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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2025
The article, as an afterword to the special issue Navigating Post-Imperial Transitions, uses the story of a Transylvanian Romanian and Greek Catholic family, the Pordeas, as an example of several key themes of the articles: managing difference within and after the empire, concrete consequences of international arrangements, agency of individuals in the transition. The Pordeas’ extremely intense engagement and entanglement with the empire highlights that a key feature of imperial biographies, the skill of connecting milieus as a way of differentiated rule, was not limited to the high-ranking imperial bureaucrats; it was rather a knowledge important in lower educated strata of society. After 1918, within nation states that often consciously used techniques of imperial rule for their own consolidation, it opened upward mobility and sometimes global horizon for these people. However, the ability to create connections is just as important for any state facing internal difference as it was for empires, showing how much empire was created from below.
1 István Bándi, ‘Chapters on the Activities of the Emigration Department of the Romanian Intelligence from the Sixties to the Change of Regime’, National Security Review 7, no. 2 (2021): 5–43. I’m grateful to Csongor Jánosi, who drew my attention to this case.
2 ‘Ifjabb Pordea Gusztávot doktorrá avatták’, Ellenzék, 28 June 1938, 8; ‘Pordea Bubukát – doktorrá avatták’, Erdélyi Futár, July 1938, 25.
3 Gábor Egry, ‘The Rise of Titans? Economic Transition and Local Elites in Post-1918 Banat and Transylvania’, European Review of History 31, no. 5 (2024): 788–816.
4 Martin Mevius, ‘Defending “Historical and Political Interests”: Romanian–Hungarian Historical Disputes and the History of Transylvania’, in Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives Comparisons and Entanglements, ed. Anders Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi and Balázs Terncsényi (Frankfurt a. M: Peter Lang, 2013), 569–606.
5 See Máté Rigó’s article in this special issue.
6 Egry, ‘The Rise of Titans?’
7 Egry, ‘The Rise of Titans?’
8 See Kim Todzi’s article in this special issue.
9 Máté Rigó, Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022); Ludovic Bathory, ‘Capitalul străin in industria mineră din România (1919–1924)’, Anuarul Institututului de Istorie Cluj XVIII (1975): 247–62.
10 ‘Sub auspiciis regis avatás a kolozsvári egyetemen’, Nemzeti Hírlap, 11 March 1905, 2; ‘Sub auspiciis regis’, Pesti Hírlap, 12 March 1905, 12.
11 Ovidiu Buriana, ‘Cea din urmă oaste. Considerații asupra elitelor Partidului național Liberal în România interbelică’, in România interbelică. Modernizare politico-instituţională şi discurs naţional, ed. Oliver Jens Schmitt and Sorin Radu (Polirom: Iaşi, 2023), 347–8.
12 Csongor Jánosi, ‘Az erdélyi magyar kisebbség ügye az Európai Parlamentben (1978–1989)’, Pro Minoritate 29, no. 3 (2024): 71–110.
13 Egry, ‘The Rise of Titans?’
14 Ágoston Berecz, ‘Az”oláh fiúk”’: Román diákok magyar középiskolákban (1867–1914)’, AETAS 36, no. 4 (2021): 77–99.
15 ‘Még nem ért véget a szilágysomlyói minoriták kálváriája’, Keleti Újság, 21 Sept. 1934, 5.
16 ‘Még nem ért véget a szilágysomlyói minoriták kálváriája’; Mihály Kőhalmi, ‘A főgimnázium története’, in A Minorita rend szilágysomlyői róm. kath. püpsöki főgimnáziumának értesítője az 1914–1915. tanévről, ed. Mihalcsik Bonó (Szilágysomlyó: Bölöni Sándor könyvnyomdája, 1915), 1–167; Mihály Kőhalmi, ‘Adatok a szilágysomylói főgimnázium újabbkori történetéhez’, in A Minorita rend szilágysomlyői róm. kath. püpsöki főgimnáziumának értesítője az 1915–1916. tanévről, ed. Mihalcsik Bonó (Szilágysomlyó: Bölöni Sándor könyvnyomdája, 1916), 7–29.
17 Gábor Egry, The Empire’s New Clothes? How Austria-Hungary’s Legacy Kept the Successor States Running (Leiden: Foundation for Austrian Studies, 2022); Francesco Magno, Dagli imperi alla nazione Eredità giuridiche asburgiche e zariste nella Grande Romania, 1918–1927 (Editura Viella: Roma, 2023); Judit Pál and Vlad Popovici, ‘Une analyse statistique du personnel de l’administration publique départementale de Transylvanie pendant son intégration administrative au royaume de Roumanie (1918–1925)’, Histoire et Mesure 37, no. 2 (2022): 99–124.
18 Gábor Egry, ‘Zárványok, hagyományok, szakemberek. A magyar közigazgatás és Nagy-Románia működése’, in Trianon és a magyar közigazgatás, ed. Béni L. Balogh (Budapest: Magyar Kormánytisztviselői Kar – Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, 2020), 131–50; see also Tamás Sárándi, ‘Konszolidáció után konszolidáció. Szatmárnémeti közigazgatásának változásai 1918–1924 között’, in Trianon és a magyar közigazgatás, ed. Béni L. Balogh (Budapest: Magyar Kormánytisztviselői Kar – Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, 2020), 69–86.
19 See Keely Stauter-Halsted in this special issue. See also Jernej Kosi, ‘Summer of 1919: A Radical, Irreversible, Liberating Break in Prekmurje/Muravidék?’, Hungarian Historical Review 9, no. 1 (2020): 51–68.
20 Hannes Siegrist and Dietmar Müller, ‘Introduction’, in The Twentieth Century, in Property in East Central Europe: Notions, Institutions and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century, ed. Hannes Siegrist and Dietmar Müller (Berghahn: New York, 2015), 1–29.
21 Gábor Egry and Anikó Izsák, ‘A városi hitelek és az impériumváltás. Bánsági és szatmári példák’, Századok 155, no. 1 (2021): 37–68; Mihály Kőhalmi, ‘Adalékok’.
22 ‘Még nem ért véget a szilágysomlyói minoriták kálváriája’; Anca Glont, ‘Fostering the National Interest: Utilizing Hungarian State Property in the Jiu Valley to Build a Modern Coal Industry’, Hungarian Studies Review 50, no. 1–2, (2023): 26–48.
23 Anna Ross, ‘Property and the End of Empire in International Zones, 1919–1947’, Past and Present 264, no. 1 (2024): 162–98.
24 Francesco Magno, ‘Law between Nationalism and Regionalism: The Integration of the Transylvanian Juridical Field in Greater Romania (1918–1927)’, East European Politics and Societies 36, no. 3 (2022): 828–49; Gábor Egry, ‘Fallen Between Two Stools? Imperial Legacies, State–Society Relationship and the Limits of Building a Nation State in Romania after the First World War’, Südost-Forschungen 79 (2020): 4–31.
25 See Wilke Sandler’s article in this special issue.
26 Egry, ‘The Leftover Empire. Imperial Legacies and Statehood in the Successor States of Austria-Hungary’, in Postwar Continuity and New Challenges in Central Europe, 1918–1923: The War That Never Ended, ed. Kamil Ruszała and Tomasz Pudłocki (Oxon: Routledge, 2021), 81–102; Gábor Egry, ‘Central European Elites in Post-Imperial Transition: Locality, Agency, Capital: Introduction’, European Review of History 31, no. 5 (2024): 673–84.
27 Natasha Whetaley, Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023).
28 Ádám Mestyán, Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023).