Soňa Štrbáňová:
Turning “Province” to a “Centre”? Ambitions to Establish an Institutionalized Network of Slavic Scientists at the Turn of the 19th Century

Abstract

In the last two decades of the 19th century, the Czech scientific community made serious effort to strengthen its position not only within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but also outside its territory. An instrument of this endeavour was bringing together Slavic scientists with a vision of establishment a Slavic scientific community around a new centre – Prague. The programme of Slavic scientific cooperation, which was taking shape especially during the Prague conventions of the Czech naturalists and physicians in Prague 1880 to 1914, and the analogous Polish conventions (1869–1911), included establishing of pan-Slavic scientific journals, creating common Slavic scientific nomenclature, publishing terminological dictionaries and Slavic bibliographies, organizing regular pan-Slavic scientific congresses, exchange of Slavic students, and so on. In these efforts the Czech scientists (especially the physicians supported by economically and politically influential strata of the Czech population) played the role of a hegemon motivated by both scientific and political goals. The extensive programme of Slavic scientific integration never materialized as it did not correspond to political and social reality and the existing international tensions, but we may discuss it as a historical attempt of integrating the periphery and creating a new centre, in this case of “Slavic science”. The endeavor to launch an institutionalized cooperation of the Slavic scientists can also be discussed in terms of building a Slavic identity through formation of a Slavic scientific community, as well as a special case of nationalization of scientific knowledge as treated recently in the volume edited by M. Ash and J. Surman (see Note 1).

Language: english

Keywords: History of Slavic science; nationalization of science; scientific conventions; conventions of Slavic scientists