Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1990–2000countries, and to provide students of Romanian-Hungarian bilateral relationswith a useful working instrument, comprising works published after1989 by Romanian and Hungarian authors on inter-ethnic, socio-political,cultural and diplomatic relations, focusing mainly on the modern period.In compiling the bibliography, the authors had to face the challengesof subsuming under common analytical categories two historiographical traditionsand organizing linguistically divergent materials. Originally, theauthors considered the possibility of publishing two separate bibliographiescomprising works by Hungarian and Romanian historians on the relatedsubjects of the history of Hungary, Romania, and Transylvania, and on thestatus of national minorities in the two countries. But this parallel treatmentwould have greatly reduced the relational and comparative aspects of theendeavor. Nevertheless, one has to face serious disproportions on variousaccounts. First and foremost, there is a quantitative imbalance. The treatmentof the general history of Romanians in the Hungarian historiographydoes not equal the numerous works on the history of the Hungarians livingin Romania. Currently, approximately one hundred authors are publishingin Romania historical works in Hungarian language, on the history of theHungarian minority in Romania and, to a lesser extent, on that of Romaniaand Hungary. Compared to this, works by Romanian historians on the historyof Hungary are considerably less numerous.Second, the analytical focus of the two historiographies is different.Traditionally, Romanian historiography on Transylvania has been by andlarge ethno-centric, focusing mainly on the history of Romanians andtheir socio-political emancipation. It touched upon the general historyof Transylvania and of Hungary only providing that, and to the extent ofwhich, it was related to the history of Romanians. Nevertheless, in thelast decade there has been a tendency to overcome parochialism and toreconsider the history of Romanians in Transylvania, by integrating itinto a comprehensive regional historical framework, focusing on issuessuch as inter-ethnic relations in the province, the history of regionalismand the formation of regional identities. In its turn, Hungarian historiographyin the last decades has been dominated by a tendency of professionaland methodological self-centeredness. Furthermore, the Hungarianhistorical literature has not focused on the general history ofRomania, but it has been concerned with certain aspects of it, whichoverlapped with the Hungarian national history, focusing on those geographicalregions of Romania which are inhabited by ethnic Hungariansor were part of the Hungarian state in various historical periods.Although it did not lack in quality, the Hungarian research on the historyof Romania or Transylvania was not marked by methodological ortheoretical innovations. As for the Hungarian historiography in Transyl-310