We, the People

This work analyzes the processes of nation-building in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Southeastern Europe. A product of transnational comparative teamwork, this collection represents a coordinated interpretation based on ten varied academic cultures and traditions. The originality of the approach lies in a combination of three factors: seeing nation-building as a process that is to a large extent driven by intellectuals and writers, rather than just a side effect of infrastructural modernization processes; looking at the regional, cross-border ramifications of these processes (rather than in a rigid single-country-by-country perspective); and, looking at the autonomous role of intellectuals in these areas, rather than just seeing Southeastern Europe as an appendix to Europe-at-large, passively undergoing European influences.The essays explore the political instrumentalization of the concepts of folk, people and ethnos in Southeastern Europe in the 'long 19th century' by mapping the discursive and institutional itineraries through which this set of notions became a focal point of cultural and political thought in various national contexts; a process that coincided with the emergence of political modernity.