Nenaplněná syntéza. Cizí vlastníci a meziválečná pozemková reforma
An Unfulfilled Synthesis: Foreign Owners and the Interwar Land Reform

Summary/Abstract: After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the political leadership launched an extensive land reform aimed at owners of large estates, most of whom belonged to noble families. The process lasted until the mid-1930s. The edited volume by Václav Horčička et al. "Cizí páni na české půdě: Pozemková reforma v meziválečném Československu na statcích cizích státních příslušníků" [Foreign Lords on Czech Soil: Land Reform in Interwar Czechoslovakia on Estates of Foreign Nationals] focuses primarily on the diplomatic and foreign policy aspects of this crucial, multifaceted, and long-term process. According to the reviewer, however, the authors only partially succeeded in achieving their synthesizing ambition. An undeniable strength of the book lies in its thorough heuristic approach, making extensive use of materials from foreign archives. Nevertheless, description often outweighs analytical evaluation. The work also lacks stronger connections between the findings and existing scholarly literature, which is only minimally discussed. In thereviewer’s opinion, only some chapters provide a well-structured and convincingly argued account. As a result, the book stands less as a synthesis than as another partial contribution to the subject – valuable as a source of information for further research and general conclusions, but limited in its interpretative reach.

• Details
• Contents