The Csangos are a little-known minority group in Romania. Just what makes someone a “Csango” can be hard to define. Historically, many of them lived in and around Bacău County in northeast Romania, spoke a mixture of Hungarian and Romanian, shared a common cultural heritage, and—most crucially for this book—practiced Roman Catholicism. In this intelligent, deeply researched (using both Romanian and Hungarian sources), and readable monograph, R. Chris Davis explores the uncertain position of the Csangos in Romania in the fraught years before and during World War II. He shows that as this long-ignored minority became increasingly visible and vulnerable, its religious leaders put up a stout defense against both Hungarian nationalists intent on claiming the Csangos, as well as against Romanian nationalists who saw them as a potential fifth column. The book engages recent scholarship on the links between religion and nationhood, the pervasiveness of racial science and official discrimination, and the ways in which minorities can sometimes challenge how majorities define themselves.

Davis's story begins in 1920, with the creation of “Greater Romania.” The postwar peace treaties had greatly enlarged Romania's territory and population. For Romanian nationalists, this was a cause for celebration, yet many also worried about the sizeable religious and ethnic minorities, who comprised more than one-quarter of the population. The Csangos, who numbered perhaps 200,000 (out of a total population of 18 million), mostly flew under the radar, as nationalists instead fulminated against Hungarians, Jews, and Roma. Davis argues that a turning point came in 1927, when Romania signed a concordat with the Vatican. This gave the Roman Catholic Csangos some autonomy and protection. But it stirred up Romanian Orthodox polemicists, who saw Catholics as potentially disloyal and an unwanted conduit of foreign influence. For these “Orthodoxists,” it was not possible to be both Roman Catholic and a “good Romanian” (a phrase in wide currency during these years). Yet Csango leaders disputed the equation of Orthodoxy and Romanianness. Davis singles out Iosif Frollo, a Catholic layman, teacher, and theologian, who asserted that Csangos were Romanian by blood, history, loyalty, and language; in short, they were “Romanian Catholics.” Even as such writers pushed back against the Orthodox camp, they accepted that Christianity was also a precondition for membership in the national community. As Davis notes, several joined the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or Iron Guard, Romania's homegrown fascist movement.

Pressure on the Csangos ratcheted up the late 1930s and early 1940s. As right-wing political parties and organizations grew in strength, the legal condition of minorities deteriorated. Jews were the primary target, and laws stripped nearly 200,000 of them of Romanian citizenship. Yet all minorities were at risk, particularly after the humiliating Second Vienna Award (August 30, 1940), which forced Romania to cede large parts of Transylvania to Hungary, created waves of refugees, and triggered a search for scapegoats. Many Roman Catholics now had to secure certificates of Romanian ethnic origin from local officials. Without this piece of paper, they could not hold civil-service jobs, buy and sell land, enter teacher-training colleges, and, at least in one parish, vote in national plebiscites. Csangos scrambled to secure these certificates, which were easy to obtain in some districts but impossible in others. As was usual in Romania, much depended on local officials, a point Davis could have pursued further. But he plainly documents the strengthening of official discrimination, which peaked in November 1942 with the Ministry of Justice's decree that Roman Catholics could no longer be issued certificates of Romanian ethnic origins. In this environment, the Csangos were increasingly viewed as foreigners in their own country and an impediment to nationalist dreams of “purification.”

Davis's concluding chapters demonstrate how this logic could lead to deportation. Across Eastern and Southeastern Europe, this era witnessed numerous population transfers, from the Greco-Turkish population exchange in the early 1920s to the massive wartime expulsions carried out by the Nazis. In Hungary, some nationalists called for the exchange of Csangos with ethnic Romanians living in Hungarian-controlled territory. This proposal found favor among some Romanian nationalists, especially the Orthodoxist faction. But the deportation of the Csangos never happened. As Davis explains, Romanian politicians worried about lost manpower, relations with the Vatican, and the postwar settlement. But Davis also draws attention to less obvious factors, including the Csango leaders’ repeated declarations of loyalty and, more originally, their appeal to the findings of racial scientists, whose serological research seemingly proved that the Csangos were in fact racially Romanian and relegated religious differences to the background. In 1943, the government invalidated the previous ban on Catholics receiving certificates of Romanian ethnicity and spurned later Hungarian proposals to “repatriate” them. By shrewdly deploying racial and biological arguments, Davis argues, a “savvy group of priests in a Romanian backwater” (5) had helped redefine what made someone Romanian and protected their church for the duration of the war.

But at what cost? Davis's conclusion meditates on the power of ascriptive identities and ethnic categories. But it says little about the continued existence of Roman Catholics in communist Romania, or about the afterlife of their struggles to assert a place within the Romanian national community. Similarly, in spite of its claims to offer “a window into how identity is experienced in real life rather than in theory” (164), this book rarely ventures into the everyday lives of the Csangos—their daily religious practices, material culture, and economic networks. The real strength of this book instead lies in its careful reconstruction and thoughtful analysis of the increasingly violent and exclusionary discourses swirling around these Catholic peasants; its protagonists are politicians, demographers, anthropologists, statisticians, and theologians. The book offers a timely reminder that how states define “who belongs” can how powerful consequences, both for majorities and for minorities.