Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Guest Field Note
Cluj-Napoca , Romania
To Hungarians, Transylvania is sig-
nifi cant because it was an impor-
tant part of the Hungarian Kingdom
for a thousand years. Many of their
great leaders were born and bur-
ied there, and many of their great
churches, colleges, and architec-
tural achievements are located
there too. For example, in the city
of Cluj-Napoca ( Kolozsvár in Hun-
garian) is St. Michael's Cathedral,
and next to it is the statue of King
Matthias, one of Hu n gary's greatest
kings. Romanians have long lived
in the territory too, tracing their
roots back to the Roman Empire.
To Romanian nationa l ists, the
existence of Roman ruins in Tran-
sylvania is proof of their Roman
ancestry and their right to govern
Transylvania because their ancestors lived in Transylvania before those of the Hungarians. When archaeologists found
Roman ruins around St. Michael's Cathedral and King Matthias's statue, they immediately began excavating them, which
in turn aggravated the ethnic Hungarians. Traveling in Transylvania made me very aware of how important places are to
peoples and how contested they can be.
Figure 8.5
Credit: George White, South Dakota State University
confl icts by force as well as by negotiation, and defi ned
their borders more precisely.
To help people within the borders relate to the domi-
nant national ideal, states provide security, infrastructure,
and goods and services for their citizens. States support
education, health care, and a military to preserve the state
and to create a connection between the people and the
state—to build a nation-state. European states even used
the colonization of Africa and Asia in the late 1800s and
early 1900s as a way to promote nationalism. People could
take pride in their nation's vast colonial empire. People
could identify themselves with their nation, be it French,
Dutch, or British, by contrasting themselves with the peo-
ple in the colonies whom they defi ned as mystical or savage.
By defi ning themselves in relation to an “Other,” the state
and the people helped identify the supposed “traits” of their
nation; in so doing, they began to build a nation-state.
tions. Such complications might include states containing
more than one nation, nations residing in more than one
state, and even nations without a state at all.
Nearly every state in the world is a
multinational
state
, a state with more than one nation inside its borders.
The people living in the former state of Yugoslavia never
achieved a strong sense of Yugoslav nationhood. Mil-
lions of people who were citizens of Yugoslavia never had
a Yugoslav nationality. They long identifi ed themselves as
Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, or members of other nations or
ethnic groups. Yugoslavia was a state that was always com-
prised of more than one nation, and it eventually collapsed.
When a nation stretches across borders and across
states, the nation is called a
multistate nation
. Political
geographer George White studied the states of Roma-
nia and Hungary and their overlapping nations (Fig. 8.5).
As he has noted, the territory of Transylvania is cur-
rently in the middle of the state of Romania, but it has
not always been that way. For two centuries, Hungary's
borders stretched far enough east to encompass Transyl-
vania. The Transylvanian region today is populated by
Romanians and by Hungarians, and places within Tran-
sylvania are seen as pivotal to the histories of both Hun-
gary and R
Multistate Nations, Multinational States,
and Stateless Nations
People with a sense of belonging to a particular nation
rarely all reside within a single state's borders. The lack of
fi t between nation and state therefore creates complica-
omania. In keeping with the nation-state ideal,
it is not surprising that both Romania and Hungary have
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