Appel à contributions : colloque “Italy and the Post-Habsburg Central Europe: Occupation, Administration, Intervention, Diplomacy”, deadline : 28 février 2019

Call for papers

Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava

LabEx, EHNE, Axe 5 : L’Europe des guerres et des traces de guerre

invite you to an international conference

Italy and the Post-Habsburg Central Europe: Occupation, Administration, Intervention, Diplomacy

Bratislava, 19^th and 20^th September 2019

In the autumn 1918, after four years of the greatest conflict in the history of mankind until then, the armies of Entente and its allies fought out the definitive victory against the Centrals Powers. However, the period of stability didn’t come immediately, mainly in Central Eastern Europe, where the aftermath of the World War One took much longer than in the Western countries.

The end of the War and the following reconstruction of Central European region was one of the most important political, diplomatic and military milestones in 20^th century. The creation of successor states opened the question of drawing the new frontiers and thus the disputes among those countries. We would like to continue the discussion that started at the four previous conferences about the Italian front organised in 2014-2018. Italy ambitioned the position of great power mainly in the Balkan that it regarded as its sphere of influence but also in Central Europe. Rome had its own military mission in Czechoslovakia, was part of the Allied Commission in Hungary, annexed several former Habsburg territories etc. In other words, Italy had active policy towards the successor states. Although Italian ambitions interfered mainly with the Yugoslav ones, they also clashed with those of USA and France. This new period of instability finished later in early 1920s. The Italian ambitions weren’t fulfilled, from where comes the expression “mutilated victory”.

However, the relations between Italy and the Post-Habsburg Central Europe go far beyond the political, diplomatic or military history. Great number of former POW had to come back home from Italy to the new born states and vice versa. Refugees from occupied territories returned as well. The demilitarization of the society was one of the main tasks of immediate aftermath of the war. The situation on local level often contradicts the big narrative and the bottom-up perspective of this transition period enables us to see new interesting points of view. The attitude of local people and authorities in the regions, that had switched from one state to another, could have been rather prudent as they didn’t know how long the administration of that time would last. The relations between locals and new occupants or the expectations of ordinary people from the new states and governments is also an important subject to be analysed.

Language of the conference: English

Deadlines: Submission of paper abstracts 28th February 2019.

Notification on acceptance 31st March 2019.

Abstracts should be submitted by email to the contact michal.ksinan@gmail.com and should include: author, name and affiliation with full contact details. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words.

The conference organisers cover accommodation. Travel expenses have to be covered by participants. The PhD students and young scientists may ask for the refund of their travel costs from organisers. They will be refunded according to the available funding.

The conference is supported by: Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences; Labex, ENHE, Axe 5; Slovak Historical Society; Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Bratislava

Scientific committee: Juraj Benko, Étienne Boisserie, Gabriela Dudeková Kováčová, Matej Hanula, Catherine Horel, Borut Klabjan, Michal Kšiňan, Marco Mondini, Rok Stergar

Organising committee: Juraj Benko, Gabriela Dudeková Kováčová, Matej Hanula, Michal Kšiňan

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