Historical background The
Hungarian tribes originated in the vicinity of the
Ural Mountains and arrived in the territory formed by present-day Romania during the 9th century from
Etelköz or
Atelkuzu (roughly the space occupied by the present day Southern
Ukraine, the
Republic of Moldova and the Romanian province of
Moldavia). Due to various circumstances (see
Honfoglalás), the Magyar tribes crossed the
Carpathians around 895 AD and occupied the
Carpathian Basin (including present-day
Transylvania) without significant resistance from the local populace. The precise date of the conquest of Transylvania is not known; the earliest Magyar artifacts found in the region are dated to the first half of the 10th century. In 1526, at the
Battle of Mohács, the forces of the
Ottoman Empire annihilated the Hungarian army and in 1571 Transylvania became an autonomous state, under the Ottoman
suzerainty. The
Principality of Transylvania was governed by its princes and its parliament (Diet). The Transylvanian Diet consisted of three Estates (
Unio Trium Nationum): the Hungarian nobility (largely ethnic Hungarian nobility and clergy); the leaders of
Transylvanian Saxons-German burghers; and the free
Székely Hungarians. With the defeat of the Ottomans at the
Battle of Vienna in 1683, the
Habsburg monarchy gradually began to impose their rule on the formerly autonomous Transylvania. From 1711 onward, after the conclusion of
Rákóczi's War for Independence, Habsburg control over Transylvania was consolidated, and the princes of Transylvania were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. In 1765 the
Grand Principality of Transylvania was proclaimed, consolidating the special separate status of Transylvania within the Habsburg Empire, established by the
Diploma Leopoldinum in 1691. The Hungarian historiography sees this as a mere formality. Within the Habsburg Empire, Transylvania was administratively part of
Kingdom of Hungary. Also after World War I, a group of
Csángó families founded a village in Northern Dobruja known as
Oituz, where Hungarians still live today. In August 1940, during the Second World War, the northern half of Transylvania was returned to Hungary by the second
Second Vienna Award. Historian
Keith Hitchins summarizes the situation created by the award:
Some 1,150,000 to 1,300,000 Romanians, or 48 per cent to over 50 per cent of the population of the ceded territory, depending upon whose statistics are used, remained north of the new frontier, while about 500,000 Hungarians (other Hungarian estimates go as high as 800,000, Romanian as low as 363,000) continued to reside in the south. In September–October 1944,
Northern Transylvania was retaken by the armies of Romania and the
Soviet Union; the territory remained under Soviet military administration until 9 March 1945, after which it became again part of Romania. The
Treaty of Paris (1947) overturned the Vienna Award and recognized the territory of northern Transylvania as being part of Romania. After the war, in 1952, a
Magyar Autonomous Region was created in Romania by the communist authorities. The region was dissolved in 1968, when a new administrative organization of the country (still in effect today) replaced regions with counties. The communist authorities, and especially after
Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime came to power, restarted the policy of
Romanianization. Today, "Transylvania proper" (bright yellow on the accompanying map) is included within the Romanian counties (
județe) of
Alba,
Bistrița-Năsăud,
Brașov,
Cluj,
Covasna,
Harghita,
Hunedoara,
Mureș,
Sălaj (partially) and
Sibiu. In addition to "Transylvania proper", modern Transylvania includes
Crișana and part of the
Banat; these regions (dark yellow on the map) are in the counties of
Arad,
Bihor,
Caraș-Severin,
Maramureș,
Sălaj (partially),
Satu Mare, and
Timiș.
Post-communist era In the aftermath of the
Romanian Revolution of 1989, ethnic-based political parties were constituted by both the Hungarians, who founded the
Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, and by the Romanian Transylvanians, who founded the
Romanian National Unity Party. Ethnic conflicts, however, never occurred on a significant scale, even though some violent clashes, such as the
Târgu Mureș events of March 1990, did take place shortly after the
fall of Ceaușescu regime. In 1995, a basic treaty on the relations between Hungary and Romania was signed. In the treaty, Hungary renounced all territorial claims to Transylvania, and Romania reiterated its respect for the rights of its minorities. Relations between the two countries improved as
first Hungary,
then Romania, became
EU members in the 2000s. == Politics ==