergence of competing nationalisms
among his Hungarian Czech and other subjects who feared that their languages and cultures
would be lost. In this sweeping narrative history of Eastern Europe since the late eighteenth
century John Connelly connects the stories of the region's diverse peoples telling how at a
profound level they have a shared understanding of the past. An ancient history of invasion
and migration made the region into a cultural landscape of extraordinary variety a patchwork
in which Slovaks Bosnians and countless others live shoulder to shoulder and where calls for
national autonomy often have had bloody effects among the interwoven ethnicities. Connelly
traces the rise of nationalism in Polish Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman lands the creation of
new states after the First World War and their later absorption by the Nazi Reich and the
Soviet Bloc the reemergence of democracy and separatist movements after the collapse of
communism and the recent surge of populist politics throughout the region. Because of this
common experience of upheaval East Europeans are people with an acute feeling for the
precariousness of history: they know that nations are not eternal but come and go sometimes
they disappear. From Peoples into Nations tells their story.
