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This chapter offers a detailed account of Tomáš Masaryk’s extensive attempts to steer nationalities discourse in Britain, with a view to securing the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of the new Czecho-Slovakian state. It describes Masaryk’s relationship with British supporters such as Robert William Seton-Watson, and their creation of the journal The New Europe as a platform for advocating total victory in the war, and articulating the cultural right to independent existence of the constituent nations of the Habsburg Empire.

This chapter asks the question could things have been different, could the advent of a more general 'peace' in the 1920s have been accompanied by alternative ways of thinking and practising inter-communal co-existence in the 'New Europe' and beyond? We look at some experimental efforts not least associated with Soviet korenitzatsia (indigenisation) as potentially hopeful signs. In the upshot, however, we are forced to conclude that the outlook for what had become communal 'minorities' in the rimlands' arena was a decidedly bleak one. Our focus turns at this juncture to the new Turkish Kemalist state's genocidal response to Kurdish rebellions in the east. And finally to the "Assyrian affair' a military operation against a minority community in Turkey's formerly British-administered neighbour, Iraq, which sent shock waves through the League of Nations.

This chapter examines the films Meeting Venus (1991) and Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe (Édes Emma, drága Böbe, 1992), both directed by István Szabó. In the 1990s there was much talk in Hungary and in the other countries of the former Eastern Bloc about “joining Europe,” which of course actually meant joining the European Union, as if this would somehow be the final episode in an untroubled, seamless transition from Hungary's homespun and very much watered-down version of Stalinism to a full-blooded embrace of free-market capitalism. The “new” Europe did not usher in some new dawn of utopian bliss and prosperity; instead it brought its own set of different problems. Both Meeting Venus and Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe demonstrate a keen awareness of the pitfalls awaiting Hungarians (and others) in the “New Europe,” the changes within Hungary, and the fresh brutalities of the so-called free market and its consequences, side effects and spin-offs.

Democratic agents are supposed to speak the truth so that there is consistency between what they do and what they say. There is, nevertheless, a tension between cultural demands for responsible and accountable actors and the difficulties of establishing responsibility and accountability objectively. Possibly, the tension may contribute to a separation of political talk and political action and this chapter explores factors that may contribute to making it possible for a polity to thrive despite inconsistencies between official narratives and organized practice, and to avoid accountability demands challenging the legitimacy of the political order. This is done using Norway as an example of a fairly settled and legitimate polity integrated by several different ties, and the EU as an example of an emerging order and an unsettled polity with problematic legitimacy and still in search of a unifying narrative.

This chapter talks about meat. Humans constructed their own artificial existence, separate from the world of nature and animals, by developing techniques for exploiting the natural environment. They designed a new landscape of fields, vineyards, and planted trees from which only humans succeeded in producing food (bread), drink (wine), and fat (oil). Herding and hunting also became activities of production, and meat was abundant on Roman tables. However, meat was also associated with a less “civilized” exploitation of the land. Therefore, people who lived primarily on hunting and herding were represented as “uncivilized” or “barbarian.” During the Middle Ages, these “uncivilized” and “barbarian” peoples conquered the western part of the Roman empire and became the rulers of the new Europe. They imposed their culture, including their unique ways of seeing the land and the modalities of its exploitation, and gave meat primary status.