Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1990–2000on that basis, to integrate it into a larger comparative and analyticalframework, that of the “Mid-European” historical processes.In the second section, focusing on historiographical studies, one canalso point out many divergences between the Hungarian and the Romanianmaterials. While in Romania the problems of historiography figuredprominently on the post-communist research agenda, in Hungary the historyof historiography has been a marginal topic of research. In the lastdecade, some of the leading Romanian historians sought to deconstructhistorical mythologies, debated the relationship between politics and history-writingas well as the status of the historian in society; at the sametime, historiograpical debates in Hungary have been marked by more“technical” questions, such as the re-evaluation of individual oeuvres, andhave not been concerned with the “fundamental” questions of historiographicnarrativity. Some Hungarian historians have been, nevertheless,receptive to Romanian historiographical conceptions (e.g., the works ofLucian Boia). In contrast, except for the debate stirred by the publicationof the History of Transylvania in the mid-eighties, one can speak neither ofa fertile Romanian reception of Hungarian historical works, nor of a substantiveRomanian-Hungarian historiographical dialogue. This sectionalso contains some works about the other nation’s general history publishedin the respective countries.The third and fourth sections include works concentrating on thecommon ground of the Romanian-Hungarian relations – the history ofTransylvania. The third one includes general works on the province, whichrefer to more than one historical period. The fourth section – i.e., the firstchronological one – focuses on the medieval and early modern history ofTransylvania until 1867, dealing mainly with the Transylvanian Principality,and the events of 1848-49. Numerous works by Romanian authorsfocus on the confessional history of Romanians in Transylvania, and therole played by the Uniates in the emergence of the Romanian nationalmovement. In view of the Hungarian material, 1848 would have beena more clear-cut dividing line, defining the Revolution as a separate unitand then one could have incorporated into one section the rather modestoutput on the subsequent periods up to 1918. This is also true since, in theHungarian historiographical works, the Romanian community becomesa dominant theme only in connection with the events of 1848. But if westep out of the canon of the Hungarian nation-building process – crystallized,naturally enough, around 1848-49 – and turn to the tangible realityof the history of administration in Transylvania, then 1867 (i.e., the reintegrationof Transylvania into Hungary) emerges as the fundamentalwatershed. The fifth section contains materials on the relations betweenthe emerging Romanian nation-state and Austria-Hungary, and studies on312