Great Britain and the United States of America as alterity figures for Romanians in the modern epoch: Ethno-cultural images and social representations

The main characteristics of any given social group are defined through comparisons with members of other communities and result from a complex interplay. Identity and alterity are thus constructed simultaneously and interdependently in accordance with group representations emerging from various sources: direct contact through travelling, mere legends or more verifiable accounts, scientific or fictional works, press articles tackling diverse topics, school textbooks, almanacs, etc. The British and the Americans were not identified as the most noteworthy alterity figures by the Romanian mentality of the modern period, but they were surely perceived distinctively from other foreigners. Despite the cultural and/or geographical distance between Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia, on the one hand, and Great Britain and the United States of America, on the other hand, towards the end of the 19th century average Romanians were able to interwove information gathered from a wide range of sources and to transform it into realistic depictions of these two countries and their inhabitants. This process of defining the Other combined diachronic and synchronous tendencies, fiction and facts, stereotypes and truth. By synthesising the work done by previous researchers, the present study provides an overall image of the ways in which Great Britain and the United States of America were perceived by Romanians throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.