Majority and Minority in the Austrian – Hungarian Empire
Majority and Minority in the Austrian – Hungarian Empire

Summary/Abstract: According to the Law of Nationalities from 1868, during the Dualist regime, the political leaders in Budapest promoted the idea of the Magyar political nation which was understood as the sum of all the nationalities living within the Hungarian state. The Romanian elites opposed the concept of “political nation”, developing an alternative project that shared the belief in the thesis of the individuality of each and every nation. This idea was vastly considered and discussed by the newspaper editor Teodor V Păcăţian in the pages of the Tribuna, the newspaper that was the official voice of the Romanian National Party. He, essentially, stated that each people from the country in its wholeness were a nation and only in its particularities may be regarded as a nationality. He rejected the juridical distinction between nation and nationality, as it was supported by Hungarian politicians, claiming the right of equality between all the nations within the Hungarian state. In complete agreement with the majority of his Romanian colleagues who chose to play a role on the political stage, he envisioned that the best solution to the national matter consisted in the federalization of the empire.

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