Winner of the 2010 George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association. The struggle between Hungary and Romania for control of Transylvania seems at first sight a side-show in the story of the Nazi New Order and the Second World War. These allies of the Third Reich spent much of the war arguing bitterly over Transylvania's future, and Germany and Italy were drawn into their dispute to prevent it from spiraling into a regional war. But precisely as a result of this interaction, the story of the Transylvanian Question offers a new way into the history of how state leaders and national elites have interpreted what "Europe" means. Tucked into the folds of the Transylvanian Question's bizarre genealogy is a secret that no one ever tried to keep, but that has remained a secret nonetheless: small states matter. The perspective of small states puts the struggle for mastery among its Great Powers into a new perspective.
"Case's thoughtful, substantive work challenges prevailing conception on 20th-century European politics by arguing that small states do make an impact on larger European concerns . . . Case's book also suggests significant new avenues of research on national and European identity politics . . . Highly recommended."
Choice
"This will take a rightful place among the really important and interesting works written on East Central Europe in the last forty years. It also figures among the most penetrating and memorable evocations of place written about Europe as a whole. The author is a brilliant, naturally gifted writer, with a keen sense for telling formulation."
Berkeley
"[Between States] focuses chiefly on events between 1940 and 1944, in what is a stellar blend of classic diplomatic history with microhistory . . . Holly Case's microhistorical analysis of Cluj serves to caution us that ethnic identity, often depicted as static, is indeed hardly spontaneous; instead it is the product of a state-supported or state-obstructed situative process of identification. Cas
