Fight or Flight?

Abstract

The success or failure of a national minority in pursuing social, economic and political advancement in nineteenth-century eastern Europe was determined by the inter-relation of three cardinal factors: the demographic size and nationalist quality of the minority concerned; the availability and strength of support from existing Great Powers; and, perhaps most important, the state of health of the multi-national empire in which the minority was located. The almost infinite variety of local combinations of these factors promoted an expanding range of available options for employment in the developing confrontation between ‘nation’ and ‘empire’.