Rural Social Combustibility in Eastern Europe (1880–1914): A Cross-Border Perspective

This article proposes a comparative, cross-border analysis of the sources of rural combustibility around the complex frontier between Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia and the states that emerged out of the fringes of the Ottoman Empire, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Starting from the major peasant uprising that took place in 1907 in Romania, the article seeks to account for the fledgling country's explosiveness in contrast to its neighbours, given the structural and functional similarities of the systems around the frontier. It argues that, despite these skin-deep similarities, there were vital differences as regards the initial terms of peasant emancipation and the presence of a system of checks and balances, which could curb the impositions of the great landowners onto the peasants.