WORDS AND WITS: A TERRITORIAL DEBATE AND THE CREATION OF AN EPISTEMIC COMMUNITY IN INTERWAR DOBRUJA (1913-1940).

This article establishes a link between a creation of an epistemic community and a territorial debate while addressing the Romanian-Bulgarian dispute regarding Dobruja. Moving beyond approaches centered on an investigation of similar territorial debates over contested lands and their immediate outcomes, the paper primarily analyses the potential of a political conflict for generating a community of intellectuals who become involved in propagating their respective state and nation-building causes. Putting the case of interwar Dobruja into the context of "entangled history", the study clarifies its place within the framework of similar debates regarding other borderlands. Relying on the publications of the participants of the debate, the article claims that a conflict over a territory and the possibilities of its integration binds together influential public actors, various representatives of the local intellectual elite, uniting them in an unlikely epistemic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]