Introduction: racial disavowals: historicising whiteness in Central and Eastern Europe

Mark, James; Imre, Anikó; Iacob, Bogdan C; Baker, Catherine

Abstract

Central and Eastern Europe has long been removed from global histories of race: this introduction firstly explores the regional and global forces which have forged this capacity for disavowal, and analyses what has been long at stake in doing so. Second, we outline the region’s modern history as a ‘white semi-periphery’ integrating it into the racially hierarchical international order over the last two hundred years. We demonstrate how Central and Eastern Europe was tied up with the imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We underline that a globalising approach to this space - through imperial and anti-imperial entanglements, mass migration and settler colonialism, and the reception of colonial culture – makes the centrality of race for the region’s history powerfully apparent. Third, we address how whiteness might be used to make sense of internal nation-building. We explore the role of Central and Eastern Europe in global race science, and show how racial hierarchy based on proximity to whiteness structured the societies not only of the newly-established states of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but even the region’s Communist polities that publicly professed their rejection of such racial politics. The introduction therefore situates whiteness as a main pillar of contemporary Eastern European populism within comprehensive temporal, geographic, and conceptual frameworks.

Citation

Mark, J., Imre, A., Iacob, B. C., & Baker, C. (2024). Introduction: racial disavowals: historicising whiteness in Central and Eastern Europe. In C. Baker, B. C. Iacob, A. Imre, & J. Mark (Eds.), Off White: Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race (1-30). Manchester: Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526172211.00007

• Acceptance Date: Aug 9, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 28, 2024
• Publication Date: May 28, 2024
• Deposit Date: Aug 9, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 12, 2024
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Pages: 1-30
• Series Title: Racism, Resistance and Social Change
• Book Title: Off White: Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race
• ISBN: 9781526172204
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526172211.00007
• Keywords: Central and Eastern Europe; socialism; nation-state; empire; populism; racialisation; colonialism; white supremacy; semi-periphery; Islamophobia
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4354320
• Publisher URL: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526172204/off-white/