Understanding the Roots of Populism in Central Europe and Beyond

How have rural uprisings and peasant movements shaped modern Central and Eastern European history—and what can they reveal about populism today? In The Last Peasant War: Violence and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2025), historian Jakub Beneš uncovers the forgotten waves of rural unrest that reshaped politics in the era of the world wars. He will be joined by leading historians Mark Cornwall and Claire Morelon to discuss his book’s fresh perspective on twentieth-century Czech and broader European history, as well as its relevance for understanding today’s political divides.

The Last Peasant War: Violence and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe

Princeton University Press, 2025

SPEAKERS:

Jakub Beneš is Associate Professor in Central European History at University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. The Last Peasant War is his second book. He is also the author of the award-winning Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 (Oxford University Press, 2017). Born in California to Czechoslovak parents, Beneš has lived and worked in the UK since 2012.

Mark Cornwall is Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Southampton. His books include The Devil’s Wall: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha (2012) about the Czech-German relationship in the early 20th century. The Czech playwright Jan Mocek has turned The Devil's Wall into a play - Wandervogel - and it is being performed this year in Prague, Brno and Nitra. In 2022, the Czech Academy of Sciences awarded Mark Cornwall the Palacký Medal for Merit in the Historical Sciences for his work on Czech history. He is now writing a history of treason in the late Habsburg Empire, and also researching the Czechoslovak security police in the last years of communism.

Claire Morelon is Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prague, 1914-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2024). She was awarded the 2020 Stanley Z. Pech Prize by the Czechoslovak Studies Association for an article on the requisition of church bells during the First World War. Prior to coming to Manchester, she held research fellowships at the University of Oxford and the University of Padua.

Admission: £5 ( Eventbrite fee)
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