Mental Maps of Eastern Europe: States, Mentalities, Modernisation
Journal: Journal of Historical Sociology
Year: 2022

Abstract Eastern Europe has been the object of orientalising discourses portraying it as a region defined by problematic statehood, underdevelopment, and nationalist‐religious warmongering. These discourses have produced 19 th ‐century mental maps of Europe contrasting a perceived ‘core’ European area ending with the Frankish Empire's eastern border and coinciding with later Enlightenment influence and an indistinct ‘Orient’ or ‘East’, bypassed by “modernising” processes. This contribution focus