Borbála Zsuzsanna Török. Exploring Transylvania: Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories in a Multiethnic Province, 1790-1918. Leiden: Brill Academic Pub (original) (raw)

The latest work of Borbála Zsuzsanna Török, Exploring Transylvania: Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories in a Multiethnic Province, 1790-1918, traces the institutionalization of the Landeskunde discipline, together with its Hungarian adaptation called honismeret, throughout the long nineteenth century in Transylvania. The author defines both terms generally as the “scholarly mapping of a certain territory” and “the encyclopedic and systematic description of the land or the ‘fatherland’ [Translyvania]” (p. 1). Her book explores the evolution of Landeskunde and honismeret from their encyclopedic outlook during the Enlightenment to a singular focus on the nation and its history by the turn of the century. She states that, “indeed, Transylvania has been considered a ‘locus classicus’ of entangled and rival nationalisms” (p. 9). Up to now, only a couple of works provide a limited analysis of nineteenth-century Transylvanian cultural developments, including Török’s own earlier...