The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe
The publication of this book is timely. Questions of nationality are the most difficult issues to be settled at the end of the war. The European nationalities are, with certain well-known exceptions, as the Belgian, Swiss, and Irish, virtually linguistic groups, and especially in eastern and southeastern Europe, where lie most of the outstanding problems, language is the only tangible and available criterion of nationality. Now, even with the fullest recognition of nationality as the basis of political independence or autonomy, it is not to be expected, not even possible, that political boundaries should coincide precisely with linguistic boundaries. But it is the first essential to know what these latter are. Yet the requisite information is scattered through countless statistical reports, local monographs, and articles in journals of diverse character, linguistic, historical, and geographical.
Mr. Dominian, who is a graduate of Robert College, Constantinople, and has the advantage of familiarity with the languages of Southeastern Europe, is conversant with this scattered literature, and has made the results available in what, so far as I know, is the only single work which combines sufficient detail with so broad a scope. Especially convenient are the many linguistic maps, and one would welcome still more of them, at the sacrifice of the profuse illustrations of scenery which have presumably been borrowed from elsewhere to adorn the book. For example, the "View of Dissentis in the section of Switzerland where Romansh is spoken" might well be replaced by a map of the Romansh speech area, and most of the illustrations are still less relevant to the discussion. A reduced reproduction of Cvijić's ethnographical (= linguistic) map of the Balkans from Petermanns Mitteilungen of March, 1913, would have been a valuable addition.
A full linguistic atlas of Europe is a desideratum, and the author has come so near to supplying it that one regrets he did not go further and include many more of the available but scattered linguistic maps of different sections. The areas of present Celtic speech are not discussed. True, they have no bearing on any present problem of nationality, not even the Irish question. But that is true also of several other boundaries which are discussed. The areas of Lithuanian and of Lettic are stated only in the most general terms. Tetzner, Die Slawen in Deutschland, a work not mentioned in the author's bibliography, contains the fullest information, with detailed maps, for the Prussian Lithuanians, Cassubians, Masurians, Wends, etc.
However, the sections of most general interest for the coming problems of reconstruction are those dealing with the areas of Polish, Bohemian (including Slovak), and the Balkan languages, and with the peoples of Asiatic Turkey. The treatment is objective and impartial. In the case of Macedonia, Servian and Greek critics will certainly accuse the author of having accepted outright the Bulgarian view, and will point out with truth that he has taken his statistics from Bulgarian sources (Brancoff, Tsanoff, Schopoff; Brailsford's Macedonia, which gives much the same conclusion, and which, despite an overreaction against the extreme Greek claims, is on the whole unpartizan, is neither quoted, nor mentioned in the bibliography). But the fact remains, and ought to be faced, that the prevailingly Slavic population of inland Macedonia was never even claimed as Serbian until after Serbia's disappointment at being denied access to the Adriatic. With removal of the ban on Serbia's natural expansion westward and some compromise with the Hellenism which is strongly intrenched in the larger towns, a permanent solution of the Macedonian question ought to be possible. The previous blunders of European diplomacy, of commission and omission, seem intolerable, now that we see to what they have given an opening.
"The inhabitants of Albania are totally devoid of national feeling. Various causes militate against national unity." The second statement is true, but the first is much too strong. Despite religious differences, tribal feuds, and backward social conditions, the Albanians are fully conscious that they are not Slavs, Turks, or Greeks, but a distinct nationality. The sentiment is not less there because it has not overcome the obstacles to effectiveness. Witness the formal demands of the Albanian leaders in 1911 for Turkish recognition of Albanian nationality and language, and the vaguer dreams of the peasants described in Miss Edith Durham's High Albania (also not mentioned in the author's bibliography). It is not unlikely that this small nationality will be sacrificed to larger issues. But an Italian protectorate would at least give it a much better chance to try itself out than a division between Serbia and Greece, which have an inherited contempt for the very idea of Albanian nationality and would aim to uproot it. Recognition of an Italian protectorate might also induce Italy to withdraw her claims to the Dalmatian coast, thereby aiding Serbo-Croatian unity (and so indirectly the solution of the Macedonian question), and to give up the purely Greek islands of Rhodes, Cos, etc., her retention of which is the grossest violation of principles proclaimed.
In matters touching the character, history, and relationship of languages, there are not a few remarks which savor of uncritical popular philology, some merely naïve in expression, some positively erroneous. But these do not seriously affect the main purpose and value of the book.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1955, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 68 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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