Episode 14: Maciej Górny. Nation-States and the Minorities Question after the World War One

In this episode, Maciej Górny, Professor of History at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, talks to us about the legacies of the First World War in East, Central and Southeast Europe. Górny draws our attention to the experiences of war along the Eastern Front, an area of study that has still remained largely neglected in contemporary Western historiography. Górny notably demonstrates that the war ultimately determined patterns of inter-state violence that accompanied the formation of the new nation-states in the region. This is followed by a discussion of the role of experts and maps in the process of the social construction of ethnic identities and national minorities in East-Central Europe.