The purpose of the article is to revisit, after a quarter of a century, Professor Keith Hitchins’s two-volume Oxford synthesis of Romanian history from 1774 to 1947. It summarizes his principal premises and conclusions and then assesses how well his findings have held up since then.

Radu Nedici

A Nation Yet to Be Discovered: The Romanian Reception of Keith Hitchins’s Studies on Modern Transylvania

(pp. 177–195)

This article attempts an assessment of Keith Hitchins’s legacy on the question of the intellectual origins and development of the Romanian nation in Transylvania from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. I focus on how his works have been read by scholars of different generations in Romania, mostly through an analysis of the reviews his books received in both scientific journals and the popular press. Closely linked to the political context of the 1960s–70s and after 1989, I suggest his success in Romanian academia rested mainly on him being perceived as a foreigner who was able to write truthfully about one of Romania’s most intimate historical topics. It is my contention that the consequence has been a lack of critical engagement with Hitchins’s idea of nation, which led to a failure to assimilate the implicit constructivist approach at the core of his investigation.

Anca Șincan

Positive Influence: Negotiating a Church Historiographical Canon with the West

(pp.197–216)

The present article discusses the way in which the historiographical canon on the history of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches in Transylvania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was reconceptualized during and in the aftermath of the academic visit of Western specialists in Romania. Keith Hitchins’s visit to Romania in the early 1970s to undertake research in the church archives for his work on the history of the Romanian intelligentsia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire made an impact on how the history of the Greek Catholic Church was portrayed in the religious journals of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The subtle shifts in the canon included distinguishing the Greek Catholics from the Orthodox in Transylvania and reintroducing the Greek Catholic interwar historiography into the interpretation.

Alex R. Tipei

What Did Romanian Mean to Ion? Moving Beyond Methodological Nationalism through Keith Hitchins’s Pedagogy

(pp. 217–237)

This article discusses the tension created in Keith Hitchins’s work between his constructivist approach to the nation and his adherence to a certain type of methodological nationalism. Examining Hitchins’s The Romanians, 1774–1866 through the lens of his pedagogy, the article posits that his commitment to methodological nationalism and his use of language associated with this approach obscured his understated argument on the constructed nature of Romanian national identity. It explores the impact of Hitchins’s scholarship and teaching on my own research to show why moving beyond the language of methodological nationalism is important and offers suggestions for doing so.

Book Reviews

(pp. 239–249)

Dumitru Lisnic

Eugen Străuțiu, Steven D. Roper, William E. Crowther, Dareg Zabarah-Chulak, Victor Juc, and Robert E. Hamilton (Editors). The Armed Conflict of the Dniester. Three Decades Later. New York: Peter Lang, 2023. 251 pp.

Paul E. Michelson

Vasile Pușcaș. Keith Hitchins: The Historian’s Honesty/Onestitate istoricului. Cluj-Napoca: Editura Școala Ardeleană, 2021. 169 pp.

Gheorghe Gelu Păcurar

Marco Guglielmi. The Romanian Orthodox Diaspora in Italy: Eastern Orthodoxy in a Western European Country. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 170pp.

Dumitru-Cornel Vîlcu

Johannes Kabatek, Eugenio Coseriu: Beyond Structuralism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2023. 326 pp.