The emergence of an international system of states ordered around the idea of "the nation"at the end of the “long” 19th century was neither a natural, nor inescapable, nor uncontested development. It was a process shaped by human beings that was open-ended. The goal of the planned conference is to discuss this process in the context of the intensification and acceleration of communication and exchange processes which in the 19th century had taken hold in East Central Europe as ...