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Central Europe and Colonialism: Introduction

Apart from a short period between the Berlin conference and the end of the First WorldWar, whenGermany played aminor role as a colonial power, Central Europe was largely excluded when western countries and Russia divided the world between them. Nonetheless, Central Europeans played an important role in the history of colonialism. Not only did large numbers of Central Europeansmigrate to the colonial world, but Central Europeans also provided personnel to occupy, administer and police colonial empires, and they reflected on colonial experiences at different levels of high and popular culture. In addition, their in-between position brought Central Europeans into contact with both the West European imperial powers and Russia, which made the Central European experiences and perspectives richer in many ways than those of the colonial powers themselves, where close contacts with specific territories tended to marginalize perceptions of other parts of the world. Moreover, trade contacts between Central Europe and the colonies resulted in an exchange of Central European industrial products and tropical commodities from the colonies. On the other hand, large parts of Central Europe experienced a similar fate at the hands of the great powers (including the post-Second World War domination by the Soviet Union) as countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Just as (post)colonial studies examines the colonial past of these areas, scholars have recently started to explore the same processes in Central Europe. For the period before 1918, East Central Europe’s position vis-à-vis imperial Russia, Germany andAustria-Hungary can be considered in a similar way to Ireland’s position in relation to Britain, prior to independence. This special issue ofEuropeanReview brings together papers about Central Europe and colonialism, presented at the fourth event of the ‘Wrocław Seminar’ series. The seminar was organised by the Academia Europaea Knowledge Hub in Wrocław in cooperation European Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, 407–409 © 2018 Academia Europæa