Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

National Prejudices, Mass Media and History Textbooksvent any claim about a total withdrawal of the population in 274, when theRoman army left the territories North of the Danube. In this logic, anyelement of discontinuity must be removed. The logic is simple: concerningthe history of the territories inhabited by Romanians, the Romanians mustbe a priori on the side of continuity, while Hungarians on the side of discontinuity.This vision is based on three essential premises: the right of the onewho came first; the refusal to question the established narration of theethno-genesis and to express any doubt concerning its scientific basis; anda racial definition of Romanian Latinity. Some excerpts are illustrative:Why do you think this [that the Romans had exterminated the Daciansand thereafter withdrew to the south of Danube]? Because in the ninthcentury, when Hungarians reached the Romanian soil, this territoryshould had been empty and Hungarians should have obtained the rightof the first comer. ... It is true [that autochthonous Dacians are mentionedas participants in the Romanian ethno-genesis]. But the title is:“Ethno-genesis: How do Romanians imagine their origins.” Besides thefact that the one who wrote this title is professionally disqualified for therest of his life, let me note that where there is imagination, there is nocertitude. Or, this title is about the fundamental act of birth of the Romanianpeople as resulting from imagination. I do assure those interestedthat in Hungarian textbooks the [historical] fact that Dacians were exterminatedand did not participate in the [Romanian] ethno-genesis isasserted with a very “scientific” certitude. ... The repeated mentioning of“the Latin-speaking population from the North of Danube,” as a smokescreen,does not confirm but rejects the Romanization [process], excludingfrom any discussion the proto-Romanians resulting from the Dacian-Roman symbiosis who inhabited the region between the NorthCarpathians and the Balkans in the sixth century. 26Another major aspect of the Romanian history allegedly missing from thetextbook is the emergence of Romanian statehood. Two titles and twomap-titles especially disturbed Nãstase. These are: “Transylvania and theVlacho-Bulgarian state of the Assanides,” “The two Romanian Countriesruled by natives,” the map of “The Romanian Principalities and Transylvaniain the seventeenth century,” and the map of “The Romanian Principalitiesand Transylvania in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.”This means that:There are two Romanian states and they are governed by natives – Wallachiaand Moldavia – , while the Bulgarian Tsardom and Transylvania103