Nationale Bewegung und soziale Organisation I. Vergleichende Studien zur nationalen Vereinsbewegung des 19. Jahrhunderts in Europa. Herausgegeben von Theodor Schieder und Otto Dann mit Beiträgen von Peter Alter, Gerhard Brunn und Hans Henning Hahn. München-Wien, R. Oldenbourg Verlag 1978. 579 s. DM 80.

This is a study of the emergence of the modem nationalism in three different countries in Europe. P. Alter attemps to study the history of the national movement and its organizationin Ireland in the period of 1801-1921, H. Hahn the organizations of the Polish Great Emigration in 1831-1847 and G. Brunn examines the development of the Catalonianmovement from 1859 to 1923. The book provides full and accurate information on the political and economical situation especially in Ireland and Catalonia, but first

of all gives a lot of information about the national movement, its ideology and the organizationand structure of the movement. The authors place emphasis on the analysis of the social structure of the movement as well on their political, social and cultural activities. The bibliography and a list of national organisations are provided for each country.

The method of elaborating the problem is similar in all cases. Each study consists of 9 chapters, but the specific character of each movement has been accentuated. In the firstj the peculiarities of the national movement in an backward agrarian country in which the social and the religious problems have been very closely related. The second study gives a concise account of the Polish political activities after the defeat of 1831 in France and England. The last study deals with the development of a very specific movement in Gatalonia - a struggle for autonomy of the most industrial part of Spain. It is really a very interesting monography about the Gatalonian movement with a short but very well elaborated history of Gatalonia. To explain the social structure of the national movement the author used the new statistical methods. In my evaluation this is the best study in this book. All studies have been a contribution to the history of the modern nationalism but the general conception of arranging the material in the same way seems to me unconvincing because each movement has been unique and a similar conception does not help for the comparative studies which were the essential aim of this book. I believe that it is impossible to compare these three movements even if there are somc formal similarities in the organizational structure of the movements.