An Ethnic History of Europe Since 1945
Ethnicity, the rise of nationalism, the formation of new nation-states in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and the peaceful split of Czechoslovakia have become central topics for politics and scholarship in the 1990s. Studies on ethnic conflict, nation building, and particular ethnic and minority groups in Europe abounded throughout the last decade. However, a cohesive book that provides a systematic and general picture of minority existence so far has been missing. Panikos Panayi's An Ethnic History of Europe since 1945 (published in New York, 2000) tries to fill this gap for the post-war period. As the author correctly states, so far: "no single author has attempted to examine the European ethnic mosaic since the end of the Second World War. The present volume is therefore the first attempt by an individual author to rectify this situation" (p. 3). Thus the author sets a high goal for himself in making a general and definite contribution to the field.
The author structures his book into four sections, the first one dealing with a general introduction to European minority history with a special focus on the time since 1945; the second one locating this particular history within the wider framework of European social and economic history; the third one discussing ethnicity as the key issue of European minority history, and finally the fourth one describing the interrelation of majorities and minorities within a system of nation-states. Section one briefly discusses the typology of minorities and gives the reader a short explanation of the concept underlying the author's notion of minorities. The second section focuses on demographic, geographical, economi...
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...s deficiencies at the basic factual level. When going into the details of international organizations and the impact of international institutions on minority existence in Europe after 1945 (p. 185), the failure to mention either the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe or the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is unpardonable. It leaves the reader with the impression that the author either is not familiar with the topic he is writing about or finished this piece of scholarship in an all too great haste. The book also went from one spelling mistake to the next which of course takes the readers train of thought off of the topic and on to each individual misspelled word.
In conclusion Panayi's book is not an essential contribution to the field, he leaves the reader unfulfilled and utterly confused.
In fact, sometimes it is actively encouraged as part of preserving the culture and the traditional aspects of the nation in question; for example, routine celebrations of national holiday and the wearing of cultural clothing demonstrate moderate forms of nationalism. However, it is when extreme pride in one’s nation leads to acts that contravene common decency that the forces of nationalism become dangerous. A historical example of such an event was the Bosnian war and the resulting Bosnian genocide that occurred shortly after the partition of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s. In this event, extreme Serbian nationalism called for the unity of the Serbian peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina - an event that echoes the words of the source. Serbian leaders and followers believed that their culture and people were superior to that of the neighbouring ethnic groups - the Bosniaks and the Croatians - and thought that they needed to be eliminated because of the potential threat they posed to the establishment of an autonomous Serbian Republic, or “Greater Serbia”. In the course of the war, and the ethnic cleansing that followed, more than 100,000 Bosniaks and Croatians were to be killed in a mass act of genocide. This appalling and gruesome figure shows the extent to which extreme nationalism is unacceptable and how unification of a people by force is both detrimental and wrong on all
During the time of World War II, there was a dramatic change in the society of America and its way of life. Men were needed at war and the women were left at home. People were mistrusted and were falsely accused of something they didn’t do. Some people were even pushed away because they were different. These people were the minorities of America. Some of the minorities it affected the most were the African Americans, women, Japanese Americans, and even young adults. What is a minority? A minority, in this case, is a person or group of people who are discriminated against because there is something about them that makes them different. Some of these reasons why they are different are things like race, gender, and even age. However, the real question is how were the roles of American minorities change after World War II?
Now we are going to focus more on the term of ethnic succession. Ethnic succession has a wide range of interpretations: all the way from ‘right’ wing, ‘left’ wing, ...
Therefore it has become a source of division within the working class that only works in favor for the bourgeois and capitalist. On the there hand, Ethnicity has a wider concept than race but still can be useful and counterproductive. To begin, one obvious reason why ethnicity is useful because it allows for other cultures, customs to express themselves. Secondly, promotes multiculturalism and diversity. Be that as it may, it is counterproductive and overlapping because the systematic distinctions within ethnicity lead to equality and inequality in society Therefore resulting to racial supremacy and privilege. Given these points, in this paper, I will discuss in details the ways in which the concepts of race and ethnicity are useful and how they are counterproductive with regards to different authors; Peter Wade, Robert Milles, Etienne Balibar, David Nirebeng, Roman Grosfoguel and Joan
...to identity with at least one of the countries predominate languages, English or French, dictated the degree in which they could participate in Canadian life. According to the Commission, this participation was real under two conditions: “that both societies, the French-speaking as well as the English-speaking, accept[ed] newcomers much more rapidly than they have done in the past; and that the two societies willingly allow other groups to preserve and enrich, if they so desire, the cultural values they prize[d]” (RCBB Book 1 xxv). It creates an interesting take on the acceptance of those “othered” groups, as change was necessary not only on the part of the minorities but also from Canada’s French and English-speakers. The Commissions work remains focused on language and culture, more so than ethnicity amongst a bilingual, bicultural and “othered” Canadian society.
The last two decades of the twentieth century gave rise to turbulent times for constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, eventually leading them to split apart. There were a number of damaging aspects of past history and of the political and economic circumstances that contributed to the breakup and eventually caused the situation to snowball into a deadly series of inter-ethnic conflicts. Yugoslavia was reunified at the end of the war when the communist forces of Josip Broz Tito liberated the country. Under Tito, Yugoslavia adopted a relatively liberal form of government in comparison to other East European communist states at the time and experienced a period of relative economic and political stability until Tito’s death in 1980. In addition to internal power struggles following the loss of their longtime leader, Yugoslavia faced an unprecedented economic crisis in the 1980’s. As other communist states began to fall in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some former Communist leaders abandoned communism and founded or supported ethno-national parties, blaming the economic suffering on the flaws of communism and other ethnic groups. The ethnic violence that followed would not have been possible without the willingness of politicians from every side to promote ethno-nationalist symbols and myths through media blitzes, which were especially effective due to low levels of education in the former Yugoslavia. Shadows of the events of World War II gave these politicians, especially the Serbs, an opportunity to encourage the discussion and exaggeration of past atrocities later in the century. The ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia can be traced back to a series of linked damaging factors such as the de...
Gagnon, V. P. (2004). The myth of ethnic war: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Nationalism is the idea that a people who have much in common, such as language, culture and geographic proximity ought to organize in such a way that it creates a stable and enduring state. Nationalism is tied to patriotism, and it is the driving force behind the identity of a culture. Nationalism had many effects in Europe from 1815, The Congress of Vienna and beyond. In the following essay I will describe many of the consequences of nationalism on European identity, as well as some of the conflicts that it created.
Imagine waking up one day to the thundering of blows given at the door telling you to “open up or be shot down.” It is the Serb police, and they are telling you that you and your whole family had to leave your home immediately. This is how it went for many Albanian people during what some Serb extremists called “demographic genocide.” This was the beginning of what many would call the Kosovo War, and it lasted from March to June 1999. After NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, something strange happened. Now the people being victimized were the Serbs and anyone who was “friendly” to them. In this paper, I will speak about what happened before and after the war in Kosovo.
First, ethnic fusion defines ethnicity as the major religious foundation. Success of such religions is attributed to the preservation of fundamentals that may be “at odds with the dominant culture (Christiano et al., 2016).” Second, ethnic religion links language and national identity to an ethnicity (Christiano et al., 2016). Third, religious ethnicity is defined as more than one group sharing the same religion (Christiano et al., 2016). Lastly, ethnic autonomy is defined as playing a minimal role in defining ethnic identity (Christiano et al., 2016). Ethnic autonomy is viewed as a less frequent identity, such as gypsies. Further elaborated in the text is the influence of religious institutions on the implementation of culture in the new
Kuzio, T. (2001). Historiography and National Identity among the Eastern Slavs: Towards a New Framework. National Identities, 3(2), 109-132
Ed. John Merriman and Jay Winter. "Slovakia." Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. Vol. 4. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. 2358-2359. World History in Context. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Will Kymlicka writes in the Multicultural Citizen that national minorities and immigrant groups should be given room and protection to practice and express their cultures. He argues that cultural expression is key to individual freedom and allows for a greater freedom of opportunity. National minorities, as large ethnic minority populations within a nation that have historic and cultural ties to the land (Kymlicka, p. 79), should be given the utmost cultural freedom and protection culture as it enhances the nation as a whole. Immigrant groups, who by immigrating have given up their homeland, will in time assimilate into a dominant national culture, but should be given strong protection from discrimination and room to express themselves. But what happens when a national minority oppresses immigrant groups to protect its own culture? Bill 60 of the Québec government pits national minorities against immigrant groups complicating Kymlicka’s views on liberal freedom and culture. The answer to this problem lays in looking back to John Locke’s political society to show national minorities take priority over immigrant group in relation to culture.
To commence this discussion, it is first essential to establish an understanding surrounding the role of language in relation to national identity. Theoretically, the more power language has in this relation, the more powerful language planning may be when creating a national identity. However, the role language plays in this respect is somewhat problematic to define and has proven to be a debatable topic among nationalists, sociologists and sociolinguists. For instance, May demonstrates that ‘sociological commentators, unlike sociolinguists, have generally been loath to apportion a prominent role to language in the explanation of minority ethnic and national identity claims’ (2001: 8). Consequently emulating distaste from sociologists to credit language with significant power in a national identity. In a similar sense, de Vries notes that, in relation to a language community, ‘social scientists have generally ignored the systemic properties of language’ (1991: 39), thus, concurrently suggesting with May, a disagreement from the social sciences over the role of language in terms of identity and national identity. Similarly, circa the French revolution, the concept
In his article “The Failure of Multiculturalism”, Kenan Malik uses the diverse European culture to study and explain the irony of multiculturalism. He defines multiculturalism as “the embrace of an inclusive, diverse society” (Malik 21). Integration between cultures is practically inevitable, but several nations view this as a threat towards upholding their culture. Due to this, many countries have made attempts at properly integrating new people and ideas while trying to prevent the degradation of their own. This can result in unjust regulations and the reverse effect of an intended multicultural society.