WW1 only or "National Reunification War", Poll

You mean his interpretations of Romanian history...

Imperialist & Ahmed, you missed the point. I did not quote Boia per se. Instead, from the book authored by Boia I quoted other historians, as Onciul and Bratianu. Other reveered Rumanian historians, quoted in the same chapter, are A. D. Xenopol, N. Iorga, C. C. Giurescu et al - all converging to the same idea, namely that a clear 'national unity' vision in Mihai Viteazul's plans did not exist - could not exist - during his conquest of Transylvania on the turn of the XVIth and the XVIIth Centuries.

As I said, check out the book and you'll see what these illustrious historians mean.

Finally, I did not learn of the actual time of birth of the 'nation' only recently, but many years ago, in a context totally different than Mihai Viteazul's. It's nothing new, as it's a classic, well established historical concept. What is new is the attempt to push the envelope, so it would fit a certain political agenda. This happened mainly after the war, during the Communist times, and is curently uphold by a certain segment of historians - professionals and amateurs alike.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on July 08, 2005 03:10 am

The problem of unification during the Middle Ages is very complex. There were many unifications during that period (the unification of France, the unification of Norway, the unification of the Visigothic and the Hispano-Roman communities in Spain) that all were later used as a territorial base for "nations".
Could we say, from this perspective, that what was Mihai Viteazu’s kingdom (that unified those who spoke the same language even if this was not the purpose of his actions but anyway it was a kind of unification) became later the base of the Romanian nation (as historical process).


Every nation, since the appearance of the concept, referred itself to some kingdom that existed before. The relation between nation and territory is more powerful than we think. And this is the cause of the conflicts and disputes that appeared later. Many territories changed sides many times (look at the situation in the Balkans), that’s why it was very difficult to “split” two neighbors. How could one do it? Taking in consideration the old kingdoms or taking in consideration the ethnicity of the population?

Maybe this would be a question for an other thread that would try to analyze the technical relation between a state as structure, territory, people and nation.

This post has been edited by johnny_bi on July 08, 2005 04:16 pm