The Baltic Sea: A Space of Changing Expectations

Synopsis

After 1989, great expectations were placed on the re-establishment of the Baltic Sea area as a “historical region”. The idea was to offer to the citizens of the coastal countries new opportunities to identify themselves with trans-national political processes and the unhindered exchange across borders. The contributions gathered in the present volume acknowledge the results achieved by the EU enlargement, but are rather sobering with regard to the envisaged establishment of a “Baltic Sea Region”. The authors examine the structural policies for the islands, the attempts to establish forms of transnational democracy, the intellectual efforts of region-building, and the perception that migrants have of such efforts. The essays show that national interests and expectations, as well as older spatial concepts such as “Eastern Europe”, have hitherto resisted the establishment of a “Baltic Sea Region”.

Biographical Note

Prof. Rolf Petri (University of Venice, Italy)
Rolf Petri is a professor of contemporary history (19th and 20th centuries) at the University of Venice. Born in 1957, in 1982 he obtained the university diploma from the University of Marburg and in 1988 the doctoral degree of the European University Institute in Florence. He was a researcher and lecturer at the Deutsche Historische Institut (Rome), and the universities of Bielefeld and Halle-Wittenberg; coordinator of the European Doctorate in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean “Building on the Past” from 2006 to 2009; director of Ca’ Foscari School of International Relations from 2011 to 2014; and member of the editorial board of “Memoria e Ricerca”.