The seven microstates of Europe are an enigma, surviving in a world of globalism and transnationalism. As an anthropologist, Klieger offers a unique perspective.
The seven microstates of Europe, i.e. Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Malta, San Marino, Sovereign Order of St. John, and Vatican City are remarkable not only for their size, but their persistence. Most have been around for centuries, while much larger empires have come and gone. Despite the great events of the last two millennia, these countries have come into existence and have managed to steer a course away from incorporation within their larger neighbors. Why is this? Rather than being an exercise in triviality, the study in The Microstates of Europe: Designer Nations in a Post-Modern World of the histories of these tiny states may provide insight into tenaciousness of national aspirations and ethnic solidarity that are everywhere evident. Modernist studies tend to view the microstates as illogical anomalies destined to disappear under the crush of social progress. However, these states are anything but marginal—in fact, they are among the richest states in the world. This book examines the phenomenon from structural history and anthropological perspectives. It is not a grand history of petite places—rather, it is an “ethnographic anthology” of a few places in Europe that should not logically exist. The Microstates of Europe is a post-modern critique of the trends of globalism, and it examines the counter-trend of increasing nationalism, particularism, and cultural relativism. Rather than being eclectic exceptions, the microstates may demonstrate the survival of extremely long enduring mechanisms of collective boundary maintenance that are most likely present in many communities throughout the world.
Excerpt
Anachronism, because it juxtaposes symbols apparently from the archaic past into modern constructs, often catching the viewer by surprise, is also a fertile territory for the creation of humor: carrying the President of the United States to the Senate in a sedan chair by liveried coolies would probably strike many people as funny. The extant microstates seem anachronistic--under the logic of the modern state they should have merged with their larger neighbors after feudalism broke up--but they did not. Why?
This book explores how U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy failed to stand up to Soviet aggression during the early Cold War—despite America's overwhelming nuclear advantage.
325 letters my father wrote to my mother during his time in World War II.
Woven together in a timeline of events of three of his brothers, 5 brothers-in-law, and one cousin, all 10 of them were in WWII at the same time.
