Vlad Popovici

The public release of the AI-powered conversational bot ChatGPT, its subsequent success, its acquisition by Microsoft, and its integration into the company's digital tools, coupled with the swift response of other key industry players (particularly Google, which soon launched its own version of integrated search engine artificial intelligence-Google Bard), have sparked numerous public debates and concerns within the academic realm. In the short term, the primary concern revolves around students using this advanced digital tool to automatically draft their papers, thereby potentially cheating the grading system. In the medium to long term, apprehensions center around the status of the historian's profession and the condition of historians compelled to compete with artificial intelligence. This study, conducted through sequential interviews with ChatGPT, GPT-4, and Google Bard, discusses both issues, with a specific focus on the history of the Romanians and the Romanian university system.

The transition from the administrative system of the Habsburg monarchy to that of the successor nation-states after World War I has traditionally been analysed in terms of discontinuity, or even rupture. In our research, which focuses on the specific case of Transylvania, we demonstrate that both the development of a centralised administrative system and the relationship between the state authority and local autonomies were characterised by continuity rather than change. In both the Hungarian and the Romanian state, the key institution involved in the process of diminishing local self-government was the representative of the central power in the territory (the lord lieutenant until 1918 and later the prefect). The gradual expansion of his prerogatives over institutions and county officials began in Hungary in the early 1870s, and continued until the interwar period in Romania; this was a process that extended beyond the changes in the political and state regime in 1918. Thus, for interwar Transylvania, administrative centralisation in the French tradition did not represent a paradigm shift, but instead the continuation and acceleration of an already quite advanced process that the Hungarian state, which had been eager to modernise its administrative structures, had already introduced 50 years earlier.

Historical Data Grinder (HDG) is an EAV database model designed to store and aggregate historical information regardless of geographic space, chronological period, or topic of interest. The source code of the database is available open source at: https://github.com/angelalumezeanu/hdg_ structure. This paper details the specificities of HDG within the framework of other digital tools focused on the history of Romania, describes the updates brought by version 2.0, and highlights its advantages compared to traditional relational databases. To exemplify the latter, it presents the procedure for ingesting a major data set: members of the Hungarian parliament elected in the Transylvanian constituencies between 1865-1918. The data set is available for the general public, along with other information from HDG, at www.hdgrinder.ro.

Im Europa der zweiten industriellen Revolution trugen die Eisenbahnnetze nicht nur zur Entwicklung der Wirtschaft und ihrer Marktintegration bei, sondern stellten auch das eigentliche Symbol des Fortschritts dar. In der Habsburgermonarchie wurde der Eisenbahnbau, wie auch in anderen Län­ dern des Kontinents, von heftigen Debatten sowohl bezüglich der Entwick­ lung und des optimalen Betriebs der nationalen Bahnstrecken als auch der Finanzierungsweise, beziehungsweise der Rolle der Staatsfinanzierung, be­ gleitet

The dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy during the last months of the year 1918 generated a vacuum of authority, in which various ad hoc in- stitutions, created or convened mainly based on ethnic criteria (guards, councils, assemblies), attempted to establish themselves as represent- atives and leaders of different ethnic groups, as well as claiming execu- tive powers over the territories inhabited by the latter. Given their ethnic character, geographical overlapping and national rivalry became inher- ent, while their ad hoc nature dissolved the traditional borders between the legislative and executive powerholders. Our paper focuses on the evolution of these institutions in the territory of Transylvania, where they functioned, in various forms, between October 1918 and April 1920, with particular regard to their degree of representativeness, their self-as- sumed legislative and executive attributions, and their relationships with the Hungarian and Romanian states.

L’évolution des liens entre l’Association et le corps des officiers de 1900 à 1920 est illustrative des métamorphoses que subit la société civile roumaine de Transylvanie et de Hongrie après 1918, lorsque, d’un « non ami » d’un État multiethnique, elle devient l’un des principaux appuis du processus de consolidation d’un autre État multiethnique.

Cette étude prend pour point de départ les résultats d’une recherche antérieure qui avait mis en évidence que, pendant les quatre dernières années, l’intérêt manifesté en ligne par le public roumanophone pour
la Première Guerre mondiale a été moindre que celui d’autres peuples de l’Europe centrale et du Sud-Est. Dans ce contexte, nous avons analysé les résultats des recherches sur Google (principal moteur de recherche en ligne en roumain) pour certains termes-clés étroitement liés au sujet de la Grande Guerre et au Centenaire de la Grande Union des Roumains. Notre conclusion est que les principaux générateurs de contenus sur ces thèmes sont les trusts éditoriaux et de presse, d’une part, et des acteurs institutionnels du monde de l’éducation, de la culture et de la société civile, d’autre part. La présence des sites officiels a été moins visible et, apparemment, dépourvue de cohérence. Cette situation s’explique par ce que ces sites sont plutôt le fruit des initiatives des autorités départementales qu’une partie d’un projet centralisé.

The study focuses on the Romanian offi cials of the administration and justice of the Kingdom of Hungary which took part, as elected delegates and substitutes with credentials and the right to vote, at the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia (1 December 1918). The extremely low number of county offi cials compared with the local ones (e.g. village notaries and mayors) reveals that despite the understandable political marginalization of the mid-level bureaucrats of the old regime, there were still local civil servants in which the Romanian population preserved its political trust. In the years following the union, the county officials and the notaries took advantage of the context and secured better positions in the new Romanian civil service, while most of the village mayors (recruited mainly from among the well to do peasants) continued their political and administrative activity at local level.

The study continues and develops the research initiated by V. Moga at the beginning of the 2000s regarding Astra’s members in the period of 1913-1920, through a chronological extension towards the beginning of the century and a more detailed analysis of the evolutions during the First World War. After the Association went through a period of stabilization of the number of its members in the first years of the 20th century, starting with 1906, partially as an effect of the festive moment represented by the inauguration of the “Astra Museum” in the previous year, a period of growth followed, reaching its peak in 1912, one year after the 50 year jubilee. The combined effect of the extinguishment of interest after the festive moment and that of the breakout of the war caused a consistent recoil, which ended only in 1916, as a result of the efforts of the Association’s leadership at all levels, however only the year of 1919 brought are turn to the pre-war situation. From the point of view of the composition and of the profile of the body of members, it is obvious that Astra has mobilized the individual and institutional energies of all of the Romanian socio-professional layers, a significant share being held by the clergy, lawyers and banking institutions, followed by teachers and professors, “owners” (of mines, of farms, etc.), the body of petty functionaries, the doctors and pharmacists, officers, craftsmen and merchants, and, definitely, the peasants – the latter dominating a particular lower category, that of the “helping members”, which included several thousands of persons. Women represented a relatively discreet presence within Astra, their number and percentage remaining low before 1919, and seeming to be often linked to the presence of their male partners.

The paper analyses the inventory of property and assets drafted after
the death of Dr. Nicolae Stoia (1830‐1879), the physician of the Greek‐Catholic Archdiocese of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș between 1872 and 1879. Alongside real estate and financial instruments (insurance policies and bank shares), half of the estate’s active value consisted of debts owed by business partners or patients. The assets’ management and particularly the slow recovery of debts revealed the difficulties faced by the estate guardian Ioan Micu Moldovan in fulfilling his duties. The conclusions highlight the precariousness of exercising a liberal profession, even as a physician, in Transylvania, given the fact that the premature death of the family bread winner significantly affected the survivors’ material conditions and standard of living, regardless of their previous social status.

The paper offers a synthetic overview of the historical and social sciences writings on 19 th and 20 th century Romanian elites. Following the original local sociological constructs developed during the interwar period, the early socialist regime stopped almost all research on the topic for the next two decades. The interest rose again slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, when preliminary investigations highlighted some of the future research subjects: intellectuals, economic, and political elites. After 1989, historians were the first to enter the field, opening workshops on the previously mentioned categories, and more recently on ecclesiastical, military, and administrative elites. Social and political scientists followed shortly, focusing mainly – but not exclusively – on the socialist and post-socialist elites. Despite the flourishing period of the last two decades, and the generally positive trend, the historical research on elites in Romania produced mainly empirical studies. The methodological and theoretical framework was left unapproached, partly due to a lack of tradition, partly because of the low level of collaboration between historians and social scientists.

This paper aims to analyse the typology of medical-historical information provided by parish registers from Transylvania – a category of primary sources used mainly by historical demographers. The approach is descriptive and prospective in character: it creates a typology of the medical information to be found in the sources, while highlighting possible research directions and approaching a series of methodological and interpretation issues. The parish registers contain references to medical actors (the midwife, the physician, the death inspector), to medical activities (vaccination), and to events regarding the history of medicine (multiple births, infant mortality, death-causing diseases and accidents, epidemics, etc.). Despite the fact that they provide mainly demographic data, some epidemiological and medicine-related information can prove interesting for researchers in the field of the history

The paper offers an overview on the electoral process in the Banat between 1861 and 1918, by analyzing the statistical evolution of the results and the composition of together with the low level of economic development made this particular geographical area suitable for electoral frauds, gradually transforming it into a traditional election ground for the deputies of the government party, regardless nationality. It is not by chance that one third of the Hungarian prime ministers, along with other members of their cabinets and close relatives, won some of their parliamentary seats in the Banat. Regarding the body of representatives sent into the Hungarian Parliament, while a large majority (ca. 50%) were only elected once, resuming afterwards their bureaucratic careers, there were also prominent local personalities who held their seats for decades. Overall, the mixture between nationalism, government influence and family/group interests makes the region of Banat a most interesting case-study for the election process in the Kingdom of Hungary.

How many members of the Romanian political elite from Hungary were book authors? And which were their areas of interest? Is there a relation between authorship and their (sometimes self-assumed) position as national leaders? These are few of the questions to which our research seeks an answer, starting from the methodological principles of collective biography (or prosopography) and applying them to a bibliographical database. The themes of the writings, aside from the subjective point of view given by the prolificacy of certain characters, offer a quite clear image on the education and intellectual interests of the authors. They also allow us to establish a direct connection between one' place among the political elite and the nature of the books he published. The high percentage of political writings elaborated while holding offices inside the Romanian parties strengthens the believe that we are dealing with members of an elite; though they were not " professional " politicians, they were trying to take upon themselves the responsibilities of politics, even if their professional background and expertise didn't always work to their advantage. Not least, the fact that the writings mirror the ups and downs of the inner political struggles from the Romanian parties is a strong argument for the methodological validation of our approach.

The present research is focused on a document often left aside by the Romanian historiography – the 1887 memorandum project elaborated by Ioan Slavici. The paper can be considered a forerunner of the 1892 memorandum and represents the result of a deep compromise between the real political ideas of its author and the Romanian National Party's official agenda. Thus, shortly after its elaboration, Slavici resigned from the leadership of the national movement and never again made mention of the project's ideas. Alongside the description and analysis of the document's content, the conclusions of our article explore the possibility of alternative explanations for the strong pro-Habsburg position of the writer, presenting the opportunity of relating his political imaginary with some recurrent psychological behavior identified by one of his recent biographers.

Elites should be regarded and approached as gregarious social entities (groups, networks) rather than as outstanding individuals. The volume aims to explore the elites in East-Central and SouthEastern Europe during the long nineteenth century from the perspective of their gregarious tendencies (i.e., groupness), to assess the role of the latter in the elite's decisions and agenda, and to observe the transformations brought in this regard by the changing social and political landscape. While the gregarious tendencies of the members of the elite were rooted in their shared perspectives, in their mutual interests or in the communion of cultural patterns, it is clear that during the process of group formation, kinship ties played an unassailable part, although they were likely never a causal factor. The volume covers the research on elites from the early 18th century to the interwar period, focussing on the Banat,

Pornind la drum ca facţiune în interiorul PNR şi încercând să îşi impună punctul de vedere prin preluarea conducerii formaţiunii şi ostracizarea adversarilor, prima generaţie de tribunişti a format nucleul uneia dintre cele mai importante grupări de interese româneşti din Ungaria dualistă. Beneficiind de avantajul coeziunii oferite de activitatea anterioară
la „Telegraful Român”, de prestanţa şi talentul lui I. Slavici şi racolând pe parcurs adepţi valoroşi (S. Albini, I. Russu-Şirianu, G. Bogdan-Duică), grupul de la Sibiu s-a impus în contextul favorabil oferit de acţiunea memorandistă. Problemele au apărut atunci când interesul de grup a fost sacrificat în favoarea celui personal, liderii căutând să împace siguranţa şi bunăstarea materială oferite de emigrare cu aspiraţiile de conducători ai
mişcării naţionale. O problemă în plus a fost reprezentată de aservirea faţă de Partidul Naţional Liberal din România, poziţie care a subminat credibilitatea tribuniştilor în faţa unui electorat aflat încă în faza de tranziţie din punct de vedere al interesului şi implicării conştiente în politică.
A doua generaţie de tribunişti, ai cărei membri, cu puţine excepţii, nu se ridicau la nivelul fondatorilor curentului a eşuat în menţinerea poziţiei în cadrul PNR, cedând în faţa presiunilor preşedintelui I. Raţiu. În consecinţă, a fost necesară o etapă de reorganizare, caracterizată de moderaţie în discurs şi acţiune politică, având ca principal obiectiv
recâştigarea susţinerii publice.
Cea de a treia generaţie, al cărei centru local a fost mutat la Arad, a evoluat odată cu societatea românească din Ungaria, pliindu-se pe metamorfozele sociale şi mentale ale începutului de secol XX. A fost perioada în care membrii curentului au făcut un important pas dinspre discurs spre acţiune politică, manifestându-se nu doar în cadrele elitare ale
Partidului Naţional Român ci şi în contact direct cu societatea rurală, în spiritul unui program modern, orientat spre formarea unei baze electorale absolut necesare atingerii scopului urmărit: implementarea activismului.