Creating Nationality in Central Europe, 1880 – 1950
Modernity, violence, and (be)longing in Upper Silesia
Edited by James Bjork, Tomasz Kamusella, Tim Wilson, and Anna Novikov
Routledge, 2017
In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Upper Silesia was the site of the largest formal exercise in self-determination in European history, the 1921 Plebiscite. This asked the inhabitants of Europe’s second largest industrial region the deceptively straightforward question of whether they preferred to be Germans or Poles, but spectacularly failed to clarify their national identity, demonstrating instead the strength of transnational, regionalist and sub-national allegiances, and of allegiances other than nationality, such as religion. As such Upper Silesia, which was partitioned and re-partitioned between 1922 and 1945, and subjected to Czechization, Germanization, Polonization, forced emigration, expulsion and extermination, illustrates the limits of nation-building projects and nation-building narratives imposed from outside. This book explores a range of topics related to nationality issues in Upper Silesia, putting forward the results of extensive new research. It highlights the flaws at the heart of attempts to shape Europe as homogenously national polities and compares the fate of Upper Silesia with the many other European regions where similar problems occurred.
‘Tim Wilson’s “Fatal Violence in Upper Silesia, 1918-1922” is of special value for research into the history of the Polish-German conflict after the First World War. The author has successfully compiled the calendar of the conflict month by month and calculated, sine ira et studio [without anger and passion], all the Polish and German fatal victims as for November 1918 to July 1922.’
– Marcin Jarzabek, Acta Poloniae Historica