The post-Byzantine thesis was taken by various commentators as further proof that the Romanian historian, unlike many of his contemporaries, accepted a level of multiculturalism or acculturation in defining modern Romanian identity. Semiotician Monica Spiridon writes: "Iorga highly valued the idea of cultural confluence and hybridity." Similarly, Maria Todorova notes that, although it minimized the Ottoman contribution and displayed "emotional or evaluative overtones", such a perspective ran against the divisive interpretations of the Balkans, offering a working paradigm for a global history of the region: "Although Iorga's theory may be today 2009 no more than an exotic episode in the development of Balkan historiography, his formulation "Byzance après Byzance" is alive not only because it was a fortunate phrase but because it reflects more than its creator would intimate. It is a good descriptive term, particularly for representing the commonalities of the Orthodox peoples in the Ottoman Empire ... but also in emphasizing the continuity of two imperial traditions". With his research, Iorga also rehabilitated the Phanariotes, Greek or Hellenized aristocrats who controlled Wallachia and Moldavia in Ottoman times, and whom Romanian historiography before him presented as wreckers of the country.