environmental history, society, modernization, ecology

During the nineteenth century many East-Central European intellectuals and politicians shared the view that a successful nation could rise out of competition if only it embraced Western economic and technological advances as fully as possible, among which intensifying network of rails, roads and movement of goods and people, as well as large reclamation and river regulation projects combined with the intensive extraction of natural resources, for example forests, were seen as key. As a result of the dramatic nationalist modernizations, such as the one orchestrated by the elite of the Kingdom of Hungary, the environments of East-Central Europe, for example the floodplains and the ridges of the Carpathian Mountains were transformed at an alarming rate. The political, social and economic aspects of this history have been well documented most notably perhaps by György Ránki and Iván T. Berend but also by many other historians. Albeit the scientific community still knows little about the complex interconnectedness of national building, modernization and their ecological consequences and subsequent environmental discourses, of which this presentation aims to explore.