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

CONSTANTIN IORDACHIDobrogea was subject to a separate, extra-constitutional administrative organizationbetween 1878 and 1913. Under this status, the inhabitants of Dobrogeaenjoyed a local type of citizenship, which denied them political participationand the right to acquire properties outside the province. Theintegration of the multi-ethnic province of Dobrogea into Romania resembledthus the model of “internal colonialism:” its organization was characterizedby administrative distinctiveness and excessive centralization supportedby claims of cultural superiority of the core region, by intense ethniccolonization, and by uneven regional economic development tailored to theneeds of the metropolis. 6This analysis focuses on the mechanism of assimilation implementedin Dobrogea by the Romanian political elites. The first part of thepaper explores the formation of the Romanian nationalist discourse aboutDobrogea, and its influence on shaping citizenship and property legislationin the province. The second and main part of the paper investigatesthe integration of Dobrogea into Romania at the following levels: administrativeorganization, ethnic colonization, and cultural homogenization.Special attention is devoted to the effects of citizenship legislation on theethnic assimilation of the province into Romania. The third part exploresthe association between national consolidation and modernization, and itsside-effect, namely the relationship between Bucharest’s excessive centralizationand regionalist tendencies in Northern Dobrogea. The fourthpart examines the political emancipation of the Dobrogeans. In conclusion,some specific characteristics of the process of nation- and statebuildingin the province are highlighted, in an attempt to add the complementarycase study of Northern Dobrogea’s prewar assimilation to thebroader debate on the administrative integration and cultural homogenizationin interwar Greater Romania.Theoretically, in line with recent works on the “deconstruction” ofthe nation-state, the study looks at its heterogeneous linguistic, territorial,and ethnic composition, and stresses diversity rather than unity, byfocusing on local history, and the history of regionalism. From this perspective,the case of Dobrogea features more general patterns of integrationthat would be repeated, in different historical conditions, on thelarger scale of Greater Romania, but also original characteristics, derivingmostly from Dobrogea’s Ottoman legacy of a multiple imperial borderland,most evident in its demographic and religious composition,and military organization. 7122