Nationalism on the Margins - Brendan Karch

social practices and multiple loyalties become ironed out by national division. The triumph
of nationalism came through its ability to narrow the field of alternative loyalties, slowly,
over time, such that it became increasingly difficult to be a bilingual Upper Silesian
Catholic. But this triumph was achieved not through the will of local villagers, nor through
the successful homogenization of diverse communities, but rather through the resort to
illiberal mechanisms of state coercion and violence. This dissertation is concerned with the
contrast between the diverse loyalties of local communities and the efforts of nationalist
activists to stamp out these practices.
A BORDERLAND REGION IN PRUSSIA
The history of illiberal nationalism in Upper Silesia cannot be unlinked from a larger
historiography on the role of Prussia in Germany’s dark turn. Yet Upper Silesia’s past is also
positioned in disparate historiographical trends on borderland regions throughout Europe. A
recent resurgence of interest in regions and regionalism has come with the rise of
autonomist and separatist movements such as those in Basque country and Scotland, and
with the European Union’s increasing tendency to bypass nation-states in order to address
regional development issues. But as Celia Applegate has noted, historical inquiry has yet to
mature in its treatment of regions as a unit of analysis. 41 The nation-state still forms the
basic political-geographic framework for historians, thanks in large part to modernization
theories which modeled social homogenization and the attendant elision of regional
difference. Applegate has noted that it is easy “to conceive of regions within that same
capacious category that includes women, minorities, workers, and natural environments –
41 Celia Applegate, "A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of Sub-National Places in Modern
Times," American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (1999).
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