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

The History of Romanian-HungarianInterethnic, Cultural and Political Relations:SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY(1990-2000)Compiled by NÁNDOR BÁRDI and CONSTANTIN IORDACHI *Edited by CONSTANTIN IORDACHI and BALÁZS TRENCSÉNYIFOREWORDIn the modern period, Romanian and Hungarian historians have beenpassionately debating the overlapping pasts of their countries. Thepolemics between the two historiographical grand narratives have focusedon the multiethnic space of Transylvania: clashing over the question of“chronological preeminence,” the status of the province within the HungarianKingdom and that of the Romanian population within the Transylvaniansocio-political system, the situation of Romanians within “GreaterHungary” and that of the Hungarian minority within Greater Romania,the impact of the process of forced industrialization and cultural homogenizationupon minority life under the communist regime, and the diplomaticrelations between the two countries. These debates produceda large and heterogeneous historiographical corpus that has not yet beensubject to comprehensive bibliographical research.The political change that occurred in 1989 has created an unprecedentedopportunity to transgress the narrow boundaries of previous historiographicalparadigms. In this context, there have been attempts tore-conceptualize the Romanian-Hungarian relationship from a regionalor global perspective, using non-teleological theoretical outlooks. At thesame time, historical polemics and conflicting national mythologies havecontinued to characterize a significant part of the historiographical productionin the two countries. The present bibliography aims to contributeto a better knowledge of the post-communist history-writing in these* The work is part of a larger bibliographical research project on the history of Romanian-Hungarian relations, conducted by the authors at the Teleki László Institute, Budapest. Theauthors wish to thank Marius Turda, who compiled, together with Constantin Iordachi,a concise bibliography on the representation of the history of Hungary in the post-1989Romanian historiography that served as a nucleus for the Romanian section of the presentbibliography, as well as Cristina and Dragoº Petrescu, who helped with the proofreading ofthe material.309