Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

BARNA ÁBRAHÁMimpossible for the state to establish universities on ethnic basis, but thenationalities could do it at their own expense. In 1866, after a debate lastingmore than a decade, a national collection was initiated for a law academyand an agricultural college. From direct donations, incomes of ballsand performances, only twenty thousand forints were accumulated by1883 (it was estimated that the interests of a deposit around 600,000forints would have been necesary to run the faculty). Finally, this sum wasused for the building of a girls’ school in Hermannstadt. 51 This actiondemonstrated, on the one hand, the organizational skills and initiative ofthe elite and, on the other hand, the general poverty of Romanian society.It was exactly this duality that characterized the situation of the Romaniansliving in Hungary. Their middle class – comprising the bourgeoisie,the intelligentsia and the professionals – lived on the level of the Transylvanianmiddle class, establishing the largest provincial bank and the richest privatefoundation of Hungary. It financed a national cultural association,there were some grammar schools of high standard, and the idea ofa Romanian college was also popular. The peasantry became differentiated,a middle stratum was born, evoking the admiration and envy of the elite ofRomania, and the most developed regions became models of embourgeoisment.But these strata could not redeem the general backwardness andpoverty of Transylvania that led to the stagnation of agrarian technology andto the collapse of traditional craftsmanship, connected with the upsurge ofa new manufacturing industry, which was not Romanian. With this background,the creation of a strong industrial and commercial entrepreneur classwas virtually impossible and these conditions did not favor the creation ofa dynamic network of economic relations that could be considered an independentRomanian “national economy” in Transylvania.NOTES1The question remains, whether the separate treatment of Transylvanian Romaniansocial development, disconnencted from the global context of Hungary, isa permissible mode of analysis at all. In my opinion, it is a legitimate subject,because the “Romanian society” – similarly to other non-Hungarian peoples ofthe country – evolved in other directions than the Hungarian one: from religiousand linguistic perspectives it was a second-class minority; it lost (througha long process of assimilation) its nobility; and, due to its inferior situation, itdid not assimilate sizeable bourgeois elements, and could not create a genuineRomanian stratum of industrial or merchant entrepreneurs. Its promisingmicrosocieties were swept away as the challenge of the more competitive foreigncapital became more acute, such as in the case of the Romanian levantine216