Maps of central and eastern Europe in the 19th century would have shown a confusing array of villages speaking a variety of languages and following different religions, many of whom wouldn’t have been aware of themselves as Poles, Romanians, Serbs or whatever. These communities had uneasily co-existed under imperial rulers until the spread of newspapers and telegraph poles began to form a new national consciousness, usually driven by urban intellectuals LARPing in peasant fantasies.