Nationalism

In 2016, in the so-called ‘Brexit’ referendum, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union (EU). In an age of connectivity, mobility and increasing diversity, the Brexit vote seems to have put the clock back, heralding the nation as a bastion against change. Given the fact that
75% of those aged 18-24 voted to remain in the EU, it is clear that young people hold different views compared to those of their parents and grand-parents. The aim of the present article is to explore these views, mapping the different ways the nation is made meaningful by them. Focusing on a socially heterogeneous cohort of young people (aged 14-19) living in Loughborough, a market town in the East Midlands, which also voted to leave the EU, the paper analyses artworks and accompanying texts produced in schools and youth associations on the theme: “Our nations’ future”. Tracing the hopes for and concerns about a post-Brexit Britain, the paper brings to the fore young people’s agency in uncertain and complex times, scrutinizing how the nation becomes a vehicle to establish entitlement and belonging.

The 100 years anniversary of the establishment of Czechoslovak Republic seems to be a suitable occasion for exploring the legacy of “the 1914 generation“ in historiography (as it was metaphorically called by Czech historian Jaroslav Werstadt), especially with the emphasis on the Czechoslovak perplexities, continuities and discontinuities of topics of the historiography of inter-war Czechoslovakia.
The book aspires to question the discourse of the traditional interpretation of Czech and Slovak historiography in Modern Age (esp. the late 19th and fi rst half of the 20th century), prefering problem-based questions to biographical issues. The emphasis lies here on methodology, the use of nationalist political agenda behind a historiographical framework and the question of generational (dis)continuity, especially concerning the emergence of Marxism within the Czech and Slovak social sciences during the 30’s.
The individual chapters of this collective monograph focus mainly on the historical context and the reflection of the work of Václav Chaloupecký (1882–1951), a distinguished Czech historian, the pupil of Jaroslav Goll and Josef Pekař, professor of Czechoslovak history and also (in 1937/38) the rector of the Comenius University in Bratislava, who after the Munich treaty and again after 1945 continued his academic career at the Charles University in Prague.
Due to recently published monographs on Václav Chaloupecký and Karel Stloukal, two of the most important academic figures of the “1914 generation”, biographical and overview chapters are not part of this monograph. Via Chaloupecký’s web of social and professional connections, the authors rather focus on particular subject matters and problems open to interpretation. Chaloupecký’s role as the Bratislava-based promoter of the newly forged “picture of Czechoslovak history” serves here as a pars pro toto, a crossroad leading to a different contemporary field of questions.
The monograph attempts to address mainly the critical reception of Chaloupecký’s theses and works, usually and generally linked to the “Czechoslovakism” label and the issues of historiographical pratice and public actions of Chaloupecký’s Czech and Slovak professional companions including teachers, colleagues and pupils as well.