Table of Contents

Introduction: The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village Part I. Politics in the Postemancipation Galician Village 1. Emancipation and Its Discontents 2. The Roots of Peasant Civil Society: Premodern Politics in the Galician Village 3. Customs in Conflict: Peasant Politics in the Viennese Reichstag and the Galician Sejm 4. Making Government Work: The Village Commune as a School for Political Action Part II. The Construction of a Peasant Pole 5. The Peasant as Literary and Ethnographic Trope 6. The Gentry Construction of Peasants: Agricultural Circles and the Resurgence of Peasant Culture 7. Education and the Shaping of a Village Elite 8. The Nation in the Village: Competing Images of Poland in Popular Culture 9. The Village in the Nation: Polish Peasants as a Political Force Conclusion: The Main Currents of Peasant Nationalism Bibliography Index

About the Author

Keely Stauter-Halsted is Professor of History and Stefan & Lucy Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of The Devil's Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland and The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914, both from Cornell.

Reviews

"This volume makes a major contribution to the ever-growing literature of nationalism by emphasizing the plurality and dynamism of the process. It is well illustrated and indexed and includes an excellent bibliography."-Choice "Insightful and innovative ... Stauter-Halsted's book is a fine example that draws on a dazzling array of printed and archival sources to reveal what peasants themselves were saying, writing, thinking, and dreaming about any future Polish nation... The fresh approach to the village and identity will make a strong contribution to the literature on nationalism, peasant studies, and the public sphere. it should be essential reading for anyone interested in modern Europe, the peasantry, and national identity."-HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews "The Nation in the Village prompts a generous run of intriguing questions pertinent to (and often challenging) the prevailing historiography of nationalism and the peasantry in Poland."-Slavic and Eastern European Review "Keely Stauter-Halsted's new monograph combines the best of intellectual worlds: it is not only richly informed by theoretical and historical works on identity formation, civil society, subaltern studies, peasant nationalism, and cultural studies but by extensive materials from archives in Warsaw, Krakow, and Lvov. The result of her intellectual efforts in an insightful study of the political, social, and cultural transformation of Galician serfs into members of the Polish nation during the postemancipation period and how the peasants themselves were instrumental in this transformation... She set the bar quite high for those who wish to investigate the creation, establishment, and maintenance of a Polish national identity."-Slavic Review "This study makes an important contribution to the growing literature on nationalism in Eastern Central Europe."-Polish Review "Keely Stauter-Halsted's nuanced methodological approach is not only comparative but also broadly interdisciplinary. Original and compelling, The Nation in the Village represents the most sophisticated analysis of nationalism and national identity among the Polish peasantry in Galicia to date."-Robert Blobaum, West Virginia University "What this impressive book does so effectively is to describe the changes in the mentality of the Galician peasantry in relation to changes in its socio-economic and political environment. Subtly argued and eminently readable, The Nation in the Village takes a dynamic approach to an important issue."-John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta