THE EASTERN MARGINS OF EMPIRE

Abstract

Equating modernization with Westernization has historically been one of the strategies with the help of which the development of entire world regions has been programmatically defined as “catching up with the West”. As a result, structural problems that accounted for incongruities with the postulated model in particular countries were explained (away) as economic, institutional or cultural lags to be overcome by faithful application of development policies mandated by the Euro-American core. Using the example of the clash between Western global designs and Romanian local history both at the end of the 19th century and in the post-socialist era, the epistemological premises of the “European patent on modernity” are examined with respect to their consequences for the conceptualization of modernity in the periphery.