From Empire to the European Union. Modernization in the Habsburg Lands from 1867 until Today

This course offers an overview of the history of a selection of those lands whose membership in the European Union dates from May 2004 and which also were included in the imperial frameworks of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918: Poland, the Czech Lands, Slovakia, and Hungary. Starting around the Ausgleich of 1867, we will follow the economic and social development, as well as the domestic and international politics of this region, through the late-imperial, interwar, communist and post-communist eras.

In terms of the knowledge acquired by the students in this course, the expectation is to be able (a) to place the economy, society and politics of post-socialist East-Central Europe into a longer historical perspective; (b) to establish familiarity with the main tendencies of historical development of the region from the mid-19th century to our time; and (c) to discuss problems of modernization and modernity in the region in its relation to the organization of political life (empires, nation states, international- and supranational entities). Students successfully completing this course will have an improved competence to articulate and reflect upon the most central problems and contradictions of late-modern societies (development and backwardness, modernity and authenticity, democracy, authoritarianism and dictatorship, the role of state and market in the modern development) as well as the different outcomes of processes of nation building and state formation and their social-political consequences.

Lectures and seminars with active participation on the students' part.