C. A. Macartney and Central Europe

C. A. Macartney (1895–1978) was a British historian with a life‐long interest in the history and politics of the peoples of East‐Central Europe and in particular, those of Hungary. He combined historical research with an advisory role in various policy‐making bodies. Macartney had little faith in the system of small nation states that resulted from the break‐up of the Austro‐Hungarian Monarchy. He called attention to the fact that the principle of self‐determination was applied unevenly by the peacemakers in Paris, and that the new states were unstable and thus consequently unable to resist pressures from Germany and Russia. While always forthright, Macartney was also often controversial. He became a proponent of various Hungarian interests and causes in Britain, a standpoint difficult to maintain during and immediately after World War II. Yet Macartney was not simply an appeaser. For him, the solution to the problems of the Danube Basin lay in the gradual eradication of overlapping nationalisms and the establishment of a supra‐national economic and political structure for the benefit of all the peoples concerned. His scholarly works conform to the highest standards of academic professionalism, and are to this day often the only source in English on the particular subject.     

Transformation in East Central Europe: 1918 and 1989. A Comparative Approach

The authors of the introduction to this special issue argue for a historicization of the concept of transformation by broadening our understanding of it to decrease its teleological spin. This allows us to discard the “zero hour” narrative and to rather consider phenomena that exist long before a “turn” or “revolution” accelerates the transformation process. The closely related terms of “continuity” and “discontinuity” can be relieved of their mandatory dialectical logic by introducing the concept of “adaptation” as an analytical instrument in order to explain what happens after a certain turning point. Consequently, a historicization of the concept of transformation, as the briefly presented case studies show, entails detachment from apodictic periodization and the narration of quasi-mechanized progress in order to specify every single field of accelerated change. However, this does not necessarily limit the usefulness of the concept, as examining individual cases using specific criteria and comparing and bundling them will contribute to a better understanding of societies in transformation as a whole.     

Face-Work: Making Hair Matter in Sixteenth-Century Central Europe

Bringing gender history, the history of the body and art history into a conversation with material culture studies, this article argues that the sudden fashionability of beards in Renaissance Europe has been intricately linked with a culture of material and visual experimentation. I propose shifting perspectives from a focus on the symbolism of beards towards examining how early modern ways of material engagement with the matter of hair crafted a visual attention to facial hair that made up the sociocultural significance of beards. Focusing on how people made hair matter, I suggest working with the concept of face-work. In particular, this article maps how the Reformation upheavals and the rise of new visual practices dynamised Renaissance protagonists’ creative engagement with facial hair as a means for staging the self.     

Middle pleistocene adaptations in Central Europe

The biological evolution documented in the fossil and archaeological record of Central Europe between about 700,000 and 100,000 years ago reflects the transition fromHomo erectus to the earliestHomo sapiens. These populations created different types of industries, ranging from assemblages of small artifacts and industries with simple pebble tools to standardized units such as the Evolved Acheulean and the Early Mousterian. The industries of the Last Interglacial (Taubachian) show some regression in technological standardization and a reappearance of small artifacts. Other aspects of cultural adaptation (settlements, dwellings, hunting activity, symbolic and aesthetic expressions) are also summarized. It is suggested that the impact of climate and climatic changes on human settlement and behavior was greater in Central Europe (where two glaciations advanced from both north and south) than in the Mediterranean and Western Europe. The general trend of cultural veolution was toward greater technological and social complexity, but its course was not unilinear.     

A Variation on a Basic Theme: The Transition to Farming in Southern Central Europe

This paper attempts to summarize the past years of research on the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Central Europe and to review recent discussions about the origin and spread of the Early Neolithic. Particular emphasis is given to the debate about migration or diffusion. A combined migrationist/diffusionist model is presented, arguing for an emergence of a farming economy among hunter-gatherer populations in Transdanubia and the subsequent spread of this economy through migration. The new settlers interacted with local Mesolithic groups and adopted and incorporated local material culture and sometimes even aspects of local Mesolithic economy, a process which continued throughout the Early Neolithic. With time, population increase, subsequent competition for resources, and climatic instability led to a destabilization of traditional Early Neolithic society and finally to the outbreak of severe intercommunity violence. The only escape from mutual extinction was a rearrangement of subsistence and social and political structures, possibly with contributions from surviving Terminal Mesolithic groups.     

How Wealth Happened in Neolithic Central Europe

This paper advances the proposition that three key technological and logistical systems matured during the fourth and third millennia BC in Late Neolithic/Copper Age Europe: transportation infrastructure, durable goods made of metals, and capital investment in oxen used for traction. As risk rather than uncertainty became the dominant condition under which decisions were made, the convergence of these factors permitted individuals and households to accumulate genuine wealth.     

The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe

Sherzer, Joel. Verbal Art in San Blas: Kuna Culture through Its Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. x + 281 pp. including references and index. $39.50 cloth.

Heider, Karl G. Indonesian Cinema: National Culture on Screen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. x + 154 pp. including bibliography and index. $28.00 cloth, $9.95 paper.     

The magdalenian in Western Central Europe: Settlement pattern and regionality

Magdalenian material from northern Switzerland, southwestern and southeastern Germany, the middle Rhine, and central Germany is examined for differences among these geographical areas. Several regional features, including a broad range of archaeological data, can be identified and indicate two regional groupings, a southwestern and a northeastern. The first includes sites from central Germany and the middle Rhine, while the second includes northern Switzerland and southwestern Germany. The southeastern German sites cannot be firmly placed within this pattern because of the insecure data base. The main differences are in prey species, hunting and settlement patterns, and some characteristics of the mobile art. The comparison does not allow a finer separation, although the two regional groups could probably be subdivided into smaller geographical units. Alternative explanations are discussed and further avenues of research are proposed.     

Globalization of real estate markets in Central Europe

The process of globalization is increasing competition between urban areas for the attraction of investment. Within this context the paper initially highlights the impact of global change on city economies linking this to international investment within the real estate market. Factors influencing diversification strategies and international investment activity within property markets in central Europe are considered relative to a range of performance criteria. Office markets in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw are forwarded as case study examples to assess the degree of maturity that is occurring in these former socialist cities based on the activity of investors and end‐users including the extent to which there are dual markets operating for local and international actors.     

Confession and Nation in Early Modern Central Europe

Abstract

Amongst historians of early modern Europe, the relation between confession and nation has been largely neglected, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. The dominant discourse on nationhood, in contrast, was established by historians of modern history such as Elie Kedourie, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and Miroslav Hroch. This article evaluates the contributions of two historiographical debates to the study of early modern Central Europe, which were conducted in parallel, from the 1980s, but have not been assessed in context. It argues for the necessity to combine the perspectives of ‘confessionalization’, developed by early modernists, with the focus of nationalism, championed by students of the nineteenth and twentieth century, in order to achieve a full understanding of the region.