THE PEOPLE INCORPORATED Constructions of the Nation in Transylvanian Romanian Liberalism, 1838–1848
THE PEOPLE INCORPORATED Constructions of the Nation in Transylvanian Romanian Liberalism, 1838–1848

Author(s): Kinga-Koretta Sata
Subject(s): Human Geography, Period(s) of Nation Building, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (CAS)
Keywords: Transylvanian Romanian liberalism; national historiographies of 19th-century Transylvania;
Summary/Abstract: The existence of a specific Transylvanian Romanian liberalism, either in the sense of being a fully-fledged movement, or only a more or less clear-cut affective community of individual theorists and politicians, is not taken for granted by the national historiographies of 19th-century Transylvania, either Hungarian or Romanian. The theorists and activists that this paper groups under the heading of Transylvanian Romanian national liberals are most commonly described as members of the national movement in Transylvania, that is, the movement that fought for the emancipation of the Romanian people in Transylvania. It is the argument of this paper, however, that the identity politics devised by the theorists discussed cannot be understood without taking seriously their allegiance to the liberal project of modernity (and modernization) besides their commitment to the national cause. They themselves thought that the two projects, liberal modernization (and its economic corollary, capitalism) and national emancipation were not only reinforcing each other, but could not be conceived of separately. It is this apparently paradoxical concatenation of a progressive and a conservative idiom of political thought, liberalism and nationalism, that the present paper intends to describe through a reconstruction of the Transylvanian Romanian version of liberal identity-building, both political-institutional and cultural.

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