Ethnic Politics and the Saxon Colonization of Medieval Hungarian Transylvania

This project examines the settlement of the Saxons in the Voivodeship of Transylvania (a voivode was a rank roughly equivalent to a mixture of a governor and a landed prince) within the Hungarian Kingdom immediately before and after the Mongol Invasion of 1241. This project attempts to understand the political and inter-ethnic effects of the Saxon settlement in context of the integration of Transylvania (including the Vlach and Pecheneg natives of the area) into Hungary. The research question is as follows: How did the Crown utilize policy based on "otherness" to secure its expansion, stability, and state centralization? This project analyzes the ever-present theme of inter-ethnic relations and how certain groups are utilized as a tool by the state; in the scope of this project, the Saxons were used as an empire-building tool, which allowed the Hungarian Kingdom to add not only land, but also people groups, to their empire. It also, due to context, analyzes early governmental centralization efforts in Central-Eastern Europe by the Hungarian Kingdom in the high and late Medieval periods (mid 1100s -1300 specifically for this study) and the use of different treatments toward and utilization of different ethno-regional groups.Scholarship, OSU College of Arts and Sciences: Undergraduate Research Scholarship, 2017Grant, OSU Department of History: Honors Thesis Research Grant, 2017Grant, Global Mobility Project: Summer Undergraduate Research Award, 2017Grant, Aida Cannarsa Snow Endowment, 2017Grant, OSU College of Arts and Sciences: International Research Grant, 2017No embargoAcademic Major: HistoryAcademic Major: Russia