Holly Case has called the period spanning the late-18th to the second half of the 20th century “The Age of Questions,” which included the Eastern question, Jewish question, social question, and countless others. In his recent book Liberalism, Constitutional Nationalism, and Minorities: The Making of Romanian Citizenship, c. 1750–1918 (2019), Constantin Iordachi shows how the succession of transnational “questions” that were at the heart of European and North-Atlantic politics during the long nineteenth century, and the interplay between them, impacted citizenship policies in Romania and beyond. He further describes the transfer of novel institutions of citizenship across temporal and political boundaries. In this discussion, Iordachi briefly outlined some of his broader conclusions regarding citizenship and statebuilding across the nineteenth century, after which he and Case engaged in a discussion about the role of “questions” in this dynamic and across this critical span of European and global history.
Constantin Iordachi is a Professor of History at the Central European University who specializes in the history of citizenship and fascism. He is the author of the recent monograph Liberalism, Constitutional Nationalism, and Minorities: The Making of Romanian Citizenship, c. 1750–1918 (Brill, 2019).
Holly Case is an Associate Professor of History at Brown University and Visiting Fellow at the IWM. Her latest book is titled The Age of Questions (Princeton, 2018).
