engleski

Knowledge and Identity between Society and State: A Walk through the Modern Croatian Encyclopedics

During mid-19th Century, and especially after the 1868 Croatian-Hungarian Settlement, a number of modern Croatian institutions and associations were established. Publicly or privately sponsored, University of Zagreb, Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society for Yugoslav History, Matrix Croatica and the Society of St. Jerome, each in its own way – parallel to the ever-growing system of mandatory primary education as well as non- mandatory high-schools –contributed to the dissemination of knowledge and also to the long- term process of Croatian national integration. As a result, the increasing number of buyers and subscribers enabled relatively stable demand and supply relationships concerning books and periodicals. However, albeit often regarded as an ultimate representation of national identity, being extremely complex, encyclopaedias and lexicons were also risky projects to enter, and seldom achieved success, at least not until the state-sponsored institutions took over during 20th Century, which was often at the detriment of the autonomous public, which stood behind most of the 18th and 19th Century classic European encyclopaedias. On the other hand, within Croatian context, it was also necessary to keep in mind the possible ethnonational and territorial extent of the envisioned readers’ community, which for most of the time also entailed cautious positioning within changing Habsburg and Yugoslav frameworks, including decades of non-liberal and non- democratic political life. Within that scope, the author will strive to present selected general- and national- type encyclopaedias and lexicons from 1880s to 1980s, a clear indicator of the worldwide conceptual changes, but also of some local particularities.

Croatia, Habsburg Monarchy, knowledge, national integration, nation building, enciclopaedias, lexicons, institutions

nije evidentirano