Horea’s Uprising: A European Event Perceived in America
Horea’s Uprising: A European Event Perceived in America

Summary/Abstract: Our research started from the historiographical work of David Prodan and Nicolae Edroiu. Both historians have approached the subject of the echoes of Horea’s uprising in Europe. They highlighted, following Brissot’s letters, certain common characteristics between stages of the American Revolution and the peasant revolt in Transylvania (1784–1785). Studying the American newspapers of the time of Horea’s uprising, I present a diachronic analysis of the mood in America and Europe, especially among the Romanians in the Habsburg Empire, in order to explain the American interest towards the mentioned event in Transylvania. I concluded that the emancipation movements in America and Europe explain the considerable interest in Horea’s uprising on these two continents. The attention paid to Horea’s uprising by the European and American public opinion is significant in outlining the spirit of an age dominated by powerful transformative forces and was an instrument not only of politics but of the entire process of modernization. The American newspapers did not see the event in Transylvania as a mere local uprising, but as a social and political movement aimed at radically changing society within the Habsburg Empire, as well as in Europe and America.

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