Considerații privind vocabularul politic al românilor din Imperiul Habsburgic: receptarea liberalismului și conservatorismului (1838-1914)
Considerations Regarding the Political Vocabulary of the Romanians from The Habsburg Empire: The Perception of Liberalism and Conservatism (1838-1914)

Summary/Abstract: In this study we intended to analyze how the Romanians from the Habsburg Empire, mainly those who resided in Hungary and Transylvania, perceived two main ideologies of the nineteenth century, liberalism and conservatism. Our research had two main parts: firstly, we identified and analyzed the definitions used by the Romanian intelligentsia for these two ideologies and secondly, we wanted to see in which context they were used. We used the following categories of sources: Romanian press, like Gazeta de Transilvania, Observatoriul, Albina and Federațiunea, dictionaries compiled by Transylvanian Romanians, The Romanian Encyclopedia, political speeches of Romanian political activists, letters of important Romanian political figures like George Barițiu, Vincențiu Babeș, Alexandru Papiu Ilarian, Avram Iancu etc. Our research has shown that Romanians had contact with these ideologies during the 1830s, and they understood their main characteristics. Although they knew several features of liberalism, Transylvanian Romanians and Romanians from other regions of Hungary had rarely identified their political movement with liberalism, because they had considered nationalism to be a part of this ideology. Before the inauguration of the Dual Monarchy (1867) we can see that they used the word “conservative” to chargeheir adversaries and tried to portray themselves as favorable to liberalism. After 1868, several Romanian leaders and journalists accepted conservatism and perceived it as an ideology dedicated to the fight against centralization and Magyarisation.

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