POLITICA ŞI PRINCIPIUL NAŢIONALITĂŢII ÎN TRANSILVANIA ÎNAINTE DE MAREA UNIRE

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the principle of nationalities as a main concept in the Transylvanian Romanians political thought from the end of the nineteenth century until the Great Union of 1918. The assumption of this approach is that the radicalism of the policy towards the nationalities in Transleithania − completely opposite to the Hungarian demarche of “establishing a constitutional system in a monarchical parliamentary regime” and of “removing absolutism”, the reverse of modern democratic and liberal principles, and oriented not only towards the nationalities submission and integration but also towards a “hierarchical ordering” of them – involved (1) the specificity of instituting the principle of nationalities as doctrinal basis of the militant demarche, petitioner-memorandist and political, in combating the Hungarian policy towards nationalities and in imposing the recognition of nationalities as political nations in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and (2) a specific incorporation of the principle of nationalities within federalist conceptions. As such, this paper contains a configuration of the “nationality policy” of Hungarian government after the instituting of the dual monarchy, the analysis of the principle of nationality being allocated to a self-contained article.

Keywords

• nationality policy
• the principle of nationalities
• liberal nationalism
• nation-state.