1 Identifying the Other. Transylvanian ethnicities in the first half of the 19 th century as viewed by foreign travellers  Mihaela Mehedinţi, Ph.D. Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania E-mail: mihaela_mehedinti@yahoo.com Transylvania – A multicultural province Transylvania has always housed various nationalities, usually cohabiting in a peaceful manner. As obvious as this remark appears to a contemporary, ascertaining this fact still amazed 19 th -century foreign travellers. The multitude of different ethnicities, spoken languages and religions perplexed them and provided them with the chance and reason to create long lists of attributes meant to clarify the characteristics of this region for their potential readers. For example, the French military man and diplomat Auguste de Lagarde considered that “from all of Europe’s countries, Transylvania is perhaps the one which, on a territory not vast at all, comprises so many distinct peoples. You can count up to twelve distinct peoples, who preserve their national spirit, costume, distinct mores and who live in good understanding” 1 . A decade later, the Irish traveller Robert Walsh further detailed this rather unusual situation by mentioning an approximate number of individuals for each ethnicity. According to his sources, in 1824, Transylvania was the homeland of 753,000 Romanians, 480,000 Saxons, 305,000 Hungarians and Szeklers, 72,000 Gypsies, 7,600 Slavs, 5,500 Armenians, 1,900 Jews, 800 Greeks and 200 Bulgarians 2 . The Banat area offered an even more impressive picture, as its inhabitants were brought here by “the course of events, through all sorts of circumstances, from every possible part of the world. RaĠi, who call themselves Serbians, then Romanians, Bulgarians, Gypsies, Jews, Italian and French settlers, Hungarians and Germans, and, as a matter of fact, all these nations who match together as fire and water, live here in peace” 3 . The German traveller F. S. Chrismar further adds that “at Becicherec even a colony of Spaniards (from Biscaia) had been established” 4 . Due to the presence of these numerous ethnicities, some travellers identified more than 20 spoken languages 5 , a situation that could easily bring to mind the Tower of Babel. And the