Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Bogdan Dumitru, PhD candidate, History

The relationship between land rights and national discourse, while a central element of nation-building in East Central Europe, has been relatively neglected by contemporary historical scholarship on nationalism. Based on the analysis of legal disputes over land ownership and peasant petitions, this talk discusses the relationship between land ownership inequality, land redistribution, and nationalism in interwar Transylvania. It will show that peasants were not simply passive actors acted upon by the state and nationalist elites. They played active roles in criticizing government inefficiency and corruption and in negotiating their loyalty to the nation-state.