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Neagu Djuvara; Translated by Cristian Anton

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Neagu Djuvara; Translated by Cristian Anton A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ROMANIANS Neagu M. Djuvara (1916–2018) was born to a family of Aro manian descent that settled there in the late 18th century and gave Romania several notable figures. He obtained a degree in history from the Sorbonne (1937) and became a doctor of law (Paris, 1940). Between June and November 1941, he took part in the Roma nian army’s campaign in Bessarabia and Transnistria, and was wounded close to Odessa. Admitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1943, he was sent to Stockholm on a diplomatic mission related to the peace nego tiations with the USSR on the morning of 23 August 1944, hours before Romania changed sides in the WW2. He worked as a legation secretary in the Swedish capital until September 1947, when the Communists took control of Romanian diplomacy. Djuvara chose to remain in exile, where he was active in various diaspora orga ni sations. In 1961, he left for the Republic of Niger, where he would work for the next 23 years as a diplomatic and legal advisor to the country’s Foreign Affairs ministry, while also teaching international law and the history of economics at the University of Niamey. In 1972, he obtained a state doctorate from the Sorbonne with a thesis on the philosophy of history, under the supervision of philosopher Raymond Aron; this was followed by a degree in philo logy from INALCO (Paris). From 1984 to 1990 he served as the secretary general of the Casa Ro mânească cultural association in Paris. Following the fall of commu nism in Romania, he returned home and became an honorary member of the “A.D. Xenopol” Institute of His tory in Iaşi and the “N. Iorga” Institute of History in Bucharest. His major works include: On Romanian Nationality Law (doctoral thesis); Civilisations and Historical Patterns. A Comparative Study of Civili sations (recipient of a French Academy prize); Between East and West. The Romanian Principalities at the Beginning of the Modern Age; A Brief History of Romanians; The Genesis of the Romanian People; Mircea the Elder and His Wars Against the Turks; From Vlad the Impaler to Dracula the Vampire; The Journal of Georges Milesco (autobiographical novel); Somewhat Irre verent Memoirs and Stories; Bucharest–Paris–Niamey and Return or Memoirs of 42 Years in Exile (1948-1990); Is There Such a Thing as True History?; Thocomerius – Negru-Vodă. A Voivode of Cuman Descent and the Beginnings of Wallachia; The Seventy-Seven Years’ War (1914-1991) and the Premises of American Hegemony. An Essay in Political Science; Who Were Wallachia’s Great Boyars? The Grădişteanu Family Saga (16th-20th Century); A Reply to My Critics and the Foes of Negru-Vodă; The Mystery of the Stockholm Telegram of 23 August 1944 and Several Incredible Details Regarding Our Capitulation. A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ROMANIANS Translation by Cristian Anton Illustration research: Cătălin Strat Cover design: Angela Rotaru Layout: Manuela Măxineanu DTP: Iuliana Constantinescu, Andreea Dobreci, Dan Dulgheru Printed by Art Group © HUMANITAS, 2014, 2017, 2018 This book features photographs by Marius Amarie that were kindly offered by the National History Museum of Romania (pages 23 and 41 – Gepidic artefacts from Apahida; pages 27 and 39 – Artefacts from the Pietroasele hoard; page 35 – Inscribed 9th century ceramic vessel; page 270 – Sword of King Carol I; page 273 – Sword of Edhem Pasha; page 276 – The Steel Crown of Romania) as well as photographs offered by the National History Museum of Transylvania (page 12 – Dacian silver fibula and a bronze sword discovered at Beneşti). Huma - nitas would like to thank the two institutions for their support. We have also used images of charters and seals found in the National His - torical Archives and photographs from the online archive of commu - nism in Romania (IICCR). Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României Djuvara, Neagu A Brief Illustrated History of Romanians / Neagu Djuvara; translated by Cristian Anton. – ed.a 3-a. – Bucureşti: Humanitas, 2018 ISBN 978-973-50-6252-1 I. Anton, Cristian (trad.) 94 HUMANITAS PUBLISHING HOUSE Piaţa Presei Libere 1, 013701 Bucureşti, România tel. 021/311 23 30 www.humanitas.ro Online bookstore: www.libhumanitas.ro foreword This book is not an ordinary history book; it is not a textbook, and it does not profess to replace school textbooks. The idea for it came to me a few years ago, when Mrs Irina Nicolau, a specialist in ethnology and oral history, voiced her exasperation about the fact that our school textbooks – even after the revolution of De- cember 1989 – were continuing to disseminate the same version of history, intentionally deformed over the past decades, and written in the same pretentious, dead lan- guage of officialdom, dressed up to disguise the poverty of thought and often the absence of any real meaning. It was she who persuaded me to summarise our coun- try’s past in the simplest and most fluent manner on audio tapes for today’s younger generation. The present title is the transcription of those recordings, “purged” of the errors inherent to improvised speech and comple - mented where it seemed to me that the misgivings were too obvious – within limits, of course. I therefore let the story flow, free of interruptions, explanatory notes and citations – in short, avoiding the style which scholars call “academic” – to make it comprehensible to all, from history enthusiasts to those who have chosen to remain indifferent to our past. It is a very abridged story; for example, I did not list the names of all the voivodes (or princes) who were fighting for the throne during the 15th or 16th century, nor those of the Phanariote princes replaced by the sultan in Constantinople once every two or three years (when they were not beheaded or hanged at his orders) through - out the 18th century. It should not be mistaken for a work of vulgarisation. I am not fond of the word “vulgar” used 5 foreword as a derogatory term, which would suggest that the story is not only simple, but also simplistic or puerile. The reader will quickly realise that, under the guise of light storytelling, I had the audacity to tackle the most delicate and controversial issues in our history, under the assumption that the high school student too has an adult mind, instead of a fragile one that should be spared and offered a sweetened, rosy image of our past. Nothing serves our country better than knowing (or acknow ledg - ing) the truth, as much of it as we mortals can per ceive – as God alone knows the whole truth. For that reason, do not be surprised if I sometimes happen to say “some au - thors believe that...” or “I believe that...” etc. It is often said that one must be objective in searching for the truth. I am not fond of this word either: if you look it up in a dictionary, you will find that “objective” used to mean “outside consciousness” and therefore, logically, can only be applied to the study of inanimate objects. Yet historians primarily deal with people – in - dividuals or groups, therefore subjects, not objects, and in order to understand these subjects they too have to be subjective. They will be trying very hard to relate with various mentalities and opinions, one after the other, some of them contradictory (individual, national, reli gious, doctrinal etc.). Their impartiality can only stem from a succession of partialities, constructed as honestly as possi - ble. If we proceed in this manner, not only will we not be able to pursue an alleged “national” agenda in describing and explaining the past, but we will not be tempted to hide some facts or manipulate others in the name of this false patriotism, under the pretext that we must respond to the fabrications of our Hungarian, Bulgarian, Greek or Russian neighbours, and of others. Lies should not be met with more lies. The only rational answer is complete acade- mic integrity. This is the only way we will assert ourselves before the international scien tific community and take our rightful place in Europe and the world. I have kept the somewhat ambiguous title of “The History of Romanians” – as opposed to “The History of Romania” of which we tend to speak more and more nowadays – firstly because it is traditional; secondly, because “Romania” is a term applied to the country in - habited by Romanians only after the Union of 1859 – neagu djuvara 6 therefore, can we really call our territory in the Middle Ages “Romania”?; and finally, because it enables me to briefly mention other branches of the Eastern Roman world found outside the territory of present-day Ro - mania, such as the Aromanians or the Vlachs that founded the Second Bulgarian Tsardom, the Asen dy- nasty (Romanian: Asăneşti). However, the scope of the book goes beyond the history of “Romanians” in its strictest sense, both eth- nically and temporally. Temporally, because we will be going further back in time, before the human group spea king the Romanian language was formed, and get- ting closer to the peoples who mixed to form this group, meaning the Romanian people; this was a long process, very difficult to follow and explain because of the scarcity of documents. We must briefly mention the Geto-Dacians, then the Romanised Italic and Medi ter - ranean peoples brought by Roman colonisation; per - haps even some remains of Germanic barbarians (Goths, Gepids etc.) but most importantly the great Slavic mi - gration, which left deep traces in our language, cus toms and institutions, and which must be seen as the third major component in the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people.
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