Narrating Empires: Between National and Multinational Visions of Belonging

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires struggled not only to implement legal, infrastructural and social reforms aimed at strengthening their own central power, but also to legitimise their rule through new frameworks of belonging. In an age of modern communications, and against the backdrop of an evolving public discourse, the creation of new identity narratives became not only dependent on the state, but also on the active participation of educated individuals who would show commitment to or rejection of the empire through newspapers, books and other written media. Outlining the main topics of the volume, this introductory chapter emphasizes how the promotion of narratives of multinationalism in both empires should be read against the background of an increased articulation of nationalist narratives among their diverse populations. These two intertwined strands of narratives have kept resounding after the empires were gone, informing current-day discourses of political homogeneity and heterogeneity, social closedness and openness