Questions related to the rights of national minorities were among the thornier challenges confronting Europe as it emerged from the carnage of the First World War. The principle of national self-determination which guided the treaties ending the conflict offered legitimacy to newly created “nation-states” and justified the acquisition of new territory for others. At the same time, it helped bolster national grievances for those who felt cheated by newly established borders, and motivated nationalization policies aimed at making the ideal of the nation-state a reality. As scholarship from the past few decades has demonstrated, these tensions created an environment where, for many, the First World War was only the prelude to continued conflict. In this excellent study, Machteld Venken demonstrates that schools were often the front line of these struggles.
Venken offers a thorough, deeply researched comparison of schooling in Polish Upper Silesia and the regions of Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium to illustrate the complexity of education policy in European borderlands in the interwar period. Without question, the quality of this comparison is the book's greatest strength. Analyses of interwar borderlands tend to prioritize Central and Eastern Europe, while territorial changes in the West have received scant attention. Even though traditional assessments have assumed borders were more stable in the West, Venken demonstrates that states like Belgium faced similar challenges to newly established states, like Poland. Both had to confront the challenge of incorporating newly acquired multilingual spaces into their states and of making those territories “socially lived spaces” that contributed to the stability and prosperity of the larger nation (20). While trying to achieve this goal, Belgium and Poland each had to establish policies that managed linguistic policy for German-speakers. Complicating matters, both also had to contend with the fact that they were surrounded by larger, more powerful neighbors whose foreign-policy goals often conflicted with the aims of each state. The most important of these neighbors was Germany, whose politicians rarely hesitated to call for the restoration of “lost” territories and offered financial and political support to groups working to undermine the education policies of their neighbors. This reality meant that both Poland and Belgium always faced the possibility that their borders were subject to potential challenges and negotiation.
While these similarities offer a strong foundation for comparison, as Venken deftly shows, there are also limits to any potential parallels. Poland's international status was more precarious than Belgium's. Beyond international agreements, like the Treaty of Locarno – which seemed to signal the possibility for adjusting Germany's eastern border – Poland's policies were subject to oversight by the League of Nations. In examining the impact of this fact, Venken uncovers the clever ways in which average people successfully employed League oversight to advance their grievances against Polish education policy. Belgium, on the other hand, faced no such supervision and even established a quasi-colonial regime in its formerly German territory, which was responsible for managing its incorporation into the Belgian state.
There were also considerable differences in the ultimate objective of education policy in each state. Belgium had a long history of accommodating multilingual education, and often the most pressing question related to German-language schools was related to the appropriate time to begin foreign-language education, not the status of German-language schools themselves. Poland, on the other hand, aimed to create a school system that would bolster the Polish nation-state and often established regulations that were designed to diminish the status of non-Polish-language schools.
The success of these policies was limited by both international events and the actions of citizens navigating life in these states. Venken's ability to explore the behavior and motivations of these individuals is another strength of the book. She shows that most parents living in the borderlands were often more interested in providing the best education for their children rather than fulfilling the ambitions of nationalist or political actors. As a result, Polish-speaking parents often attempted to send their children to German-language schools, while in Belgium, many prioritized the learning of French, regardless of nationality. Others even took the step of sending children across the border, to schools in Germany, when legally possible. In each case, the thought was that this education would allow for greater economic success.
Even if such actions were not motivated by political considerations, they still had profound political results. Venken argues that the ability of parents to circumscribe educational policy demonstrates that governments were often unable to realize a strong, solid border which divided their national space from their neighbors. In fact, she asserts that the weakness of such border constructs often became more pronounced in the face of rigid policies meant to restrict which schools children could attend. To help explain these arguments, Venken thoroughly grounds her analysis in theories tied to borders, territoriality, and human geography. At times, however, the use of these theories threatens to overwhelm or distract from the impact of the book's findings. For example, Venken uses the book's second chapter to offer a comprehensive theoretical framework and explain its applicability to subsequent arguments. While such a discussion is important, the fact that it occurs in the second chapter halts the momentum established at the start of the book. It also means that considerable space is devoted to explaining what the book will do later, rather than folding relevant theories organically into the prose. The book also would have been strengthened through more complete engagement with existing historical scholarship. Considerable work exists on education in prewar and interwar borderlands, which bolsters Venken's findings. While she offers a broad discussion of many of these works in her second chapter, they are not integrated into the book's larger arguments, leaving some important connections undiscussed. These issues do not diminish the overall success of the book, however. Venken offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the ways in which European states and ordinary people grappled with the challenges of the interwar period and provides a compelling discussion of the development of education in Europe's borderlands.
