SHATTERZONE OF EMPIRES: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Boderlands

By Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz

This work is a comprehensive analysis of inter-ethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe's eastern borderlands over the past two centuries.  Extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along disputed borders. Examining this region at several levels—local, national, transnational, and empire—and through multiple approaches—social, cultural, political, and economic—this volume offers informed analyses of how the populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and how and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this specific region will help readers grasp the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands both past and present.

Indiana University Press (2013)