The Matica and Beyond Cultural Associations and Nationalism in Europe

Nineteenth-century national movements perceived the nation as a community defined by language, culture and history. Part of the infrastructure to spread this view of the nation were institutions publishing literary and scientific texts in the national language. Starting with the Matica srpska (Pest, 1826), a particular kind of society was established in several parts of the Habsburg Empire – inspiring each other, but with often major differences in activities, membership and financing. Outside of the Slavic world analogues institutions played a similar key role in the early stages of national revival in Europe. The Matica and Beyond is the first concerted attempt to comparatively investigate both the specificity and commonality of these cultural associations, bringing together cases from differing regional, political and social circumstances.