Description:
Winner of the 2010 George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association.
The struggle between Hungary and Romania for control of Transylvania seems at first sight a side-show in the story of the Nazi New Order and the Second World War. These allies of the Third Reich spent much of the war arguing bitterly over Transylvania's future, and Germany and Italy were drawn into their dispute to prevent it from spiraling into a regional war. But precisely as a result of this interaction, the story of the Transylvanian Question offers a new way into the history of how state leaders and national elites have interpreted what "Europe" means. Tucked into the folds of the Transylvanian Question's bizarre genealogy is a secret that no one ever tried to keep, but that has remained a secret nonetheless: small states matter. The perspective of small states puts the struggle for mastery among its Great Powers into a new perspective.
Review Quotes: "[Between States] focuses chiefly on events between 1940 and 1944, in what is a stellar blend of classic diplomatic history with microhistory . . . Holly Case's microhistorical analysis of Cluj serves to caution us that ethnic identity, often depicted as static, is indeed hardly spontaneous; instead it is the product of a state-supported or state-obstructed situative process of identification. Case's book offers much not only to those Hungarian historians engaged in re-elaborating our understanding of the [era] . . . but also to scholars of the region who seek to finally supersede the national narratives that followed the collapse of state socialism with another approach, that of transnational and comparative social history."--Stefano Bottoni "Hungarian Historical Review"