The present volume contains nineteen scholarly essays by Miroslav Hroch, originally published between 1970 and 2004. Most texts are written in English, but there are also four contributions in German and one in French. The articles appear in photographic reprint with their original pagination, with a Roman number added to each chapter in order of appearance to allow for precise reference. A brief preface by the author and an index complete the volume.

The book's subtitle is somewhat misleading. Although Hroch insists that “the great social group known as the ‘nation’ . . . really exists in the present and may thus serve as an object of empirical research” (VII: 91), he says little about nations per se as historical subjects or as historiographical objects, and he consistently refuses to use the term “nationalism” as an analytical tool, arguing that it is more appropriate to analyze the empirically tangible phenomena of national movements and national agitation instead. Consequently, the bulk of the essays deals with national movements and the interplay of social change and national mobilization especially between 1789 and 1848, but with a fair coverage of the latter parts of the nineteenth century also. One 1971 essay on the role of Central European trade in the trade balance between Eastern and Western Europe from 1550 to 1650 testifies to Hroch's erudition but remains unattached to the rest of the book, whereas two articles from the mid-1990s, in which Hroch puts contemporary national developments in Central and Eastern Europe in historical perspective in order to warn against simplistic assumptions about a region ridden by rampant and irrational nationalism, are atypical as Hroch is clearly reluctant to let his analytical insights result in any political recommendations.

Together, the nineteen essays offer a good impression of what characterizes Hroch as a historian. Many essays have a comparative design, which Hroch applies with methodological stringency and a deep empirical knowledge of his objects of study, be it the social interpretation of linguistic demands in European national movements, the social or territorial characteristics of the leading groups within these movements, or the reception of the French Revolution in Europe in the first decade after its outbreak. Hroch offers interesting comparisons and well-argued conclusions, but often—probably unavoidably given the essay format—the broad comparisons and conclusions leave the reader with a nagging urge to ask if “this was really so,” i.e., if a closer empirical investigation would not reveal contradictions or diverging patterns of development challenging some of Hroch's general assumptions.

Hroch, surely, would not object to such inquiries. A trademark quality of his writing is his ability to present key terms and premises of his approach in a clear and cogent fashion and to apply these in the analysis. It is therefore a pleasure to read Hroch's discussions of his own position vis-à-vis Ernest Gellner, Roman Szporluk, Eugen Lemberg, or others. Methodologically and in his core assumptions about nation formation as a historical phenomenon, Hroch sticks to the ideas he developed in the late 1960s and presented in English with his 1985 book, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge University Press). The only major adjustment is that Hroch has replaced the term “small nation” with “non-dominant ethnic group.”

Curiously, however, the term “ethnic group” (and with it “ethnicity,” “ethnie,” etc.) remains insufficiently defined throughout the collection. On one occasion (IV: 75), Hroch refers to Anthony Smith's distinction between an “ethnic category” and an “ethnic community” as adequate terms for ethnic groups without or with a collective self-awareness, respectively, and suggests that we should see the two as consecutive stages in the development of nondominant ethnic groups. This logic comes dangerously close to the kind of primordialism and essentialism that Hroch repeatedly warns against, and to a circular logic where essentially the contours of the premodern ethnie become defined by the contours of the later nation, the shape of which is conversely held to be conditioned by the existence of the premodern ethnie.

Here, Hroch's argument could benefit from a dialogue with recent constructivist approaches to the study of nationalism and nation formation that focus on what the application of the category of “nation” does socially, rather than holding a nation simply to be and seeing national identity as something one has. Hroch's own strong focus on national mobilization, which also includes a keen understanding of the mobilizing role of historical prose fiction or national historiography, could provide a fertile ground for this dialogue.