Abstract
Reviewed by: Wim van Meurs, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
The title of this volume edited by renowned conceptual historians Diana Mishkova (Sofia) and Balazs Trencsenyi (Budapest) recalls associations with older studies by Larry Wolff (Eastern Europe) and Maria Todorova (the Balkans) or with the Todorova-Sundhaussen debate on the ontological and epistemological status of historical regions in Europe. Given this weighty legacy of debate and constructivist studies, the introduction is modest in size (15 pages). Next, the book discusses 10 regions in 20 pages each. Although any choice of regions is debatable, apart from the ‘usual suspects’ (i.e., the four corners of the continent and Central Europe), the editors have opted for the Baltic (next to Scandinavia/Northern Europe), Eurasia (next to Eastern Europe) as well as Iberia and the Mediterranean (next to Southern Europe). The smaller second part of the book is devoted to disciplinary traditions of regionalization or area studies, ranging from art history and demography to geopolitics and linguistics.
The main contours of some of these concepts and their history is well known: Eastern Europe, Eurasia, South-eastern Europe. Paradoxically, ‘Western Europe’ is such a dominant concept that it has been largely ‘invisible’ itself, although most other regional concepts are anti-Western ‘counter-concepts’ or derivatives of Western Europe. Other concepts, such as ‘Scandinavia’ appear understudied in mainstream European historiography (although ‘mainstream’ probably is very much a ‘West-European’ frame here). As ‘the West’ has not been a popular self-identification, Stefan Berger devotes half his chapter to concepts that contest the West. The result is a fascinating mixture of admiration and rejection for the West as a spatial concept. Similarly, the chapter on Scandinavia proves constructivists right: The label either implies being unspoiled or barbaric or serves as a tool of either pan-Scandinavianism or the socialist welfare-state model.
Generally speaking, the second part is less convincing. Eric Storm’s contribution on art history, for instance, outlines the rise of the historicist concept of national art schools in the nineteenth century. The wealth of material and erudite excursions run counter to the idea of a coherent set of contributions. What, the reader may ask, were the editors’ guiding questions for the authors? Gregory Ganev’s way of tackling economic regionalization is quite different. His main starting point is the aftermath of the First World War and the focus is not on academic frames and criteria, but rather on international organizations and the real-life impact of their regional programmes. Here too, covering both early developments in the nineteenth century (Zollverein), the League of Nations and the Cold War era (Comecon) as well as the post-communist transition (EU Eastern enlargement) is quite a challenge. As a result, episodes in both chapters have the brevity of a textbook, whereas the research field of each author stands out, e.g. post-communist transition and European integration for Ganev. Yet, at least this second part is not coherent and complementary enough to serve as a textbook.
The editors argue that concepts and categories of space are the result of social and, thus, historical production and construction by agents rather than pre-existing realities. Among the numerous self-declared ‘turns’, it is fair to say that the spatial turn has found wide resonance among historians. It has become one way of disposing of the dominant category of the nation state. In this case, the European continent is carved up into regions encompassing several states and nations. The assignment of each author entailed the cultural, academic and political aspects of the regional framework in its historicity, the complementarity of these frameworks within one continent, the contested delimitations of each region and the practices of othering and in-/exclusion connected with it. In sum, European Regions and Boundaries is an admirable ‘mission impossible’. As the editors admit in the introduction, conceptual historians find themselves in between cultural history and political science when it comes to the spatial turn. Yet, the very essence of conceptual history, as the book demonstrates, defies the rigorous taxonomy and systematic analysis of a political scientist. As a consequence, each has his or her own reading of the questions raised and trends identified in the introduction. Many of the individual chapters are highly readable and insightful, even though some authors waver between an erudite but excursive essay and a concise and systematic overview. Similarly, some readers will prefer the latter, whereas many others will indulge in the rich intricacies of conceptual history and historical concepts that abound in this book as a whole.