Post-Imperial Transitions and Transformations from a Local Perspective: Slovene Borderlands Between the Dual Monarchy and Nation States (1918–1923)

Project website

Code: J6-1801

SICRIS

When researching the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the emergence of the new, post-imperial political and institutional order in present-day Slovene territory, historians have to date predominantly focused either on diplomatic history or on the political transition of power that occurred in the major administrative centres. For decades, events such as the proclamation of the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs; the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes; and the subsequent emergence of autonomous Slovene political administration remained the central reference points of historical narration. In this context, the supposed “struggle for national liberation” and the establishment of “Slovene rule” in the borderlands also received a certain degree of attention. Both the supposedly unjust loss of “Slovene national territory” in Carinthia (to Austria) and the Austrian Littoral and western parts of Carniola (to the Kingdom of Italy), on the one hand, and the post-1918 diplomatic and military successes in the dispute over Lower Styria and Prekmurje, on the other, were researched and included in the foundational story of the Slovene nation escaping from the Austro-Hungarian “prison of nations.”

By focusing on political and military events, however, historians could provide only very narrow accounts of the post-imperial political transition and societal transformation that occurred in Slovene borderlands. Entirely missing from the scholarly literature are the everyday experiences of ordinary people living in the contested linguistically diverse borderland societies in the three regions of present-day Slovenia: Prekmurje, Štajerska and Primorska.

The main objective of this project is to research how ordinary people living in borderland communities experienced the imposed political transition and societal transformation. The central task that our project aims to pursue is to research the effects that the changed international political system had on daily life in local societies in the Slovene borderlands after the collapse of the imperial regime. In the first stage, we aim to produce thoroughly researched case studies of selected individuals or local communities. Along these lines, project members will investigate a locality or a subject according to their broader interests and specific specialization. In the second stage, the findings and gathered material will be analysed in a comparative manner in order to provide insight into common features of the transition and transformation in various institutional, social and cultural settings.

The project will bring together experienced scholars with those of the next generation, in a collaborative effort to overcome the lacunae in existing scholarship – both national and international – that tend to disregard the complexity of local contexts by ascribing the role of victims to the presumably passive local population. The proposed research thus gives a voice to the ordinary people who had to cope with the post-war social instability and weakness of state institutions at the local level. In addition, project members will also seek to reveal the role of “the agency from below”, focusing on the ways in which local societies themselves shaped or at least tried to control the outcome of post-imperial transitions and transformations. The goal of this research is thus to contribute to a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the historical phenomena that not only had an enormous influence on 20th century Central European history but that still present a serious point of disagreement between conflicting national memories in the region.