Peripheries at the Centre

<p> Following the Treaty of Versailles European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious linguistic cultural or ethnic lines. <em>Peripheries at the Centre</em> compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen Sankt Vith and Malmedy in Belgium - border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period.</p>