Trasformazioni e transizioni imperiali sulla scia della Grande guerra (1917-1923) Imperial transformations and transitions in the wake of the Great War (1917-1923)

The end of the Great War has been long considered as a caesura, with an emphasis on the breaking point between the collapse of the Empires and the formation of the new nation-states. Recent scholarship on the post-war paramilitary violence and on the imperial transformations and transitions in the space between the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Sea (1917-1923) has challenged this approach, emphasizing continuities of the war experiences and of the imperial legacies in the context of the "Long First World War" (1911-1923). This discussion aims at drawing up a balance sheet of the recent historiography, starting from three interventions. Iryna Vushko examines the biographies of ex-Habsburg officials and politicians in the successor states and their persistent connections with the imperial past; Emily Greble focuses on the imperial legacies in the legal definition of the rights of the Muslim minority in Yugoslavia within the new international order; Matè Rigò investigates the difficulties of the economic reconstruction and of the settlement of the minority question both in Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania.