Search

This study represents an application of the concept of national indifference in the Post-Ottoman Balkans. It addresses the question of why two minority communities in Northwest Bulgaria in the first half of 20th century – the Protestant Voyvodovo community and the Catholic community of Bărdarski Geran, both marked by a strong principle of religious endogamy, intermarried. The author maintains that the main reason why these two communities intermarried was – despite all the differences between them – their national indifference, a parameter that both communities shared. These marriages did not cross the ethno-national boundary (the communities were nationally indifferent and thus ethno-national borders did not divide them). Contrary to standard understandings of the concept of national indifference, the author emphasizes that national indifference can be said to have two sides. On the one hand, nationally indifferent groups represent those in which the "we-they" opposition does not follow national lines, while on the other hand these groups identify and organize themselves on the basis of principles other than national ones. In the example of the inhabitants of Voyvodovo and Bărdarski Geran, this principle was religion. The appreciation of the "positive" side of national indifference enables us to grasp "the native's point of view," how people themselves perceived and understood their reality, their identities, and loyalties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1918, the birth of independent small states in Central Europe was a common point of reference in Ireland. This article aims to provide a more complex understanding of Irish images of postwar Austria, highlighting the coexistence of some elements of Austria's imperial legacy and new characteristics of the independent small state. Irish commentators focused heavily on the newly drawn borders in Central Europe, including the redistribution of nationalities, which was considered a significant factor in the formulation of identities in the newly independent, self-declared nation-states. This article discusses how Irish intellectuals, journalists, and politicians connected the issues of changing borders and the ethnic composition of Austria to actual Irish problems, especially in relation to the question of (greater German) unity. In addition, this article also explores how the significance of religion in Irish national identity determined perceptions of postwar Austria. Catholicism came to symbolize more than the everyday religion of the majority of the Irish population, and it manifested itself in Irish perceptions of the wider world, including the small successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]