Nationalism in East Central Europe

This research paper explores aspects of the complex inter-relationships between nationalism, as manifested in East Central Europe, and relations between core and periphery statesin that area within the modern world economic system. The paths nationalism took in East Central Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were strongly, but by no means exclusively, influenced by the nature and content of the interactions between those states and certain great powers. Today, nationalism in the area remains a potent force.

East Central Europe basically comprises the areas which make up modern Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Nationalism is the political expression of the desires of specific ethnic groups or nationalities to achieve self-determination as a nation-state. Core nations are the great powers, the "economically strong, technologically and structural developed" states and the periphery are countries which are relatively "weak . . . [and] structurally backward" (Berend and Raki 125). States in between, into which category fit some of the most dynamic economies in the world, are in the semi-periphery.

Distinctive Features of Nationalism in East Central Europe

In East Central Europe, as contrasted with Western Europe, nationalism moved in directions which were distinct and different in several respects:

(1) strident and inflexible xenophobia or ultra-nationali

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29). The Effects of Core-Periphery Relations The rise of capitalism in Western Europe and the discovery of new trade routes, as the Atlantic replaced the Mediterranean and overland trade routes from Asia through Eastern Europe, led after the fourteenth century to the domestic economies of East Central Europe becoming "a hinterland, a reserve, a base. . . for the capitalist growth of the West European centre" (Pach 284). The economies of East Central Europe became "suppliers of mass-consumption food stuffs and industrial raw materials and buyers of mass-consumption manufactures, mostly textiles" (Pach 287). Poland greatly increased its exports of cereal grains and Hungary of cattle and copper. At first, the growth in export trade brought prosperity to the landholding gentry (and others) in the region. Between 1300 and 1550, growth rates increased by a factor of two and eight tenths in Poland, as compared with only a factor of three tenths in England (Maczak 9). However, during the period between 1620/1650 and 1750, world prices for foodstuffs and raw material sharply declined. Wallerstein says that in East Central Europe, "export products fell in price, in productivity and in total value and quantity exported." The terms
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1934
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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