“The Carpathians is, in many ways, a pioneering effort, one that will hopefully put the Carpathians back on historians’ mental maps and pave the way for further studies.”—History: Reviews of New Books 

The Carpathians
Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine
by Patrice M. Dabrowski

Cornell University Press
Discount code: 09SAVE – 33%

In The Carpathians, Patrice M. Dabrowski narrates how three high-land ranges of the mountain system found in present-day Poland, Slo-vakia, and Ukraine were discovered for a broader regional public. This is a story of how the Tatras, Eastern Carpathians, and Bieszczady Moun-tains went from being terra incognita to becoming the popular tourist destinations they are today. It is a story of the encounter of Polish and Ukrainian lowlanders with the wild, sublime highlands and with the indigenous highlanders—Górale, Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos—and how these peoples were incorporated into a national narrative as the territories were transformed into a native/national landscape. The set of microhistories in this book occur from about 1860 to 1980, a time in which nations and states concerned themselves with the “frontier at the edge.” Discoverers not only became enthralled with what were perceived as their own highlands but also availed themselves of the mountains as places to work out answers to the burning ques-tions of the day. Each discovery led to a surge in mountain tourism and interest in the mountains and their indigenous highlanders. Although these mountains, essentially a continuation of the Alps, are Central and Eastern Europe’s most prominent physical feature, politi-cally they are peripheral. The Carpathians is the first book to deal with the northern slopes in such a way, showing how these discoveries had a direct impact on the various nation-building, state-building, and mod-ernization projects. Dabrowski’s history incorporates a unique blend of environmental history, borderlands studies, and the history of tourism and leisure.

Learn more about the book from the author Patrice M. Dabrowski from the talk at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University published on YouTube.

Patrice M. Dabrowski was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2014. Patrice M. Dabrowski has taught and worked at Harvard, Brown, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Vienna. She is currently an Associate of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, a member of the Board of Directors of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA), and editor of H-Poland. Dabrowski is the author of three books: Poland: The First Thousand Years (2014; paperback edition, 2016), Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland (2004), and The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (2021).

Northern Illinois University Press
an imprint of Cornell University Press
Publication date: October 15, 2021
$34.95 | hardcover | 978-1-5017-5967-3
cornellpress.cornell.edu

“In this groundbreaking study of the political significance of a pivotal mountain range in the context of competing nationalisms, Patrice M. Dabrowski lifts the lid on a neglected area of Central Europe where cultures clashed as fiercely as armies.”—Adam Zamoyski, author of Napoleon 

“The Carpathians is a delightful melange of history, geography, ethnography and descriptions of little-known European landscapes. The emphasis is on the processes and spirit of discovery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The captivated reader discovers both the discoverers and their beautiful discoveries.”—Norman Davies, author of Beneath Another Sky