Shatterzone of Empires. Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands

Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, eds. Shatterzone of Empires. Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. 544 pp. Index. Maps. Illustrations. $95.00, cloth. $37.00, paper.This edited volume, the result of sustained intellectual co-operation across borders, consists of twenty-seven contributions, including a substantial introduction by the editors. The quality of its parts usually corresponds to the high standard set in the introduction. The following is an attempt to offer a few comments, first on the work as a whole and, secondly, on individual texts, with no claim to being exhaustive.Shatterzone is divided into five main parts, which, taken together, approach the modern (almost exclusively post-1789 and mostly late-mneteenth-century and twentiethcentury) history of the borderlands of Central Europe and Asia Minor (broadly understood) from several angles: social, cultural, and political imaginarles; the modem or ambitiously (and anxiously) modernizing state (in its impenal and national versions); the causes, functions, and effects of mass violence, especially along ethnic lines of conflict and (not the same tiling, as Shatterzone makes clear) involving nationalist mobilization; and, last and perhaps in fact least, the reality and conditions of multi-ethnic co-existence. As tins volume's main title indicates, it focuses mostly on the question of how communities, political systems, and seemingly solid moral codes are challenged and fall apart, not how they last. In particular, John-Paul Himka, Kai Struve, Alexander Prusin, and Omer Bartov offer important contributions to the history of anti-Semitic violence and the Holocaust. Tins is not an editorial choice, but a reflection of reality: the study of co-existence promises valuable and useful insights. Thus, Paul Robert Magocsi emphasizes the role of the state as culprit of conflict escalation, even if tins reviewer finds Ins pronounced dichotomy between state and society not entirely convincing. But, while the editors stress that the borderlands knew long periods of communal peace and co-operation, in their recent history violence and destruction have been more powerful factors. Indeed the borderlands of the traditional four land empires of Eurasia (Habsburg, Ottoman, Hohenzollem, and Romanov) and their successors were key sites of the two World Wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.Thus, a key question that work on the borderlands has to address concerns the causes of large-scale violence. The contributions to Shatterzone cannot provide a single answer, but they add up to a cumulative tendency. Risking (and regretting) over-simplification, this reviewer's impression is that Shatterzone teaches us three main points. Fust, the geopolitics of empires can be deceptive: their rivalries and clashes were crucial in producing and locating mass violence, but modern nationalism needs to be taken into account no less. In fact, it was the rise of the latter that largely coincided with the actual shattering of the Shatterzone. It takes no misplaced nostalgia for empires to recognize that the contribution of nationalism to the often veiy bloody end of multi-national societies was essential: in the last century nationalism was good at promoting some ethnic groups; it was also good at marginalizing, expelling, and killing others. Indeed, when it came to destruction, imperialism and nationalism could work hand in hand. For instance, it is the gist of Eric Weitz's contribution on Hohenzollem Germany's policy toward the Ottoman Empire that imperial strategizing could converge with a bet on ethnic or national exclusivity and, complementarity, racialized stereotypes: Turks as Prussians, Armenians and Greeks as Jews of the East.Secondly, Shatterzone also shows that there are no straight fines leading from, roughly speaking, pre-modern forms of inter-communal tension, conflict, and violence to modem ethnic cleansing and genocide. …

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