Studiile de istorie la Universitatea din Iaşi până la începutul perioadei interbelice∗ (I)
Studies of History at the University of Iaşi until the Beginning of the Interwar Period (I)

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to reconstruct the main stages in the development of historical studies at the University of Iaşi, focusing on the emergence and progress of various disciplines with historical content. From the methodological point of view, the focus will move from the analysis of teachers’ historiographical production, as it has generally been done so far, to how they were exploited within their departments. Given the scale and complexity of such a research, the material will be organized in two parts. The first one is devoted to the reconstruction of administrative dimension of historical studies, in terms of the development of courses and the interest they raised, as emerges from the numerical evolution of students and the purpose of this type of training. The second part of the research focuses on the courses’ content, given the trends in the European historiography and how they were perceived by the Romanian world. The present approach emphasizes the fact that the first teachers of history at the University of Iaşi, who taught within the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, were rather tempted to show involvement in social and political life than scientific and teaching improvement. Moreover, this Faculty and, thus, studies on the past were attended by a small number of students, due to the fact that high schools had few graduate students and university degrees did not offer any guarantee of obtaining professional commitments in education or administration. This lack of interest increased due to the poor quality of teachers and especially to the lack of concern for self-improvement of the historians aspiring to academic carriers. For this reason, the few professionals teaching at the University in the late 19th century and the beginning of the next one (A. D. Xenopol, Teohari Antonescu, Orest Tafrali and Ilie Minea) had to substitute several courses in the damage of their scientific activity. However, after overcoming the critical period during and immediately after the First World War, historical studies faced a maturation process, through shaping precise directions of research and attracting students to them.

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