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Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium — border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period.
“Peripheries at the Centre shows how the international border settlements after the First World War worked (or did not work) on the ground. We learn how pupils, their parents, and their principals maneuvered through changing legal and administrative regimes, and how those regimes were often riven by contradictions and failures in their application. Venken’s thought-provoking theses should interest scholars concerned with how international and national dynamics shape the everyday experiences, subjectivities, and scope of action for children in a variety of contested areas.” • Katherine Lebow, Oxford University
“Peripheries at the Centre is a notable intervention in social history and an innovative contribution to current historiographical debates. It offers a deep comparison of German peripheral regions after 1918 in Poland and Belgium, and it sets up a theoretically sophisticated European analysis of the limits and inadequacies of nationally framed reform pedagogy, giving voice to children’s modernity.” • Steven Seegel, University of Northern Colorado
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1. Schools, Language and Children during the First World War
Chapter 2. A Framework of Comparison
Chapter 3. Making the Border
Chapter 4. Scaping the Border
Chapter 5. A Universal Childhood
Appendix: Belgian and Polish Governments and Ministers Responsible for Education