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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LANDSCAPE IN THE RESEARCH OF ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES 185
can read in Zoltan Ilyés’s publications. The rivalry for landscapes often has an
ethnic aspect (Ilyés 2007). One of the best examples is the conflict of interests and
differences in landscape-related ideas between the indigenous population and the
colonizers. The colonizers looked down upon the subjugated peoples as uncouth
and uncultured. They lived in the wilderness, and, according to the prevalent view,
the white man brought culture to an “empty land” and turned it into a cultivated
landscape. Science has by now superseded this view, but it is by no means equally
outdated among the public. In his classic work, William Cronon introduces the
different land uses, “ecologies” and networks of contact with the environment of
the indigenous (Indian) people of New England and the settlers, thus providing a
choice example of the confrontation of diverse attitudes to the landscape (Cronon
1983). Occupying and incorporating the “empty lands” was a life-and-death issue
for expanding empires. Hence in some ways it is the product of colonization, which
they strove to justify with ideological, political and scientific arguments as well.
“LAND CONQUEST THROUGH ONION DOMES”
The so-called conquest through onion domes is a symbolic, national-political process
of expansion in Transylvania, Romania. The Romanian Orthodox Church launched
extensive campaigns of church building in the interwar years and after the change of
the political regime in 1989. Its target area is the Székely country whose settlements
are still generally populated by Hungarians. The prime locations are the exposed, visible
urban centers, and the distinguished spectacular spots of the natural landscape. The
expansion of the Orthodox religion, the national faith of Romania and the multiplication
of its churches and monasteries in the Székely country fills Hungarians living there
with a sense of losing ground and living under threat. The interviews conducted by
journalist Zoltan Csaky with politicians and clergymen illustrate the everyday fears and
dilemmas related to the “nationalization” of the landscapes. For example, the idea of
“losing the landscape” appears in the opinion of Gabor Kolumban, county representative
in the European Council, in these words: ” The expansion of the Orthodox Church is to
be seen as a sort of cultural colonization, for they create highly visible building complexes
that modify the character of a landscape, and consequently, they leave a landscape-altering
message, the activity, the trace, the footprint of another culture in this region. As far as I see,
this is detrimental to the development of the Székely country in several ways” (Csäky 2004:
48; a more recent approach to the question: Zahorän 2012).
Objective and subjective landscape history
After the review of the interpretations of the landscape, we narrow our focus to
the question of landscape history. We do so, because landscape history is important
for several disciplines of the humanities (ethnography, archaeology, historical
studies) and it provides a good framework for analytical possibilities. In spite of
its frequent use, only rarely can one read about it in Hungary.
Landscape history has no chair of its own in the traditional academic order of
disciplines (if there still is such a thing). This is similar to the position of
environmental history, which Lajos Racz defines (with reference to Michael Powell)