ABSTRACT. The article addresses the issues of race and identity as regards the Romanian people, known as ‘Roumans,’ Roumaninans or Moldo-Wallachians in the nineteenth-century British and American periodicals. Divided into two Principalities and a Province that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ‘Roumans’ became known to the Western readers in the latter half of the nineteenth century when the ideas of unification and desire for progress caught the attention of the Western powers. The analysis of the major periodical articles of the time will attempt to throw light on the matters of identity and the construction of Romanian identity as, I argue, Romanianness.
Keywords: Danubian Principalities; Transylvania; Romanianness; nineteenth-century periodicals; American and British travelogues