Peasant Violence and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe

by Irina Marin

Overview

This book is a transnational study of rural and anti-Semitic violence around the triple frontier between Austria-Hungary, Romania and Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. It focuses on the devastating Romanian peasant uprising in 1907 and traces the reverberations of the crisis across the triple frontier, analysing the fears, spectres and knee-jerk reactions it triggered in the borderlands of Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia. The uprising came close on the heels of the 1905-1907 social turmoil in Tsarist Russia, and brought into play the major issues that characterized social and political life in the region at the time: rural poverty, the Jewish Question, state modernization, and social upheavals. The book comparatively explores the causes and mechanisms of violence propagation, the function of rumour in the spread of the uprising, land reforms and their legal underpinnings, the policing capabilities of the borderlands around the triple frontier, as well as newspaper coverage and diplomatic reactions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030093952
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	02/01/2019
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,078,446
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Irina Marin is Visiting Lecturer at the University of Augsburg, Germany. She has taught and researched at University College London, University of Oxford, University of Leicester and the Vienna Institute for Holocaust Studies. She is the author of Contested Frontiers in the Balkans: Ottoman and Habsburg Rivalries in Eastern Europe (2012).

Table of Contents

1. ​Introduction: A Peasant Uprising on the Edge of a Triple Frontier.- 2. Rumour and Violence: the Making of an Uprising.- 3. Jews, Strangers and Foreigners.- 4. The Peasant Question.- 5. Eyes of the State.- 5. Paper Worlds.- 7. Diplomacy of the Uprising.- 8. Conclusions.- Index.

Editorial Reviews

Irina Marin’s thoroughly researched book is a major contribution to the historiography of the region. Its main strengths reside in its wide-ranging scope, rich and varied source material, inspiring combination of social history … and elements of social psychology, and skillful switching between different scales and spaces in order to place the Romanian case in a broad comparative context. This transnational and entangled study of violence and antisemitism will surely interest readers across the ‘triple frontier,’ and far beyond it.” (Andrei Cusco, Antisemitism Studies, Vol.6 (1), 2022)

“This thoroughly researched book explores the causes of the 1907 peasant uprising, which was the most violent episode ever to occur in Romania during peacetime. … The great strength of the book is that it takes as its point of departure a series of singular events which took place in the spring of 1907 and paints a panoramic view of the Romanian political, economic, social, and legal system at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” (Luminita Gatejel, Hungarian Historical Review, Vol. 7 (4), 2018)

From the Publisher