Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

“The California of the Romanians”:The Integration of Northern Dobrogeainto Romania, 1878-1913CONSTANTIN IORDACHIThis paper focuses on the integration of Northern Dobrogea into Romania,which is celebrated in Romanian historiography as the second stageof the creation of a national and unitary Romanian state, after the 1859 unionof Wallachia and Moldavia. 1 From this perspective, the mechanisms of integrationand assimilation used in Dobrogea by Romanian political elites prefiguredthe more complex and arduous process of administrative integration and culturalhomogenization that took place in post-1918 Greater Romania. Nevertheless,while the process of national consolidation in Greater Romania hasbeen recently subject to comprehensive research from non-teleological theoreticalperspectives, 2 the case of Dobrogea’s assimilation into Romania hasreceived limited attention. 3 In spite of the individualized character of theprovince, general works on modern history of Romania have usually failed todistinguish Dobrogea from the Old Kingdom. As for the numerous Romanianand Bulgarian works on the history of Dobrogea, written at a time when historiographyplayed an important role in the process of nation-building in East-Central Europe, they have focused almost unilaterally on the “validity” of theircountries’ rights to the province. Thus, while producing an essentially primordialistand parochialist historiographic discourse, these works have left unexploredimportant aspects of the assimilation of Dobrogea into Romania. 4This paper argues that, in order to foster the national and economicincorporation of the multi-ethnic province of Northern Dobrogea, Romanianpolitical elites designed a threefold mechanism composed of ethniccolonization, cultural homogenization, and economic modernization. Themost important stimulus behind the annexation of Dobrogea was economic:due to its strategic geographical location, the province was regarded asa vital commercial outlet of Romania, granting it access to the sea and facilitatingthus its elevation into the world economy, from periphery to semiperiphery.Demographically, Northern Dobrogea served as an “InternalAmerica” for Romania, a dynamic frontier zone of new settlements forexpanding the national economy and ethnic boundaries. 5 From an institutionalpoint of view, the mechanism of assimilation had citizenship legislationat its core: despite its formal incorporation into Romania, Northern121