Preface

The interrelationship between nation-formation and empire-building in Europe’s

long nineteenth century is an eminently complex and novel theme. Its proper treat-
ment requires concerted efforts and ample time. Luckily, circumstances allowed for
bringing together the best specialists in the comparative history of empires. This book
was first conceived during the academic year 2003–04, when Alexei Miller was visit-
ing professor at the Center for Border Studies at the University of Glamorgan, which
was directed by Stefan Berger at the time. Our conversations naturally focused on the
complex interrelationship between empire and nation-building, due to Miller’s exper-
tise in the Romanov Empire, his long-standing interest in the relationship between
nationalism and empire-building, and Berger’s interest in the comparative history
of nationalism and national identity formation in Europe. In subsequent years, we
Copyright © 2015. Central European University Press. All rights reserved.

organized several conferences on this theme, in Budapest and in Manchester. Here

we recruited the authors, who are now represented in this volume, and we discussed
drafts of the subsequent chapters. We refined our theoretical ideas as well as our spe-
cific guidelines for those authors who had written chapters on specific empires and
we also thought about comparative themes that emerged from the empire chapters.
Subsequently we asked specialists in the comparative history of empires to write
shorter articles on those thematic concerns. During another stint as visiting professor
at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester
in 2010–11, Miller and Berger—the latter of whom directed the Jean-Monnet-Center
of Excellence at the University of Manchester between 2005 and 2011—had the op-
portunity to finalize all the contributions and write the biggest part of the introduc-
tion to this volume. After another two years of further revisions and changes to indi-
vidual chapters, the introduction to this volume could be completed in the spring of
2014. So, in sum, this volume has been in gestation for about 10 years and we hope

Nationalizing
Empires Empires, edited
00 book.indb 7 by Stefan Berger, and Alexei Miller, Central European University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, 2015.05.08. 13:24
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 viii Preface

that our prolonged work on it will help to bring our understanding of the interrela-
tionship between nation-formation and empire building in Europe’s long nineteenth
century one step forward.
Over the course of a decade, we have amassed a range of debts to a range of
individuals and institutions, which we would like to thank. First and foremost, we
would like to thank the authors of this volume, some of whom have accompanied our
ten-year journey on the road to this book and have been incredibly patient with our
repeated demands for revisions and changes as well as our plans to involve more and
different authors on specific themes and empires. And we would also like to thank
some of our colleagues who have been involved in some of the workshops and confer-
ences but who ultimately, for one reason or another, are not among the authors. They
include, in particular, Feroze Yasamee, Vincent Viaenne, and Miguel Jeronimo. Fur-
thermore, Miller would like to thank Central European University in Budapest and
the Institute for Scientific Information in Social Sciences in Moscow, where he held
positions during these years, as well as the Universities of Glamorgan and Manchester,
where he was visiting Professor in 2004 and 2010–11. Berger would like to thank the
Universities of Glamorgan, Manchester, and Bochum, where he held professorships
during the years of the production of this volume. All of these institutions and the
many colleagues in these institutions provided an extremely stimulating atmosphere
for research. Furthermore, Berger is grateful to the Freiburg Institute of Advanced
Studies, which provided him with a Senior Fellowship during the academic year
2009–10. Here in particular his many discussions with Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von
Hirschhausen on the topic of the comparative histories of empire furthered his own
thinking about the topic. While many institutions and individuals contributed a great
deal to making this volume possible, as always, the remaining shortcomings and mis-
takes contained here are solely the responsibility of the editors.

Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller

Bochum and Budapest
Copyright © 2015. Central European University Press. All rights reserved.

Nationalizing
Empires Empires, edited
00 book.indb 8 by Stefan Berger, and Alexei Miller, Central European University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, 2015.05.08. 13:24
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uef-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4443155.
Created from uef-ebooks on 2022-02-23 09:59:00.