The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I ushered
in a period of radical change for East-Central European political
structures and national identities. Yet this transformed landscape
inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past. Breaking with
traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line of demarcation,
this collection focuses on the complexities that attended the transition
from the Habsburg Empire to its successor states. In so doing, it
produces new and more nuanced insights into the persistence and
effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well as the sources of
instability in the newly formed nation-states.