Hinterlands and Hypertrophies: Assessments of the Viability of Empires and Nation-States in Central and Eastern Europe, 1900 - 1930s

该项目分析了“可行性”概念的起源、发展和影响，以及它在20世纪初的实践。通过“生存能力”（来自德语：Lebensfähigkeit，直译为“生存能力”）的视角来看待一个国家，意味着将其解释为一个活的有机体。跨国专家网络在整个中欧和东欧传播这种建立国家的方法。“生存能力”受到怀疑的国家抵制和适应这一概念，这反过来改变了国际上对“生存能力”的看法。我们想研究与“生存能力”相关的知识和实践的流通如何赋予这一概念一种随时间变化的动态特征。我们将研究与“可行性”概念相关的科学客观性主张如何促成了更广泛的国际国家“科学”，这种科学影响了20世纪的国际政治、经济和国家建设。我们研究了中欧和东欧的从业人员网络，并根据广泛的出版和档案来源进行了分析。我们认为，“生存能力”在19世纪末出现，并在20世纪成为国家地位的核心原则，特别是在第一次世界大战期间和之后。对一个政体的“生存能力”进行评估意味着要对其进行所谓严格的科学分析，将国家、民族和领土解释为有机体。由于他们不发达的经济，他们在不连贯的领土上的低程度的国家权力，以及据称低水平的教育和人口的社会分层，俄罗斯和哈布斯堡帝国以及他们的继承国被批评为失败或“不可生存”的有机体。该项目旨在调查这种基于“可行性”的评估对国家解散和形成、现代化项目、人口政策、国际投资和国际政治的影响。分析的重点是“可行性”的话语及其与国家建设项目的互动。学者（地理学家、经济学家和社会学家）、政治家、记者和商人等从业人员的跨国网络将成为关注的中心。“可行性”与社会科学学科，特别是政治地理学、社会学和政治经济学一起出现。这些学科为网络内部署“可行性”概念来评估国家的专家提供了许多。该项目调查了参与辩论的边界，网络和专业知识需求如何变化，以及专家如何在-à-vis地缘政治秩序中定位自己。“生存能力”专家质疑帝国的生存能力和新成立的民族国家的持久性。这些“专家”强调，决定国家权力的是社会、政治和种族意义上的一致性，而不是领土范围。第一次世界大战提高了这些专家的地位。从国家评估的角度来看，从1917年到1923年的激烈政治动荡并不构成一个中断，而是一个增加流动和交流的点，将帝国及其继承国的命运联系在一起。该项目将以中欧、东欧、英国和美国的图书馆和国家档案馆的资料为基础。这些资料来源包括社会科学家、政治经济学家和地理学家的著作，以及公共和私营部门指导经济、人口和基础设施项目并将“可行性”转化为政策的报告。对中欧和东欧“生存能力”的考察有望带来超越历史项目的深刻见解。它将深入了解当代关于“失败国家”和塑造当今国际政治的国家建设的辩论的起源。

The proposed project analyses the origins, development and impact of the concept of "viability" and its practice in the early 20th century. Viewing a state through the lens of "viability" (from German: Lebensfähigkeit, literal translation "the ability to live") meant interpreting it as a living organism. Transnational expert networks disseminated this approach to statehood throughout Central and Eastern Europe. States whose "viability" was doubted, resisted and adapted to the concept which in turn altered international approaches to "viability". We want to investigate how the circulation of knowledge and practices associated with "viability" lent the concept a dynamic character that changed over time. We will examine how claims to scientific objectivity associated with the concept of "viability" contributed to a broader international "science" of statehood that influenced international politics, economies, and state building over the 20th century. We examine networks of practitioners focused on Central and Eastern Europe and base our analysis on a broad range of published and archival sources.We maintain that "viability" emerged over the late 19th century to become a central principle of statehood in the 20th century, especially during and after the First World War. The assessment of a polity's "viability" meant subjecting it to an allegedly rigorous scientific analysis that interpreted state, nation and territory as organisms. Due to their underdeveloped economies, their supposedly low degree of state power over incoherent territories and the allegedly low level of education and social stratification of their populations, the Russian and Habsburg Empires as well as their successor states were criticised as failing or "unviable" organisms. The project aims to investigate the impact such assessments on the basis of "viability" had on state dissolution and formation, modernisation projects, population policies, international investment, and international politics. The analysis focuses on the discourse of "viability" and its interaction with state building projects. Transnational networks of practitioners, such as academics (geographers, economists and sociologists), politicians, journalists and businessmen, will be at the centre of attention. "Viability" emerged alongside social science disciplines, particularly political geography, sociology and political economy. These disciplines provided many of the experts within the network that deployed the concept of "viability" to assess states. The project investigates the boundaries of participation in the debate, how networks and expertise requirements changed, and how experts positioned themselves vis-à-vis the geopolitical order. "Viability" experts questioned the survivability of empires and the durability of newly created nation states. These "experts" emphasized that coherence in a social, political, and ethnic sense, not territorial expanse, determined state power. World War I raised the profile of these experts. From the perspective of state assessment, the years of intense political turmoil from 1917 to 1923 do not constitute a break, but a point of increased flow and interchange that linked the fates of empires and their successor states. The project will be based on sources in libraries and national archives in Central and Eastern Europe, the UK, and USA. The sources include writings of social scientists, political economists and geographers, as well as reports from the public and private sector that guided economic, demographic and infrastructural projects and transformed "viability" into policy.An examination of "viability" in Central and Eastern Europe promises insights that will resonate beyond the historical project. It will provide insight into the origins of contemporary debates on "failed states" and nation building that shape international politics today.