Best romania history books according to redditors
We found 23 Reddit comments discussing the best romania history books. We ranked the 11 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 23 Reddit comments discussing the best romania history books. We ranked the 11 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Hmm... well basically you have to know that at the moment (and it's been like this for the last 15 years or so), the academic and public perception of Romanian history is divided between the "nationalists" — those that mostly reject critical attitude towards the the events and historical figures as they've been taught in the communist era and even before that — and those who prefer a more unbiased perspective, critical spirit and claim they would like to rid history of all the "myths".
Of course, what I said might be a little biased considering that I fall in the latter category, or at least that's what I believe.
However, I would very much recommend that you start by reading Lucian Boia's History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Basically he's the one that through this book started the whole shitstorm. Boia is like the frontman of the new "critical approach" to Romanian history. The book focuses on both historiography, pointing out the various historical tendencies during the centuries, and history per se.
I think it's a great book to start with, as it also gives you a good idea of why the historical field seems to be so polarized. Also, he isn't really an "extremist" when it comes to demythisation, although he is the one that started the whole "trend" and, to be honest, I find his work quite lucid and rational.
honestly wikipedia is good enough for somebody who knows very little and from there you can search separately for something more in depth that interests you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Romania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Romanian_history
this one here is actually fun http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Romania
http://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Romanians-Neagu-Djuvara/dp/1478132043/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375607733&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Romania-An-Illustrated-History-Histories/dp/0781809355/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Romania-Borderland-Topographics-Lucian-Boia/dp/1861891032
http://www.amazon.com/History-Romania-Nicolae-Iorga/dp/0404035043
http://www.amazon.com/short-history-Romania-Ion-Bulei/dp/9739884415
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18193725-from-vlad-the-impaler-to-dracula-the-vampire
I didn't add specifically for the modern period
Lots of people who live in northern Greece today are descended from Slavic-speakers who lived in the same place in the 1800s. Also, many Slavic-speakers were forced out in the early 1900s (or left of their own free will in many cases).
Also, many villages in Macedonia were ethnically "converted" to Greek, Bulgarian, or Serb identities during the Balkan Wars of the 1910s. This meant that the incoming militia would round up the local population and force them to write little oaths that said that they were henceforth Greeks (or whathaveyou). Source: Mark Mazower, The Balkans: A Short History.
If you want to learn more about the establishment of Greek national identity and the mixing of "Greeks" "Turks" and "Slavs" in Macedonia, I recommend this book.
You're right that many Greeks have nothing to do with Slavs (and especially not today where both Slav and Greek nationalisms have pulled them further apart) but in the 1800s the lines were far more blurred.
>so do the Romanians consider themselves Roman in anyway today
This is a tricky one. The level of perceived connection between Romans and Romanians fluctuated over the last 2 centuries, but one thing that remained constant was the linguistic connection, and our whole national identity is based around our "Latinity". As the saying goes, we are "an island of Latinity in a sea of Slavs".
Now regarding the above fluctuation: the "genetic" link (to use an anachronistic term) with the Romans changed over the years. In the initial stages of the development of Romanian nationalism (19th c.), the narrative was that the Romans conquered Dacia, slaughtered all the natives, and brought colonists from other parts of the empire, which over the centuries created the Romanian nation. This narrative was prominent out of a desire to be identified totally with a glorious past and glorious ancestors (the Roman Empire).
Over the decades however, the narrative shifted, as the Romanian state became more solidified and grew, and the provincial anxieties (being at the edge of Europe) gave way to anxieties about minorities (in the interwar period, a quarter of Greater Romania's population was non-Romanian). As such, the narrative shifted towards a more nativist view. The natives were not slaughtered, but were assimilated, and roman colonists were just a minority, albeit a culturally influential minority. Interest in Dacians started to grow, their position shifting from "barbarians worthy of extinction" to that of "our noble ancestors, full of patriotic dignity". This shift reached its peak in the 1980, when Dacocentrism overlapped with Ceauseascu's self-reliant ideology. See the wikiarticle on Protochronism for more detail.
Anyway, today's Romanians largely embrace the middle-of-the-road idea, where genetically we are descended from pre-Roman inhabitants, but culturally and especially linguistically we are descended from the Romans.
To a large extent, the cultural connection with the rest of Latinity has been exagerated, as a way to build a national narrative. We are culturally strongly connected with the peoples around us (Slavs and others from the Balkans) in a lot of ways (folk traditions, supertitions, cuisine, etc). The Roman Empire that had the most influence on us culturally was actually the Byzantine empire, and Nicolae Iorga called Wallachia and Moldova "Byzantium after Byzantium", even though we put much greater emphasis, on the Early imperial period - Trajan - because we speak a Latin-derived language (Byzantium was Greek-speaking) and because that's when Dacia was part of the Empire.
Source: History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness by Lucian Boia
Orizonturi roşii, de Ion Mihai Pacepa. E lansată prima dată în 1978 și vorbește despre Ceaușescu și crimele comunismului. Parcă există o carte mai recentă (~1990), dar nu sunt sigur dacă e tot asta revizuită sau e partea a doua.
In Europe's Shadow (Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond) - Robert Kaplan - o analiză externă a unui jurnalist destul de respectat.
Cum am trecut prin comunism - Lucian Boia - auto-biografică dar include mult despre viața în comunism.
Strania istorie a comunismului românesc - Mai multă istorie de data asta, tot de la Lucian Boia. Nu e detaliată, are vreo 200 de pagini, dar cred că are cam tot ce e important.
Romania since the Second World War - Florin Abraham - doar jumătate este despre comunism, o menționez mai mult pentru că pe amazon poți să o răsfoiești și să citești bibliografia, unde sunt zeci de materiale și cărți pe subiect.
I think there are serious issues here. You seem to be conducting a conversation with yourself here.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IO040PY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Here's a really good book for you to read. It's quite pathetic you are still spewing the same shit your 19th century forefathers were saying. They had an excuse of being the ones creating a nation. What's yours? (Anyway, don't bother responding. I'm blocking your answers. Way too much time wasted already on nationalist gits.)
Check out: http://www.amazon.com/Nations-Matter-Culture-History-Cosmopolitan/dp/0415411874
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6967.html
http://www.amazon.com/Nationalist-Politics-Everyday-Ethnicity-Transylvanian/dp/069113622X
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870500465611
http://nl.aup.nl/books/9789053569566-national-thought-in-europe.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Crises-Multiculturalism-Alana-Lentin/dp/1848135815
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-politics-of-home-jan-willem-duyvendak/?K=9780230293984
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo6017282.html
The Balkans: A Short History by Mark Mazower is a good start.
Imi place mentalitatea de "nu s-a meritat investitia" in Secret Santa a unora de-aici. Way to break stereotypes ;)
Eu am participat 3 ani.
Am primit:
Am trimis:
M-am inscris si anul asta just for the fuzzy feeling of getting someone Munchkin and some other random stuff :)
I quite like "the Moldovans" by Charles King, which is literally the only book about Moldovan history at my university's library.
https://www.amazon.com/Moldovans-Romania-Politics-Culture-Publication/dp/081799792X
Here is the mobile version of your link
For anyone interesting in the subject, I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Romanian-Battlefront-World-Modern-Studies/dp/0700620176 Really good read
Non è certo un argomento che mi appassiona o che ho affrontato di recente, per cui accontentati:
http://www.amazon.com/History-Myth-Romanian-Consciousness-Lucian/dp/9639116971