Peripheries and Contested Regions in Nationalist Imaginations: Irish–German Comparisons, 1850–1930

Abstract

This article is a comparative study of the delineation of national territory by nationalist historians in Germany and Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century to the inter-war period of the twentieth century. The essay examines how the problem of historically contested territories and non-national allegiances was dealt with by these historians, focusing in particular on the Ulster region in the Irish context, and the idea of ‘the German East’, and in particular on the origins of Prussia as an integral part of the ‘German East’. The article, building on recent work that aims at providing a comprehensive ‘mapping’ of nationalist historical traditions throughout Europe, attempts to provide a comparative analysis through a study of two relatively unconnected contexts. This is in order to establish common patterns that cannot be attributed to cause and effect resulting from direct interaction of ‘case A’ and ‘case B’. This comparison argues for the presence of a common pattern of nationalist argument with respect to European contested regions and territory more generally which was underpinned by a particular form of historical narrative.