NICOLAE IORGA ON THE DEVELOPMENT STAGES OF ROMANIAN NATIONALISM

Abstract

Known for his research on the elements of national unity which rose and developed in the minds of all Romanians and which eventually led to the establishment of Greater Romania, the great historian Nicolae Iorga identifies the stages through which the national sentiment of Romanians on both sides of the Carpathians had evolved from the Middle Ages to the modern era. After having researched the published works of Romanian humanists and Enlightenment writers in the archives and libraries of Romania, Bucovina and Transylvania, Nicolae Iorga identified the following stages of Romanian nationalist manifestations: primitive nationalism (9th to l0th century), enduring nationalism - the foundation of modern nationalism (17th century), definitive nationalism (18th century), and modern nationalism (the 1848/1849 generation). While Transylvanian nationalism was petitionary in nature, the nationalism that manifested south and east of the Carpathians was labelled as political, as it was accompanied by concrete own achievements. "Romanian nationalism" is seen as cultural and democratic, based on the traditional hospitality of the Romanian peasants and the sentiment of unity. These are the features of the Romanian national sentiment defined by Nicolae Iorga in 1922, which were used as a foundation for the Nationalist Democratic Party, the party he established in 1910 and whose leader he was until 1938.