Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 [Hardcover]

Jeremy King (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691048924 | ISBN-13: 978-0691048925 | Publication Date: October 21, 2002

This history of a single town in Bohemia casts new light on nationalism in Central Europe between the Springtime of Nations in 1848 and the Cold War. Jeremy King tells the story of both German and Czech-speaking Budweis/Budæjovice, which belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918, and then to Czechoslovakia, Hitler's Third Reich, and Czechoslovakia again. Residents, at first simply "Budweisers," or Habsburg subjects with mostly local loyalties, gradually became Czechs or Germans. Who became Czech, though, and who German? What did it mean to be one or the other?

In answering these questions, King shows how an epochal, region-wide contest for power found expression in Budweis/Budæjovice not only through elections but through clubs, schools, boycotts, breweries, a remarkable constitutional experiment, a couple of riots, and much more. In tracing the nationalization of politics from small and sometimes comic beginnings to the genocide and mass expulsions of the 1940s, he also rejects traditional interpretive frameworks. Writing not a national history but a history of nationhood, both Czech and German, King recovers a nonnational dimension to the past. Embodied locally by Budweisers and more generally by the Habsburg state, that dimension has long been blocked from view by a national rhetoric of race and ethnicity. King's Czech-Habsburg-German narrative, in addition to capturing the dynamism and complexity of Bohemian politics, participates in broader scholarly discussions concerning the nature of nationalism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An important study of local history in a region of Europe where many have feared to tread. . . . [This book] is quite readable and represents a major scholarly contribution to the study of nation-building. (Jack R. Dukes History: Reviews of New Books )

[A] highly intelligent and admirably researched study. . . . [King] is intent on mapping a new vision of the region's history, freed from its national blinkers. (Steven Beller Times Literary Supplement )

There is no other local or regional history of national identification for the Habsburg monarchy with the same chronological scope and sophisticated analysis as King¹s. (Gary B. Cohen International History Review )

Review

King provides a compelling narrative of nation building in a single Central European town. The story is told engagingly and with a rare freshness of style. King shows a masterful command over an impressive range of primary sources and exploits it fully in charting and interpreting the dynamics of nation building at the micro level within its larger historical setting. (David F. Good, University of Minnesota )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691048924
• ISBN-13: 978-0691048925
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,014,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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