By the end of World War I, the principle of national self-determination had achieved primacy in Central Europe; at least in theory, multinational empires were abandoned in favor of homogeneous nation-states. Tomasz Kamusella investigates the influence of homogenizing national movements in Prussian Silesia and Austrian Silesia, the borderland between the German, the Polish, and the Czech nations, and the attempts of Slavic-speaking Silesians to maintain multiple, nonnational identities. Kamusella's aim is to challenge German, Polish, and Czech national historiographies, which hold that Silesia was home to Germans, Poles, or Czechs whose “national awakening” came with the spread of the respective nationalisms into the region. By contrast, Kamusella argues that Slavic-speaking Silesians embraced multiple, flexible identities and developed Szlonzokian, Slunzakian, and Morawec ethnic identities as a means to resist “ennationalization,” Kamusella's term for the nationally homogenizing efforts of German, Polish, and Czech nationalisms.

Kamusella's study ignores the geographical border between Austria and Prussia, choosing instead to examine both Austrian Silesia and Prussian Silesia, first from the 1848 revolutions to the founding of the German Empire in 1871 and then from 1871 through World War I. He employs Miroslav Hroch's model of the development of nationalism to frame his diachronic and comparative analysis of the development of national and ethnic identities in Silesia—from their origins among intellectuals to their diffusion to the broader population. This focus is at once a strength and a weakness of the study. Kamusella charts the development of German nationalism, of Polish nationalism, and of Czech nationalism in general; of the spread of these competing nationalisms into Silesia; and of the development of Silesian ethnicities. This ambitious focus on the development of the three competing nationalisms and their penetration into Silesia sometimes risks erasing Silesians. More focus on the development of ethnic, regional, and national identities in Silesia—among Silesians themselves—rather than on the activities of German, Polish, and Czech activists in Silesia would strengthen Kamusella's challenge to the national histories he criticizes.

In tracing both the emergence and popularization of Polish, Czech, and German nationalisms and of Silesian ethnicities, Kamusella focuses on the structural indexes of national identity, including the results of language censuses, administrative and diocesan borders, economic indexes, the publication and circulation of “national” periodicals, and the emergence of “national” voluntary associations. Such structural indexes, however, provide only limited understanding of how Silesians themselves imagined their own identities. While he makes extensive use of the published sources in Polish, German, Czech, and English, especially secondary sources, Kamusella neglects archival sources. Engaging more directly the publications and documents of the many Silesian voluntary associations he mentions, for example, would have enabled Kamusella to delve into the inventing and imagining of national and ethnic identities from the ground up—to examine how Silesians themselves blurred the lines among ethnic, regional, and national identities, how they accommodated multiple identities, and how they experienced the emergence of ethnic nationalisms in Prussian Silesia and Austrian Silesia. Communities of experience that emerged around a shared dialect, around a shared locality, or around a shared religion often transcended national divisions, thus creating Silesian identities—the Szlonzok, the Slunzak, and the Morawec—that enabled Silesians to maintain a plurality of identities in the face of ennationalizing pressure. In the process, they began to develop ethnic-regional identities that were distinct from the neighboring national identities and that might even lay claim to their own nation-states.

Tomasz Kamusella's work is a significant contribution both to the history of nationalism and to the history of Silesia. Consistent with the “transnational turn” in history, Kamusella challenges the conventional German, Polish, and Czech national narratives. Silesia was not simply a borderland where the three nationalisms met and contested each other but, rather, a site where nonnational ethnic identities emerged to challenge those national identities. In rediscovering the Szlonzoks, the Slunzaks, and the Morawecs and exposing them to the light of historical inquiry, Kamusella challenges other historians to liberate themselves from national narratives and to reexamine notions of identity in Central Europe. This study should serve as the foundation for historians to examine further the emergence of Silesian—and other transnational or nonnational—identities.