Publisher's Synopsis
Southeastern Europe is largely perceived in terms of its nation states. These states are however products of the nineteenth-twenty-first centuries and as such disguise cultural spaces that in some cases have developed over much longer periods of time. To this day, in many countries - and not only in Southeastern Europe - regional approaches to history and regional cultural movements tend to be considered detrimental to the unity of a nation state. Southeastern Europe through its Regions examines whether the concept of region is a universally useful category for historical and cultural research on Southeastern Europe. This is not merely to create a substitute for an understanding of the nation state, rather it is intended as a complementary approach which also allows interpretation of this space in the eras before state building, below the imperial and above the local level. The volume examines regions from Dalmatia to Bucovina and from Slavonia to Thrace. It is both a regional-historical reader on Southeastern Europe and a response to the current question of the political, historical and symbolic significance of the region for Europe as a whole.
