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Author Ciancia, Kathryn, author.

Title On civilization's edge : a Polish borderland in the interwar world / Kathryn Ciancia.

Publication Info. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 New Britain, Main Library - Non Fiction  947.7 CIA    Check Shelf
 Newington, Lucy Robbins Welles Library - Adult Department  947.79 CIANCIA    Check Shelf
Description xiv, 343 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents A Conversation -- On the Edge, In the World -- Democracy as Civilizing Mission -- The Integration Myth -- The Many Meanings of the Border -- Polish Towns? Jewish Towns? -- Depoliticizing the Volhynian Village -- Regionalism, or The Limits of Inclusion -- Thinking Technocratically.
Summary "In 1918, as Europe's continental empires were violently replaced with a patchwork of nominally post-imperial nation-states, elites in Poland drew on the global language of civilization to launch a state-building mission in the non-ethnically Polish, nationally contested, and war-torn region of Volhynia. By following eastward in the footsteps of border guards, military settlers, provincial administrators, regional activists, health professionals, urban planners, teachers, and academics, the work traces how a colorful cast of characters adapted the prevailing language of European imperialism while simultaneously rejecting the very idea that they could act imperialistically in an historically Polish borderland. Their tension-ridden approaches were never static. Some Polish nationalists declared that they alone could act as benign civilizational conduits in mainly Ukrainian villages and predominantly Jewish towns, while others attempted to craft a regional identity. But by the eve of the Second World War, the province had become a testing ground for visions of demographic transformation that favoured antisemitic schemes of Jewish emigration and the forced assimilation of non-Polish Slavs. Throughout, doubts about the national strength of local Poles, competitions between diverse groups of self-declared civilizers, and mounting anxieties about the rise of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, meant that Volhynia served as an arena for redefining the precise contours of the modern Polish nation. Rather than simply a successor state embroiled in the quintessentially east European problem of "national minorities," Poland was a place where people engaged with the concept of civilization, recasting its meaning in conceptual spaces between empire and nation-state"-- Provided by publisher.
Subject Volhynia (Ukraine) -- Ethnic relations -- History -- 20th century.
Polonization -- Ukraine -- Volhynia -- History -- 20th century.
Polish people -- Ukraine -- Volhynia -- History -- 20th century.
Nationalists -- Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Nationalism -- Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Jews -- Ukraine -- Volhynia -- History -- 20th century.
Nation-state.
Ethnic relations. (OCoLC)fst00916005
Jews. (OCoLC)fst00983135
Nation-state. (OCoLC)fst01715961
Nationalism. (OCoLC)fst01033832
Nationalists. (OCoLC)fst01033905
Polish people. (OCoLC)fst01715992
Polonization. (OCoLC)fst01202254
Poland. (OCoLC)fst01206891
Ukraine -- Volhynia. (OCoLC)fst01242881
Polonization -- Ukraine -- Volhynia -- History -- 20th century.
Polish people -- Ukraine -- Volhynia -- History -- 20th century.
Nationalists -- Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Nationalism -- Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Jews -- Ukraine -- Volhynia -- History -- 20th century.
Nation-state.
Volhynia (Ukraine) -- Ethnic relations -- History -- 20th century.
Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Chronological Term 1900-1999
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Added Title Polish borderland in the interwar world
Other Form: Online version: Ciancia, Kathryn. On civilization's edge New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020] 9780190067472 (DLC) 2020007990
ISBN 9780190067458 hardcover
0190067454 hardcover
9780190067472 electronic publication
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