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During the first half of the 19th century, social public care was organized along two directions: commitment of professional beggars, without a family, in specialized institutions, and home assistance of beggars with families (by a monthly pension and by an annual change of clothes). The article relies on archive documents, such as potential beneficiaries' help requests, administrative documents issued by the authorities, lists of help beneficiaries, inquiries, etc. It presents aspects related to the practical functioning of the social assistance: types of beneficiaries, pension distribution procedures, abuses and frauds. The legal limitations of the administrative rigidity of the pension system were strictly defined, even before the assessment of the real needs in society. This is the reason the efficiency of the pension system was lower than expected both by the authorities and the beneficiaries.

This study proposed, first, to carry out, based on archive documents, an incursion as regards matrimonial relationships of XVIIIth century with all legal, economic and social connotations involved. The marriage contracts studied fall into a typology more closely of what was happening in the same period in Western Europe than in South Eastern Europe. This is because such acts have emerged within the former county of Arad in the first half of the century after the establishment of Habsburg domination and after the German colonists were brought into the area.
Besides the juridical problems regarding the contractual liabilities of the spouses, the status of the children, some problems related to wealth and dowry, I tried to mark out some aspects regarding the everyday life of Arad's inhabitants in the XVIIIth century.

The article offers a brief overview of the administrative-territorial organization and reorganization in the former county of Arad. Old medieval boundaries have known significant changes after the installation of Habsburg rule. Political, social and military reasons determined the imperial authorities to make several reorganizations of the area. Institutions were designed to ensure proper functioning of the county, but also contributed to the upgrade of the administrative structures on the Enlightenment spirit.

The two documents which are the subject of the present study, made to share property in the event of divorce, help to form an image on various aspects of daily life, poorly known from other sources: household size, land property, earnings in marriage furniture, tools, animals, prices, food, secular and religious involvement of the private life etc. In addition to legal information, both inventories, which stood at the base of documents on which the property was to be divided, reveal another perspective on social history of Arad in the late eighteenth century.

The study aims to carry out an analysis from demographic perspective for the city of Arad during the years 1767-1768. It is based on two documents that contain mainly statistical data with which it is possible to emphasize aspects related to some demographical behaviour in Arad. Information about the deceased, newborns and marriages registered, about the share of different ethnicities and confessions help us to outline the image of Arad, in which, during the XVIIIth century has been seen a clear process of modernization and demographic growth.

In February 1938, a monarchical regime was established in Romania.
In order to strengthen the power of the monarch and his discretionary control over the
administration, a new administrative law was drafted. Administrative law no. 2919,
published in the Official Monitor no. 187 from August 14, 1938, grouped the 71 counties
of Romania into 10 regions. The region was a territorial circumscription, endowed with
legal personality.
According to the Administrative law from August 14, 1938, the county became
a simple district of control and deconcentration of the central administration, losing its
legal personality. The prefect was authorized to exercise the control of the local
administration in the urban and rural communes of the county. One form the control
over the work of local authorities was their regular inspection. In April 1940, the prefect
of the Cahul County, colonel Dumitru Dobrescu, inspected the county communes,
clarifying various aspects of the activities of local administrations. The results of these
inspections make it possible to create a true picture of the realities of the Bessarabian
villages to months before the territorial abduction in June 1940.

In February 1938, a monarchical regime was established in Romania. In order to strengthen the power of the monarch and his discretionary control over the administration, a new administrative law was drafted. Administrative law no. 2919, published in the Official Monitor no. 187 from August 14, 1938 grouped the 71 counties of Romania into 10 regions. The region was a territorial circumscription, endowed with legal personality.
According to the Administrative law from August 14, 1938, the county became a simple district of control and deconcentration of the central administration, losing its legal personality. The prefect was authorized to exercise the control of the local administration in the urban and rural communes of the county. One form of the control over the work of local authorities was their regular inspection. In April 1940, the prefect of the Cahul County, colonel Dumitru Dobrescu, inspected the county communes, clarifying various aspects of the activities of local administrations. The results of these inspections make it possible to create a true picture of the realities of the Bessarabian villages to months before the territorial abduction in June 1940.

This study submits to our attention some qualitative and quantitative aspects related to urban and semi urban habitat from the former Arad County in the eighteenth century. If in 1715 there were 6 market towns, at the end of the century were already 15. Based on the conscriptions, urbariums and census, I have tried to detect the evolution of market towns during the entire eighteenth century. Reform policy of the Habsburg absolutism has determined even an economic and demographic increase in the market towns of Arad County. Between those 15 market towns of the county existing in 1787 only Arad had obvious urban characteristics. Here was concentrated 6.15% of the county population. By comparison with other counties from Transylvania and Hungary, I have pursued to dignify and quantify different aspects of the urbanization degree in the Arad County registered in the eighteenth century. The development of market towns in Arad County has had the same evolution with those of Central and Eastern Europe, because the agrarian character of these localities was predominant. The evolution towards urbanization was evident along the eighteenth century both in terms of population growth and a great social mobility and also in light of the economic and municipal development. The transformations in the direction of modernization registered during the eighteenth century were the basement of the future process of urbanization of Arad County in the century that has followed.

This article proposes to pay attention on the sources of historical demography in the old eparchy of Arad. At the end of XVIIth century, the Ottoman domination in the zone have been filled with the domination of Habsburgs and the Arad city became a significant orthodox Episcopal centre subordinated in religious plan to the metropolitan of Karlovitz. For the reconstitution and the knowledge of the demographical aspects into old counties Arad and Zarand, we can use many documents, which are preserved in the Departmental Direction of National Archive of Arad. Various censuses, tax conscriptions, wills and especially parochial registers of the marital status are sources of first category. With the methods used by Michel Fleury and Louis Henry this sources are essential to know the behaviours demographic for the various ethnos groups, as well majority Rumanian as the population German, Hungarian, Serb or Jewish which have lived in these places 300 years ago.

A marriage amongst youth belonging to the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox confessions was considered almost normal in certain communities. This can be explained by the fact that few parishioners could grasp the differences between the two confessions. At the same time, we have the ethnical aspect. Ethnie could not be separated in this case from confession, as both Greek-Catholics and Orthodox in the area are mostly of Romanian ethnie. These elements should be considered especially since we considered a mainly rural area, where customs "laws" are superposed over the official ones. On the other hand, in the mixed Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic communities, inter-confessional marriages are easier accepted on the "official" level.
An important constraint, or, on the contrary, a strong determination against a mixed inter-confessional family came from the families. As mentioned before, a strong pressure against achieving a mixed marriage came from the church. Both parishes to which the youngsters belonged had to be consulted. In order to have a religious marriage, they needed an engagement exemption from the archpriest (they came weeks, even months late, there were situations when the marriages were not accepted, so there would be no exemption). They had to pay a large amount for the exemption, so that many youngsters could not afford to pay for it; this was often solved by clandestine "wild" marriage. However, both the State and the Church wished to stop this phenomenon, so they took steps in this area.

This study depicts the biography of a young communist (Ion Călin) who volunteered for the International Brigades in Spain, and thus it features - within the historiography of the topic -
the destinies of the antifascist Romanian combatants. Since the vast majority of these combatants was composed of members and supporters of PCdR, the regime of popular democracy honored
and glorified them after March 6, 1945, in the same vein as those Communist inlanders who were
repressed by the "bourgeois regime". The Romanian Communists who fought in the French Resistance received a similar follow-up. After 1989, the names of the Romanian volunteers who had joined the Spanish Republicans' cause went in the shadow due to their political affiliation to a party utterly compromised in the eye of the public.
This study also deals with a broader context, including international politics, the reasons
behind such an enthusiasm binding young people to go abroad to a front at over 2.000 km, the social
strata they derived from, PCdR's efforts to organize and send combatants across the borders, Ion Călin's clandestine journey to the Iberian peninsula (via Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, or France), as well as aspects and details of the fights of which he was a part of during the war.

The image of the European culture is given by the association of the concepts people – culture – history – territory, which provides certain local features. From this relation, we identify a cultural area with local, regional and national features beyond a certain European culture. Thus, we identify at least two cultural identity constructions on the European level: a culture of cultures, that is a cultural area with a particular, local, regional and national strong identity, or a cultural archipelago, that is a common yet disrupted cultural area. Whatever the perspective, the existence of a European cultural area cannot be denied, although one may speak of diversity or of "disrupted continuity".
The paper is a survey on the European cultural space in two aspects: 1. Europe with internal cultural border areas; 2. Europe as external cultural-identity border area. From a methodological point of view, we have to point out that despite the two-levelled approach the two conceptual constructions do not exclude each other: the concept of "culture of cultures" designs both a particular and a general identity area. The specific of the European culture is provided precisely by diversity and multiculturalism as means of expression on local, regional, or national levels. Consequently, the European cultural area is an area with a strong identity on both particular and general levels.

Local power is carried out within the territorial boundaries of local municipalities that are delimited by each other through clearly defined borders and their degree of autonomy and vitality and depends, to a large extent, on the principles underlying the territorial organization of this public power.
The author considers that the territorial organization of the public power in the Republic of Moldova must be carried out on the basis of the following principles: a) respect for human rights, b) respect for historical, national and local traditions, c) economic and financial sufficiency, d) ensuring the participation of the population in the management of local public affairs, e) maximum proximity of the local public authorities to the inhabitants, f) population consultation on issues related to the territorial organization of the public power, g) legality, h) respect of the scientific achievements.
It was concluded that there is no strict dependence on the process of the territorial organization of public power to the objective criteria for creating territorial systems for the exercise of public power. Unlike other systems, the system of territorial organization of public power is much more static. This is a necessary condition for the proper functioning of the public authorities, which must have a permanent and clearly defined territorial area of activity.
The territorial organization of power in the Republic of Moldova was influenced by the factors of social, economic, organizational, national, historical, political nature. Each of the listed factors can determine the most important aspects of the territorial structure at certain stages of state development.

Divorce is, irrespective of the perspective of approaching the phenomenon from the point of view of the society typology, a form of social deviance that has as effect the dilution of family image and norms. We do not discuss here of a dilution of the traditional norms concerning family, as someone might misunderstand, it is an erosion of the idea of family in general. "Family" starts to have other forms than the "official" ones. Divorce is the last step in the process of erosion and dissolution of the central axis of the family – the marital couple. Despite the fact that we have considered the divorce as the last step in this process of dissolution, we have to admit the fact that, after the divorce, considering that the old couple had children, the existence of the family does not cease, it just takes a new form.
The research of the archives, preserved due to the parish notes (often duplicates), provides the opportunity of identifying the main issues at a certain epoch in the Romanian rural world concerning divorce and the act of divorcing. Our research is structured in two directions: 1. a broad one, through which we will make a quantitative analysis of the size of the phenomenon in the counties of Bihor and Satmar (by observing the particularities in the county seats) – in this way, we will try to calculate the divorce gross rate (by calculating the number of divorces at one thousand inhabitants); 2. the other direction, through a case study on the Greek-Catholic parishes of the diocese of Oradea, will pursue a rather qualitative analysis without ignoring the quantitative aspect. The choice of the Greek-Catholic parishes was made for several reasons: the first is the quality of the materials preserved; the second is the fact that the confession, unlike the Roman-Catholic one for instance, accepts the divorce, thus providing the opportunity of bringing to light the separations undoubtedly existing in the Catholic environment; the third is that we think that, by its position as compared to the two Churches (Catholic and Orthodox), the Uniate Church provides an image that is closer to the reality as shown on the level of the whole population in the region.

Territorial-administrative delimitation is a system of territorial organization, which serves as a legal basis for the functioning of local administrative institutions. Effectiveness of these institutions depends from rationality of territorial-administrative delimitation. Territorial-administrative delimitation follows location of local public administrative authorities at the first and second levels in a specific territorial, juridical and administrative framework for effective administration of locality, and in order to achieve principles of local autonomy and decentralization of public services. Under the chronological aspect, the process of territorial-administrative delimitation of the Republic of Moldova went through three distinct phases within two decades of independence: The first phase - perpetuation of centralized territorial-administrative delimitation of soviet type, which embraces the periods from declaration of Independence up to entry into force the Law no. 191 - XIV from 12.11.1998. Second phase - trying to build territorial-administrative system in the spirit of the principles of decentralization, which lasted from the date of entering into force of the Law no. 191 - XIV from 12.11.1998 until 29.01.2002, the date of entering into force of the Law no. 764191 - XIV from 27.12.2001. Third phase – returning to central territorial-administrative delimitation, which starts on 29.01.2002 and lasts till present. It is an axiom that the Republic of Moldova must give up the soviet system of territorial-administrative delimitation. It is more complicate to find the ideal model, which will correspond to new provocations that will face the Republic of Moldova in future. Determination of territorial limits of local collectivities is a very complex work and depends from a lot of facts. That is why, the judicious delimitation of territorial limits of local collectivities is important to consider the following moments: 1. Being by nature a matter of national interest, changing array of administrative organization of the territory of the state should be a result of public debates, determinedly with large participation of local authorities at the both levels as well as with citizens. 2. Territorial-administrative delimitation should be realized in a perspective of overall society development, as well as objectives and duties, which will return to administrative system in future. 3. The option for special model of territorial-administrative organization should be a result of one deep scientific survey. 4. For the delimitation of territorial-administrative units (as a number, structure, dimension, etc) can not be neglected social, material, financial and other nature costs, for short, medium or long term, that these activities involve and which the society must face. 5. Studying different models and practices of territorial organization of local autonomy has a great importance. Analyzing international practices in a matter of territorial delimitation, consequences of various options of local structures, such as studying arguments pro or contra of these structures in different states gave us the opportunity to establish that the process of territorial delimitation is determined not only by objective factors, but also by the subjective.