Since the 17th century, on the verge of modernity, Southeastern European elites and peoples have been negotiating their symbolic and spatial status at the intersection and on the edges of empires. Such position of borderland, in the broadest sense of the term, implicitly placed the region at the margins of world orders. Yet, being at the periphery was hardly a pre-determined or immutable condition: populations, elites, and later, governments constantly re-imagined themselves and adapted in relation with imperial centers, Great Power politics, and, more recently, international organizations. Inevitably such tribulations generated specific dynamics within Southeastern Europe, among its different peoples and their (self-proclaimed) representatives.

The workshop aims to identify ideas, policies, institutions, and alliances articulated from within Southeastern Europe to cope with and contest the status of periphery of either empires or world/continental orders. We wish to highlight political dynamics, development projects, intellectual programs, and state practices that emerged as a result of local/regional attempts to design and channel projects of modernity as means to negotiate marginality. At the same time, the condition of (post)imperiality was intrinsic to these local initiatives. However, we understand periphery to be fluid: historical actors and agency determined its evolution over time at macro (in relation to empires or international orders), meso (within the region itself), or micro levels (within specific spaces – such as nation-states, or communities – such as social, ethnic, or religious minorities).

Organized by Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies and Academia Română, Istitutul de Istorie Nicolae Iorga

Registration: Bogdan.Iacob(at)oeaw.ac.at