Peripheral Imperialisms? Ruling the Soil in Hungarian and Czechoslovak Ruthenia (1867–1939)

• Applicant: Dr. Felix Jeschke
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 555060825

The proposed research project builds on the assertion that the history of East-Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century must also be approached from the perspective of imperial history. For East-Central European states such as Dualist Hungary and interwar Czechoslovakia were part of a transnational imperial context of governance. The project will examine this hypothesis by studying the agricultural modernization projects that Hungary and Czechoslovakia implemented in Ruthenia between 1867 and 1939. It will focus on a diachronic, trans-imperial investigation of the Hungarian ‘Highlands Programme’ (hegyvidéki akció) and the Czechoslovak land reform. The research of these case studies will be organized along three interconnected topics: a) knowledge production, b) structures of governance and c) imperial actors. Ruthenia is understood as an imperial ‘contact zone’ (Mary Louise Pratt) in which social groups met in highly asymmetrical relations of power. The aim of the project is to examine the relationships between Budapest/Prague and Ruthenia as well as between the groups within Ruthenia and, on this basis, to evaluate the resonance of these modernization initiatives with contemporary imperial and colonial projects.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants