Aron Szele

National Movements and the Breakup of the Austro-hungarian Monarchy: the Activity and Discourse of the Romanian National Party of Transylvania 1900-1914 Aron Szele

In 1918, the Austro-Hungarian state, one of the last European empires disappeared off the map, to be replaced by a number of nation-states. In the wake of the war, everyone agreed that the nationalism of the peoples of the former empire had contributed decisively to its downfall. But did the national movements actually plan this from the outset? One of the main goals of the book is to paint a more nuanced picture of nationalisms and their interplay in the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, by presenting a case-study of the activity and public discourse of the Romanian Party in the Hungarian part of the empire. It is a history of a struggle for national emancipation and recognition of cultural rights, which led the Romanians to negotiate and struggle, in turn, against both Budapest and Vienna. The book seeks to reconnect the story of the Romanian national movement with the Hungarian and imperial contexts, and show the long road, filled with failed attempts to integrate and mediate, leading to the gradual abandonment of the imperial project in general.