Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements

This volume explores bilateral relations between Romania and Hungary and examines the entangled history of their two peoples. Going beyond traditional nation-centred narratives, the contributors approach the shared pasts of Romanians and Hungarians within a transnational research framework.
Writing the history of Romania and Hungary within a unitary framework, rather than in isolation, allows for a more complete illustration of the complex history of the East-Central European region.

This volume attempts to transcend the overlapping and often conflicting narratives of these two nations by looking for common theoretical and methodological ground on which to write the rich history of Romanian-Hungarian relations. The volume also seeks to test the relevance of the paradigm of transnational history for the study of Central Europe. The contributors employ recent theoretical and methodological tools provided by various forms of transnational research, such as the history of transfers, shared or entangled history, and histoire croisée.

By offering a multi-perspective insight into the entangled histories of Romania and Hungary, this volume acts as a test case for comparative history, on a par with the better-known case of the shared past of France and Germany. It therefore contributes to the broader effort to re-think and re-narrate East-Central European regional history, and also all-European history, from an integrated transnational perspective.

Contents:
+ Introduction

+ History Writing on Hungary and Romania: Beyond National Narratives?

+ Hungarians and Romanians: How Were Two Images of Hostility Born?

+ ‘The Struggle of Colours’: Flags as National Symbols in Transylvania in 1848

+ Accommodation or Separation: Notes on the Romanians and Hungarians of Transylvania, 1867-1940

+ Entanglements of Economic Nationalizing in the Ethnic Borderland of Transylvania, 1867-1940

+ Modernization and Ethnicity: Slovaks and Transylvanian Romanians in the Dualist Period

+ A Crossroad of Parallels: Regionalism and Nation-Building in Transylvania in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

+ Thoughts on the Social Dimension of Romanian-Saxon Political Relations in the Early Twentieth Century

+ Imagined Geographies of Race: Hungary and Romania, 1900-1940

+ Nationhood Reasserted: Transylvanian Educated Elites before and after the 1918 Change of Sovereignty

+ The Dilemmas of a Hungarian University in Cluj

+ ‘Truly Devilish Material’: Hungary’s Entanglement with History and the League of Nations

+ Romanian-Hungarian Relations from the Soviet Ultimatum until the Second Vienna Arbitration (June-August 1940)

+ Between States: A Journey from Social to Transnational History

+ The Helsinki Process from Small States’ Perspective: Cold War Strategies of Hungary and Romania in Comparison

+ Afterlife or Reinvention? ‘National Essentialism’ in Romania and Hungary after 1945

+ Defending ‘Historical and Political Interests’: Romanian-Hungarian Historical Disputes and the History of Transylvania

+ Rival National Narratives: A Comparative Analysis of Secondary School History Primers from Romania and Hungary

+ A Rapprochement without Reconciliation: Romanian-Hungarian Relations in the Post-Communist Era

+ Reconciliation at the Wrong End

+ From Disentanglement to Interdependence: State Citizenship in Romania and Hungary, 1945-2012.