Sergiu Delcea

The project challenges Western-centric teleologies of modernization through a case study of socioeconomic change in “late-developing” Romania from the 1860s through the 1910s. Defining modernization as open contestation rather than functional sequencing, I show that “core” and “peripheral” Europe shared fundamental pillars of modernity. I thus argue that nationalized sequencing of modernization tools is not a “deviation”, but, similarly to the “West”, a contingent expression of emancipatory debates.