Gábor Egry

Phantom Menaces? Ethnic Categorization, Loyalty and State Security in Interwar Romania

In this article, I analyze practices of defining and applying concepts of ethnicity, loyalty and state security in Greater Romania. While state policies were based on a basic assumption of the equation of ethnic belonging and loyalty (Romanians being loyal, non-Romanians disloyal), the complexity of the very administrative apparatus and the problems of unification opened up a space in which the concepts of loyalty and ethnicity were contested. The case studies of the use of the term irredentist and the language exams of minority officials in the mid-1930s shed light on a related but different question. The basic equation of loyalty and ethnicity resulted in the use of an otherwise empty concept of irredentism as a term to denote little more than ethnic “otherness,” a vagueness that enabled local authorities to apply it deliberately, either to restrict or to permit members of minorities to engage in activities that had some bearing on questions of identity. The ways in which the language exams were administered indicate the existence of a large group of non-Romanian public officials who were treated by their colleagues and immediate superiors as equal members of a public body serving the nation state, people who in exchange redefined their loyalty and identity as one based primarily on this professional group membership while still preserving their ethnic belonging. These deviations from the basic equation also reveal how the layered and geographically diverse nature of the state administration influenced the contested nature of the ethnic categories.

Keywords: ethnicity, loyalty, security, Greater Romania, minorities, Transylvania

Ethnicity, loyalty and state security, concepts central to this study, were and are intricately interwoven. Their relationship, far from straight and simple in a given period and in the specific context of a newly enlarged nation-state after World War I, will be the main concern of my work. This approach presumes that what I try to outline is a story of construction and negotiation, addressing how these concepts were understood, defined, redefined and instrumentalized by different actors, and always relating these concepts to one another. Not only were these concepts used in descriptions of society, they also underpinned certain policies and administrative practices and legitimized different forms of control over the population. They therefore inevitably became topics of contestation in their content and their practical consequences for the lives of individuals. Success in defining what loyalty consisted of, how loyalty was related to ethnic belonging, and what constituted a threat to the security of the state meant power, because definitions of loyalty and threat were used to legitimate restrictions on or extensions of liberties, and these liberties were never simply abstractions, but rather always involved smaller or larger spheres of personal activity.

The construction of ideals and abstractions is usually accompanied by contestation, and contestation always means more than one actor, but historical actors are rarely equal in terms of resources, power, or efficiency, and their asymmetric relationships often mean that one of them can limit the others. Concerning loyalty and state security, it is usually the state that has the strongest power to establish definitions, both as a matter of law and a matter of public opinion, as was the case, for instance, in interwar Romania. Obviously, the state had the necessary means to define (what it perceived as) threats to the existing order (including the very existence of the state) and what constituted the proper behavior of a citizen with a single word: loyalty. In some cases, this power to define loyalty was unilateral, for instance in the case of ethnic categorization, which was usually legally or structurally defined, leaving the individual little room to negotiate his or her membership, except when a census was taken.1 Thus the logic of the state and how it approached ethnicity, loyalty and state security had a considerable impact on the behavior of other actors.

However, states are rarely homogeneous entities. Indeed one of their chief characteristics is their complexity. As a consequence, even when a given state has a clearly defined goal accompanied by a well-articulated concept of state security and loyalty, many actors are responsible for the implementation of policies and the administration of society at different levels and under different circumstances.2 This plural nature of the (single) state and the resulting potential for varying interpretations and understandings of security, and ethnicity opens up spaces for redefinitions of the concept of loyalty, either entirely or at least with regards to part(s) of its content. Add to this the personal flexibility of individual administrative officials and the fact that even totalitarian regimes were never fully able to control individual responses to and attitudes towards their expectations and the result is often a surprisingly large semantic space in which contestation of these concepts (security, ethnicity, and loyalty) took place with very different outcomes, depending on various factors. Thus even in the case of state security (which is usually associated with strict control and enforcement) and its relationship to ethnicity and loyalty one can expect dynamic stories with varying trajectories, the usual narrative of political and/or national oppression notwithstanding.

In this study I attempt to trace the dynamics of the concepts under investigation in interwar Romania, firstly as an exemplary case of a wider phenomenon (nowadays a popular topic of historical research), namely the notion of ethnicity as a social construct3 and then as an alternative to the usual narratives of the specific history of the Hungarian minority in interwar Romania. Concerning the latter aim, I do not intend to rewrite this story.4 I would rather provide a complementary narrative and demonstrate why it is necessary to go beyond the generalized view of historical actors in order to understand even broader social processes within the ethnic minority communities.

I also intend to offer a tacit challenge to the existing secondary literature, Hungarian and Romanian alike. There is, however, an important difference between Hungarian and Romanian works dealing with minorities and minority policy. The bulk of Hungarian historiography since the 1960s employs more constructive methodologies in the creation of this macro perspective, and works that were written after the late 1980s implement important theoretical insights from nationalism studies and social sciences. With a few notable exceptions,5 Romanian historiography lags behind. Most of the scholarship in question is descriptive or consists of individual source publications, and articles complied from transcripts of documents without contextualization.6 Some of the most prominent works are uncritical of their sources, repetitively reproducing their perspectives, opinions and assessments, and this is also true of the source publications.7 This does not mean that these works do not contain a huge amount of information and data, but the way they narrate the history of minorities is centered on politics and framed by a perspective from above.

In contrast, I intend to dissociate my story from what we usually understand as politics, the activity of political actors at national level or that of members of political parties in a given context, or the even narrower perspectives of legal texts produced by politicians. First, my aim is to show how lower levels of the administration dealt with their immediate subjects, so I offer insights into the practical meaning of certain concepts and policies and not political intentions in the aforementioned sense. Second, my point of departure is state security, not minority policy, which is usually based on the very existence of the state, irrespective of its nature (be it democratic , authoritarian, or dictatorial) or dominant ideology (be it liberal, nationalist, communist or fascist etc.). Every state has an understanding of state security and every state uses similar practices to further this aim.

Nevertheless, the context of minority politics in interwar Romania is significant in order to highlight the potential differences between situations that resulted from the varying acts of different actors. Most works on this issue draw a distinction between the first and the second decade of the interwar era and they also point out the different stances of National Liberal and National Peasant Governments. The 1920s, dominated by the liberals, are usually characterized as an era of legal unification based on the notion of the equality of all citizens and rejection of the necessity of specific minority rights (with all the consequences this entailed for minorities that were accustomed to particular legal systems). In other words, the dismissal of minority rights as a legitimate state concern notwithstanding, the period is regarded as one in which liberal policies prevailed concerning the citizens’ status, peaking in the decentralizing accommodation attempts of the National Peasant governments between 1928 and 1933. In contrast, the 1930s is usually seen as an era of growing nationalist sentiment, during which mainstream parties tacked to the right, adopting increasingly extreme positions under pressure from the extreme right movements.8 The distance between politics and implementation, minority policy and state security allows one to test this general opinion as a hypothesis at the lower levels of the administration and from the perspective of state security organs, which I intend to do in the following sections.9

A Triangle of Concepts

The point of departure for this essay is the concept of loyalty, a notion that was potentially directly connected both to ethnicity and state security. According to Peter Haslinger and Joachim von Puttkamer,10 loyalty as a social phenomenon (a set of norms, expectations and practices) has three important aspects. The first one is an emotional-ethical one, which entails individual and collective activity, while mutuality of the relationship between individuals and groups or states remains central. The second one is a relational aspect, concerning the acceptance or rejection of a state, which enables the actors to perform, demand, control and sanction loyalty. The third one is a discursive one, (re)interpreting loyalty in relation to the usually stable discursive identity that makes it possible to gain room for maneuver despite the fixed assumptions of behavior and practices usually associated with identity. The three aspects not only situate loyalty as a discourse but also make it distinguishable in most social contexts, beyond a mere speech-act and also as an often embedded practice.

A close relationship between loyalty and ethnicity was characteristic to the new nation states of interwar Europe. It was exemplified by rhetoric that often confounded ethnic belonging with a presupposed attitude towards the existence and goals of the nation states.11 It did not, however, necessarily mean a complete identification of these concepts. They were seen rather as existing in a causal relationship between one’s ethnicity and one’s loyalty. According to the principle of national self-determination, a cornerstone of the new European order after World War I, ethnicity implied a tendency towards the establishment of new entities and the striving for sovereignty. Additionally, since the states that had lost the war sought at least partial revision of the peace treaties, revisionism based on claims on behalf of ethnic kin in other states represented another form of politics that made loyalty questionable on the basis of ethnicity. Irredentism and revisionism, the two frequently mentioned threats to the territorial integrity of the successor states, were sometimes complemented with a third problem that also put ethnic minorities in the limelight as sources of danger: the minority treaties signed by the new nation states of Eastern Europe. Successive Romanian governments saw these documents as a result of unjust Great Power pressure and an infringement on their own sovereignty. They were therefore reluctant to give them precedence over national legislation, first and foremost the Constitution of 1923, which declared the equality of every citizen irrespective of ethnicity and failed to incorporate the few specific rights listed in the Minority Treaty.12 It is not surprising that minority organizations were vulnerable to allegations that they were undermining the state, especially when they based their claims on the Minority Treaty.13

Under these circumstances, ethnic categorization became crucial in determining one’s loyalty, and in accordance with the essentialist logic of ethnicity, suspicions concerning loyalty were easily extended to the whole ethnic group. If ethnicity implied an attachment to or longing for a different form of statehood, then ethnic minorities were inevitably suspected of subversion. State security demanded observation and control of ethnic groups and their activity. Cultural practices that were regarded as peculiar to (and possibly essential to) a particular ethnic group were easily seen as expressions or rejections of the state precisely because of they were interpreted as representations of one ethnicity in a state that was perceived as the embodiment of another. Thus the three concepts were connected to one another in a complex triangle of relationships in which ethnicity had a bearing on one’s presumable behavior and this presumption easily made a person seem disloyal in the eyes of the authorities, thus automatically making him or her a threat to the state. Those responsible for the security of the state could all too easily equate ethnicity with loyalty (or disloyalty in the case of a minority) and define minorities as dangers. As a consequence, ethnic categorization was often about determining or at least alleging varying degrees of loyalty.14

Beyond this gaze from above, the complexity of the state and society and the limitations of the state’s executive capacity allowed for contestation of these concepts and also their relationship to one another, which was regarded as straightforward by most security organs. Perceptions and expectations were not necessarily accepted and fulfilled, while the approach of the state security organs and their practice of categorization inevitably impacted on the activity of those affected. However, the impact itself depended on many factors and sometimes resulted in unexpected outcomes, as other actors made other contributions to the process of defining ethnicity and loyalty and how ethnicity and loyalty affected state security. The contingent, fluid nature of ethnicity in particular posed a challenge to the simplistic causality implied in the action of state organs, as it often disrupted the connection between ethnicity and loyalty.

Security and Ethnicity

If one examines the concept of security in interwar Romania from the perspective of the state, i.e. the higher levels of administration, it is easy to discern signs of the blurring of the concept of ethnicity and loyalty. The loyalty of ethnic others was a permanent concern for the administration and in particular for the organs of security, such as the police, the gendarmerie and the State Security Police (Siguranţa, a branch of the police). But as the local outlets of these organs were politically subordinated to the county prefects, (politicians who had administrative duties, were invested with extensive powers, and represented the central government), the problem was an important issue in the political sphere as well. As a consequence, in addition to the regular reports of the police and gendarmerie, the political reports of the prefects also gave extensive descriptions of alleged subversive activities among members of the ethnic minority population.

The readiness with which the implicit assumption that the minority population as such posed a danger to the state was adopted and accepted is illustrated by how this concern figured in tens of thousands of political reports (of which I could only gain access to more than one-thousand from all over Romania) over the course of the two decades in question. Not only did these reports consistently contain separate sections on the activities of these minorities in the respective counties, the headings of these sections often explicitly labeled the groups as problems (problemă minoritară, maghiară, etc.), questions (chestiunea minoritară, germană, etc.) or movements (mişcarea minoritară, maghiară, etc.), terms suggesting something that should be overseen and kept under control.15 It is also noteworthy how much these fears and the resulting perception of minorities as threats was characteristic for Romanian political thinking and discourse in their entirety, creating a situation in which views dominant in the public sphere and state practices reinforced one another, even on the level of semantics.16

Two important things stand out concerning this labeling. First, they did not draw any distinction between the various minorities. Even minorities without an external homeland or territorial claims, such as Jews, appeared regularly in these reports. Thus there was a clear distinction between the majority and the minorities in terms of potential threat, and minority status alone sufficed as a substantiation of the subversive potential of these ethnic groups. The generalization that underlies this practice is important for the conceptualization of loyalty too, because it makes plausible and palpable how non-Romanians were essentially seen as more or less incompatible with the existing order, much like other subversive groups, and this is the second point concerning the categorization of minorities in the reports. That they posed a potential threat went without saying, as was the case with communists, fascists, and workers, but it was also regarded as self-evident that the workers’ problem or student problem was equally important, not least because of the violence associated with these movements.17 The fact that minorities figured alongside them in the reports certainly meant that they were also seen as suspicious and even potentially capable of violence.

But however simple and effective this categorization seems (minorities are disloyal and the majority is loyal simply because of their ethnicity, thus ethnicity is a reliable marker of loyalty), it did not remain unproblematic. Especially in the new provinces of Greater Romania (Transylvania, the Banat, Bukovina, Bessarabia) and more markedly at the fringes, often along the borders, the loyalty of the Romanian population was also called into question.18 On the basis of observations made by the authorities and complaints lodged by individuals, they were increasingly seen as unreliable, dangerous, and a challenge to the authority of the state. However, with a strange twist the bond between ethnicity and loyalty was maintained intact with the claim that these Romanians were not actually Romanians. They were either “denationalized” (Magyarized, Russianized, Polonized, Ukrainianized etc.) Romanians or they were not Romanians at all, but rather a mixed population, and this was reflected in their everyday practices: language use, attitude towards official celebrations, and consumption of cultural material goods.

Thus the strong link between ethnicity and loyalty was restored with the categorization of people on the basis of their behavior and the identification of certain practices with a specific ethnicity. But when the notion of behavior and cultural practices as the litmus test of ethnicity was applied on a day-to-day basis, it did not prove sufficient to determine one’s loyalty or disloyalty in a viable manner. At least this is what an exchange of letters between the central apparatus of the Siguranţa and the local police units located in the smaller cities around Cluj (Kolozsvár) suggests. In a letter, the central administration not only complained that the local police failed to report the threats posed by the regular activities of minorities in the respective cities, but also instructed the police as to what it meant to be irredentist and, as such, disloyal. The letter practically claimed that every single activity of a minority organization was part of irredentist propaganda and conspiracy, so the police had to report on them in detail and hinder them, whether they regarded these activities as potentially dangerous or not.19 While this approach concurred entirely with the simple equation of ethnicity and loyalty that prevailed in police and political reports, it was clear to the local police that it would have created an unmanageable situation on the ground. The reaction of the police, who de facto neglected the order (as I discuss below), reveals that the discrepancy between local and central actors concerning the definition of loyalty and the relationship between loyalty and ethnicity could not be eliminated by simple order. It also sheds light on the practices through which concepts were redefined, which I address in more detail later.

Not surprisingly the simple equation of ethnicity and loyalty pervaded other fields of ethnic categorization, seemingly farther from the immediate concerns of state security. But in a paradoxical way, to a certain extent these practices showed that according to the specific situation and the immediate aims of the state there was a chance of loosening the strong bond connecting ethnicity and loyalty. Census taking is one of the obvious examples, especially as it was the moment when one’s ethnicity was formally registered in a legally binding form. But while police and political reports suggest no differences among minorities as far as their potentially dangerous nature was concerned, the census contradicted to this strict rule and revealed a certain pecking order of dangerousness. In this case, the aim of the state was to weaken the (allegedly) most dangerous ethnic groups by strengthening others by revealing the “true” ethnicity of people who (purportedly) had been Magyarized or Russianized before World War I. In Transylvania, the most important groups subject to this practice were Germans and urban Jews. They were often compelled to register as Jews and Germans and were threatened with fines if they failed to comply.20

However, once again the case was less straightforward than it seems. Individual census commissioners often did not entirely share the official view and treated every minority as equally dangerous. One of them even saw the census as an opportunity to search the home of every Hungarian and to reveal hidden depots of arms and ammunition, their supposed armed conspiracy against Romania,21 once again highlighting the practical importance of what the executors of state policies actually thought of these issues. On the other hand, the police reports imply that the differences in the danger these groups posed could only have been a difference of degree, for example in the practice of Bessarabian police organs the Jews as an ethnicity were equated with ethnic danger and communism simultaneously, making them probably the most subversive group in the eyes of the authorities.22

While recent secondary literature suggests that actual policy towards minorities in interwar South Eastern Europe was mainly influenced by the relationship between the kin-state, the home state, and Great Power influence if its support was important for the homeland,23 such considerations do not seem to have had an impact on the perception of ethnicity as a threat to the state. At least in the case of Germans neither Romanian attempts to gain German support at the end of the 1930s nor the Antonescu regime’s alliance with the Third Reich diminished concerns or reduced the amount of paperwork dealing with the supervision and control of the German minority as a permanent danger, despite significant political concessions to their demands.24 The reports still related every detail of the German problem, and the police continued to devote considerable attention to German activity in the country.

Irredentists and Minority Officials

In the previous section, I mentioned how the perspective of central organs was characteristic of the state apparatus and how the equation of loyalty and ethnicity was embedded in the workings of its organs. But even at this macro level and in spite of the simplicity of the premise, it was not always easy to apply, although the equation remained the basis on which many of the acts and policies of the organs of state security were based. However, it is not always possible to discern on the basis of these sources alone how the concepts of loyalty, ethnicity and state security were contested, reshaped, and reconstructed through the interactions of different actors.

In the following section, I use two exemplary cases to highlight this process in more detail. The cases I have chosen represent two different situations for the participants. The first one, which concerns how the concept of irredentism was used by organs responsible for state security, shows the effects of unilateral, often secret categorization, while the second one, which involves the language exams taken by minority public officials in 1934–1935, shows how a supposedly fixed identification was often successfully negotiated in its content throughout this process. The unilateral nature of categorization and the secrecy, which was only broken by often politically motivated trials that were not intended to reveal the “truth” about the accused but rather to reinforce state legitimacy through the discovery of enemies, made it almost impossible to negotiate the content or label of irredentism. Individuals registered as irredentists remained passive in the face of this charge, except in the case of a trial, but the concepts were still not used uniformly. The differences in the ways in which the notion was defined and applied are very instructive concerning the working of categorization within a complex structure. Thus they shed some light on the differences in definitions within the state and also on the basic definition of nation/ethnicity.

The second example, which involves language exams, offers a look at a more dynamic and complex context in which every actor gained a certain level of agency in determining and defining ethnicity. Although the basic equation of ethnicity and loyalty remained seemingly uncontested, the many variations of what really constituted ethnicity in the case of minority officials, whose minority position and identity was a fixed element of the process, often led to a de facto redefinition of their ethnic belonging. In this case, many actors exerted influence one way or another on the result, the central state organs, local politicians, representatives of the public officials as a profession, and the examinees themselves, resulting in a very intriguing set of tactics and strategies.

Irredentism and Irredentists

The basic equation of ethnicity and (dis)loyalty made it seemingly quite simple for the authorities to identify dangerous people and groups whose often permanent supervision was necessary for the security of the state. Earlier research has already demonstrated that police practice applied the uniform view of ethnic groups as dangerous per se. Kathrine Sorrels analyzes how Jews were seen in Bessarabia and concludes that the police practically bound their ethnicity with subversive activity, be it bolshevism or ethnic secession.25 However, she concentrated on the group as a whole, implicitly accepting the contemporaneous official perspective, and did not attempt to look for differences within the state or interrogate the practical content and meaning of concepts like irredentist and Bolshevik. She used only police reports, while different types of sources, combined with the paper trail of individual cases, offer a glimpse at both the meaning of the concept of irredentism as it was used by state authorities and the process of construction/application of this concept in a complex administrative system. Lists of people to intern in case of military mobilization as of 1933,26 a period of internal politics that was still relatively peaceful,27 provides a basis for an analysis of the social backgrounds of irredentists in comparison with other allegedly subversive groups and also data that can shed some light on the meanings of the concept.

Reports on the activity of lower level police organs reveal that the lists were not exhaustive. In other words, there were more people suspected of irredentist activity than actually on the lists. Thus we can take the lists as a register of a “core” group, the presence of which was seen as the most acute potential danger to military efforts due to its social activity and influence on the minority population. In this sense, the lists were not really inventories of potential irredentists not even of people who had fallen under the suspicion of the authorities. Rather, they were records of people believed by the authorities to constitute a group the removal of which would forestall any potential irredentist political activities among the members of minority groups.

The lists consist of 1,262 people suspected or accused of having engaged in all kinds of subversive activity. While data from some Transylvanian counties are missing, a summary of the number of people to intern as of 1936 and scattered lists from individual counties from other years suggest that the overall number for Transylvania was not much higher than the number found in these partial lists, making the sample a legitimate basis of analysis.28 There was no consistent use of the label irredentist among state organs, so it is not possible to determine precisely who was treated as a dangerous irredentist. Nevertheless, the use of two different filters could certainly include everyone whom the authorities classified as an irredentist. One should therefore draw a distinction between “hard” or “core” irredentists, who were registered explicitly as irredentists, and “soft” irredentists, who figured on the list as chauvinists who held some anti-Romanian sentiment or were labeled with some similar accusation. 440 people belonged to the core and an additional 178 people to the soft irredentist group, comprising almost 49 percent of all registered people. Even if one adds the 23 spies, the number is hardly half of the dangerous elements in the register, suggesting that irredentism was less of a concern for the authorities than is usually presumed.29

In the eyes of the authorities, the phenomenon of irredentism was not solely an urban one, but was also found in a concentrated form in a few larger localities. 383 people, 62 percent of the combined, soft and hard irredentist group, lived in only 13 cities across Transylvania. However, there was no straight correlation between the size of a city or the proportion of Hungarians living there and the number of irredentists registered. The authorities needed a certain number of Hungarians to “find” a larger group of irredentists among them, but a larger group of Hungarians did not automatically mean a larger group of irredentists. This finding suggests that the authorities were not obliged or under pressure to produce a certain number or percentage of irredentists. Also, there is no visible tendency indicating that the presence of non-Hungarian minority groups proportionally raised the number of irredentists in the particular locality. This suggests that Hungarians were somewhat more likely to fall under such suspicion than members of other nationalities, a hypothesis further corroborated by the internal division of the irredentist groups according to ethnicity. In this regard Hungarians, made up around 80 percent of both “core” irredentists and the combined “core” and “soft” irredentist groups, while their share of the minority population in these counties was only 65.6 percent.30

The social composition of Hungarian irredentists shown in tables 1 and 231 reveals the extent to which the concept, when applied, was limited to a small and very specific group of Hungarians.

	Hungarian	German	Jew	Romanian	Other	Total
Worker	10	1	–	–	–	11
Peasant, agricultural laborer	6	–	–	–	–	6
Artisan, skilled worker, trader, smallholder	32	5	–	–	–	37
Public services	29	4	1	–	–	34
Education, religion	60	4	2	–	–	66
Liberal professions	82	4	17	–	1	104
Proprietor	26	2	–	–	–	28
Private official	19	2	1	–	–	22
Commerce, restoration, pharmacist	23	8	9	–	–	40
Politics	4	–	–	–	–	4
Housewife, pensioner	16	5	2	1	–	24
n. a.	–	–	1	–	–	1
Total	307	35	33	1	1	377

 

Table 1: Occupational division of registered “core” irredentists according to ethnicity

 

	Hungarian	German	Jew	Romanian	Other	Total
Worker	32	2	–	4	4	42
Peasant, agricultural laborer	7	6	–	2	–	15
Artisan, skilled worker, trader, smallholder	56	15	–	4	1	76
Public services	36	6	1	–	–	43
Education, religion	75	10	3	–	–	88
Liberal professions	98	6	21	–	1	126
Proprietor	32	2	–	–	–	34
Private official	25	5	4	–	–	34
Commerce, restoration, pharmacist	34	10	10	–	1	55
Politics	4	–	–	–	–	4
Housewife, pensioner	26	8	2	1	–	37
n. a.		–	1			1
Total	425	70	42	11	7	555

 

Table 2: Occupational division of registered “core” and “soft” irredentists, according to ethnicity

 

The most important characteristic of these groups was the reduced presence of workers and peasants, although together they represented the largest occupational group among Hungarians.32 The absence of these categories from the group of irredentists is even more striking considering that 44 percent of all Hungarians assigned to internment were registered as communists, showing that ethnicity alone did not determine one’s categorization. But a tendency to become communist according to official categorizations was even more prevalent in the case of lower middle class or petty bourgeois groups.33 In this case, 63 percent of all registered individuals were classified as communists.

On the other hand, representatives of the liberal professions and the intelligentsia were significantly overrepresented among irredentists, irrespective of their nationality. Among Hungarians 40 percent of irredentists, whether core or soft, belonged to this occupational category, compared to 13 percent among the Hungarian population. If one adopts a broad definition of middle class, adding private officials, some proprietors, and independent entrepreneurs in commerce, restoration, pharmacist or public servants it is safe to conclude that at least 60 percent of those categorized as irredentists belonged to the middle class. If we bundle together middle class defined in this manner, the elite and the better situated part of the lower middle class, their ratio together could reach as much as 80% of registered irredentists of Hungarian nationality. Therefore, it seems that irredentism was not really equal with ethnicity alone, but with ethnicity and profession or social status. Belonging to the middle-class meant that one either was not seen as suspicious or, if you were, you were still only perceived as an irredentist by the authorities.

A look at the gender aspect and some paradoxical cases corroborates this finding. Regarding gender, not only did a mere sixth of women registered belong to the “core” irredentist category, almost without exception their social roles were classic middle class housewife, while many working women figured among communists. It is also telling that a few individuals who otherwise either were leaders of the legal Social Democratic Party (associated with the workers’ problem in police reports) or already known to the authorities as communists still figured among irredentists. In all likelihood, this was due to their occupation, namely journalism.34

Obviously, stereotypes played an important role in the practice of categorization. While ethnicity was not unrelated to the decisions of authorities, it was only one factor. It was necessary but not adequate to qualify someone as irredentist. As in the case of Jews, who were associated with bolshevism due to their nationality and the respective stereotypes (for this reason mainly people from lower and lower-middle class groups are found on the lists as alleged communists), irredentist Hungarians were predominantly middle class, often well educated people, in harmony with the stereotypical image of Hungarians.35

Looking behind the often simplistic labels on the list, which were intended to describe the threats these people posed to state security, irredentism, as is clear from the two-tier analysis of the social composition of this group, reveals a wide range of meanings beyond the non-Romanian ethnic middle class status. Irredentist was not the only term used by the state authorities to designate people who were suspected of irredentism. The authorities applied a number of synonymous words, often arbitrarily or just to avoid the negative stylistic effect of the accumulation or repetition of a word. Sometimes the modification was only a phrase attached to or involving a derived form of “irredentism,” like “Hungarian irredentist, feverishly zealous, great propagandist.”36 In other cases it was a substitution or a synonym, often used in analogous phrases, like “great chauvinist, hates everything Romanian,” “irredentist and Hungarian propagandist.”37 There was a third type, namely the seemingly accurate description of a particular case, but these descriptions often rested on stereotypes, and there was also a very pliant label, subversive, which could refer to irredentism or other potentially dangerous activities as well.

The concept of irredentism was to a certain extent treated as a matter of common knowledge. The term was used with minimal or no explanation, implying the self-evidence of its meaning.38 When the term was used in a context in which it went beyond this simplistic formulation and suggested something concrete, this implied meaning could have been a general attitude, a permanent activity or a single case. The most intriguing of its implied meanings was simply the notion of a general attitude that was usually summarized as hostility to Romania and discontent with the situation in the country, and this attitude always involved a critical stance with regards to the prevailing circumstances. Sometimes even oblique, general criticism (for example in the form of a theater play in which state officials were depicted in a negative light, even if the setting of the play was not specified) was enough to raise the suspicion of the authorities.39 These kinds of manifestations of alleged disloyalty were usually seen through the lens of ethnicity. If criticism came from a non-Romanian, it was easy to assume that the reason was the alien soul of the critic who imagined a solution outside the framework of the Romanian nation state. Social roles or positions were often confounded with pursuits in attempts to define irredentism. Although in many cases the authorities substantiated their categorizations with mention of the specific acts of the accused, as these actions usually were closely related to the profession of the person concerned the decision to designate him or her as “irredentist” was a condemnation of his or her pursuits in their entirety. These activities were usually carried out in civic societies and associations, and logically the activity of these institutions was also categorized as irredentist.40 As a consequence, everyone involved automatically became an irredentist.41

Concerning specific acts that were regarded by the organs of the state as irredentist, apart from cases of violence against the authorities, open rebellion or participation in the Hungarian-Romanian armed conflict during and after World War I (i.e. in the past), these acts consisted primarily of banal expressions of nationalist sentiment and everyday gestures of ethnic belonging.42 Singing the wrong songs, wearing the wrong clothes, using the wrong paints, or buying or selling the wrong bouquet figured on the long list of potential transgressions of the law. These cases are interesting from an analytical perspective in part because of the possibility that Romanians could commit mistakes that qualified them as Hungarian irredentists.43 However, this did not loosen the tie between ethnicity and loyalty, since the gestures or acts that could make a Romanian seem “Hungarian” in the eyes of the authorities were gestures and acts specifically associated with Hungarian identity and culture.

One of the main consequences of this diversity of applications was the fuzzy character of the definition itself. Due to the multiple uses of the term and the lack of clear-cut guidelines, the police apparatus created a vague concept that could apply to anyone if necessary. As the pervading view of the minorities and especially the Hungarian minority was characterized by growing paranoia and hysteria throughout the interwar period, the emerging discourse (or at least part of it) posited every act of a member of a minority as a sign of irredentism. However, even in the late 1930s one still found expressions in this discourse of the hope that workers and peasants could be separated from the Hungarian “oligarchs,” highlighting the extent to which the police practice of categorization reflected political perceptions of the minorities.44

Paranoia was prevalent in police documents as well, not least because of the unfamiliarity of the police and gendarmerie with Hungarian (and sometimes Transylvanian Romanian) milieus.45 There was a language barrier too. Often police officers from the Old Kingdom even confused German with Hungarian, and they were rarely able to detect negative references in translated texts.46 But this reinforced the determination of the authorities, who often treated irredentism as a one way street. Once something led to the registration of a person as an irredentist, it was impossible for him or her ever to be granted absolution for this qualification. One small deed remained a permanent stigma.47

However, the vague definition of the concept, the inability of the center to apply it in a consistent manner, and the discrepancies between certain local contexts led to an unexpected result, namely the emergence of a space in which the definition of irredentism depended entirely on the local representatives of the state. Although nominally a serious problem and a reason for strict observation and control of anyone suspected of disloyalty, irredentism became an arbitrary category often used without any consequences, even if on other occasions it was the justification for severe punishments. There was no automatic classification of people with the same profession or occupation. For example, while in Cluj or Odorhei Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely) the most important Hungarian politicians were labeled irredentists, in Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) only one man, György Bernády, was regarded as meriting this designation. At the time, Bernády had been in opposition to the Hungarian party, although he was also an opponent of the governing National Peasant Party.48 Similar discrepancies were frequent concerning secondary school teachers or priests, and in individual cases there is evidence indicating that the authorities (the gendarmerie and the Prosecutor’s Office, for example in Zălău) tried to bury denunciations.49

The importance of local contexts highlights the problems and contingency of categorization even in a seemingly simple case and shows how individuals who had access to the police personnel via networks or because of their social position were able to negotiate the content of an operative term, in this case irredentism. Local police representatives still had to take official expectations into account, but at times they also found ways of feigning compliance without actually carrying out orders. As soon as they realized that compliance with orders to exercise permanent control over every minority activity would disrupt everyday life, they started to pay lip service to central demands, often imitating the exact wording of their superiors.50 The most illustrative example of this tactic was the manner in which the Dej (Dés) police handled an order issued by the regional police inspectorate in 1937. The police units in the cities around Cluj were warned to abandon their usual habit of filing lapidary reports in which they described the activity of Hungarians only vaguely and with reference to stereotypes, usually saying little more than something like, “Hungarians behave like they used to.” They were instructed in harsh terms that every organization and every event that was in some way attached to Hungarian identity or Hungarian culture served the goal of collecting money for territorial revision and propaganda. It is not clear how the other police chiefs reacted, but the Dej reports remained largely unchanged, with verbatim repetition of the phrases used in earlier reports with the addition of a half-sentence that affirmed the revisionist nature of these (perfectly ordinary) events.51 Thus while the concept of irredentism remained seemingly unaltered, in reality it became extremely fragmented and retained only one element: a correlation with ethnicity and social status.

Examining Minority Officials

Loyalty was crucial in the process of language exams for minority officials too. While nominally they were obliged as of the early 1920s to pass an exam (the first nationwide, compulsory exam was organized in 1924) in order to be employed in the public sector, examinees were often treated leniently52 and retained even when they did not possess adequate language skills. A decade later, amidst growing political pressure from stronger nationalist currents, the government decided to oblige minority public officials to take another language exam, without exception. The situation was seemingly unambiguous. Only minority officials were obliged to pass the exam. That is, ethnicity was the sole criterion and ethnicity, regarded as an unchangeable, fixed characteristic of individuals, itself was a mark of potential disloyalty.

Without describing the process in detail or analyzing the composition of the group of minority officials (a group that was much larger than it was portrayed in the contemporaneous discourse and much larger than is usually presumed in the secondary literature),53 I will focus on two aspects: the identification of minority officials as it can be examined on the basis of the exams and the ways in which prefects reacted to the explicit demand for mass layoffs from Bucharest. The first aspect involves the question of loyalty and ethnicity because the exams were potentially an expression of different forms of loyalty to the state. The second shows how different actors in different positions interpreted state security and loyalty.

The potential to test and express one’s loyalty arose from the structure of the exams. Examinees were subject to an oral and a written examination. Officials with higher levels of education had to speak about a topic selected by the committee and compose an essay. Those with lower levels of education only had to write down a text. The topics varied greatly across Transylvania, but they basically revolved around three larger issues: a rather general one with certain national content, a professional one, and a question that involved some aspect of the applicant’s personal life. The first dealt with history, geography, or culture, inviting the candidates to talk about national issues. They were free to decide whether to tell a boiler-plate version or deviate from it, and in case of the latter they could also choose the extent of the deviation. This usually was not surprising, especially for those who entered public service after 1919, because they were requested to take a competency exam that usually contained similar questions.54 A language exam, however, was slightly different. Manner of expression was the main issue in principle, not content.55

The second type, the professional question, was either strictly professional (a description of one’s working day or an outline of the rights and duties of the communal administration) or obliged the applicant to discuss the social roles of public servants, especially in rural areas, where the state was perceived as the main driver of modernization and progress. It certainly reflected the self-perception of the state and created a situation in which the candidates could prove their loyalty to the state project through the imaginary enactment of these duties. Essay topics in this category ranged from the role of village notaries in the fight against alcoholism to their role in the peaceful coexistence of minorities and Romanians.56

The third type of language exam question, which involved some aspect of the applicant’s personal life, was often posed in a general manner to rural officials and usually more specifically to urban officials, implicitly differentiating the role of the state in the two social spaces. While rural officials were seen as missionaries of modernization, urban ones were expected to set an example of urban middle-class life. Thus, examinees in urban areas were sometimes asked to describe how they had spent their most recent holidays or to summarize the content of a novel they had recently read, while village employees were asked to give general description of their personal lives or recount a few significant events from them.57

How could these different types of questions trigger broader questions of identification? The topics themselves were certainly indicators of the expectations of the examiners. The candidates could decide how to frame their answers and themselves, i.e. whether to portray themselves as mere professionals or whether to relate to national issues in their discussions of the foundations of the nation-state in history and culture, indicating loyalty and identification beyond the obvious sense of duty. While in principle the exams were not about the content of the text but rather only the mastery of the language, the applicants could hardly have failed to consider the perceived expectations of those assessing the essays.

In the light of this general pattern, it is not surprising that most candidates tried to portray themselves as professionals and members of a specialized professional body. Within this general framework, however, there was significant room to express how exceptionally attached and loyal some applicants were. It was customary to emphasize one’s long and dutiful public service58 or for an applicant to boast of his or her credentials as a competent administrator, indispensable to the future of the country. One finds a very interesting variety of this professional identification with the state in the essay by applicant David Eugen.59 Eugen expressed his extraordinary devotion to Romania by portraying himself as an orphan who had found his new family and home in the community of Romanian public servants.

Although a detailed analysis of essays written by a large enough number of examinees from different backgrounds on the same topic60 reveals intriguing, small deviations from a general pattern of identification, the exams offered primarily a relatively easy and comfortable strategy of identification as a professional public servant whose loyalty was strong without necessarily containing any unambiguous acceptance of Romanian nationalist discourse. The whole process was designed to steer the candidates towards this kind of professional identification, and even in situations in which other possibilities were available most of them opted for this one. There was also a clear difference between the urban and rural personnel. In the case of the former, they had to act as role models of middle-class life, while in the case of the latter they were supposed to serve as pioneers of the state in improving conditions in the villages. In this world, the city as characterized in the essays was a world of progress driven by the state where the nationalities coexisted peacefully, enjoying the equality of civic rights (again a reproduction of the state’s perception of itself).

The government was not content with the number of examinees who failed the exams, and Secretary of State Dumitru Iuca raised the threshold for passing after the examinations were finished and the results had already been announced.61 He wanted to see a more sweeping purge of the minority officials. His subordinates, the county prefects, reacted with surprising consternation and almost unanimously tried to parry the order, adopting a wide variety of tactics. Some of them openly stated that without the minority officials county administration would stall.62 Others challenged the order with legal arguments and engaged their superior in negotiations, in the end gaining significant concessions.63 Often prefects tried to sabotage or at least circumvent the order by various means, among them tricky reevaluations of past exams,64 pretending not to know the relevant sentences of the Supreme Court of Cassation65 or blaming the previous administration for having created a legal trap that made the layoffs impossible.66

Another frequently used tactic was transferring responsibility to other organs that were either reluctant to carry out the order or sometimes neglected it entirely. Prefects subjected their failed subordinates to disciplinary procedures in which Disciplinary Committees reexamined and reinstated them,67 and Local and National Commissions of Revision overturned the ministerial order en masse.68 Sometimes prefects replied to the inquiries of their superiors with the contention that other officials (city mayors, ministerial directors, etc.) were responsible for the failures to comply with the order, and they claimed to have no influence on them at all.69 Even if they failed to save some people’s careers, they did manage to offer escape routes (for example pensioning) that the ministry also tried to block.70

The last method of subverting the order was reexamination itself. It was unusually lenient. Most of the examinees who initially had passed the exam passed it again, but Iuca’s order obliged them to take it yet again. Committees tried to give them topics tailored to their fields of activity.71 Often examinees with poor written essays were given exceptionally high grades on their oral exams.72 In general officials who did the exams again got much higher average grades than their initial results. Furthermore, many of those who failed were still retained in their positions with or without the consent of Bucharest.73 It seems that in the end only between 15 and 20 percent of the minority officials were laid off, a significantly lower ratio than Bucharest would have wanted.

Taken together, the process, the essays, and the aftermath of the exams proved the existence of a professional identity among minority public officials and the strength of professional solidarity among public servants, irrespective of nationality. The exam topics and written exams point to the primacy of professional identification too. It made the minority officials, who were suspicious simply as members of a minority, an asset worth fighting for. The successful tactics of the prefects highlights how misleading it is to treat the Romanian state as monolithic entity that only pursued nationalizing goals. It is impossible to understand how and why nationalizing policies were executed, hindered, and sometimes even sabotaged if one fails to account for the local contexts and the different logics that prevailed at different levels of the administration.

Below the Surface, on the Fringes

In the public discourse and the workings of the organs of state security the relationship of the three aspects of loyalty was based on the simple equation of ethnicity with loyalty. Ethnicity was seen as conducive to loyalty or disloyalty. Despite initial attempts by the minorities to establish a relationship with the Romanians based on mutual recognition of civic rights and duties74 and a shared hope to arrive at a common, regionalist concept of statehood and belonging (both of which would have led to a new understanding of loyalty),75 the understanding of ethnicity as (dis)loyalty remained dominant and unchanged, despite differences in minority policies under the alternating governments. There are also signs that this undiscriminating stance with regards to loyalty was universal on the whole territory of Greater Romania. 76

At the lower levels of administration, in everyday practice neither the more relaxed nor the hardliner versions of policy led to much systematic difference. The divergent approaches to implementation depended on other factors. On the other hand, the organs of state security did not abandon their often paranoid view of minorities. Thus “practicing” one’s ethnicity became a sign of disloyalty, and this left little space for a citizen to be a non-Romanian who was loyal to the Romanian state. Furthermore, if one sought to express or demonstrate loyalty, practically this meant the acceptance of Romanian ethnicity at least in praxis. But this expectation was not applied uniformly to every social group. The concept of irredentism, as it was used by the authorities, defined Hungarian ethnicity as the sum of the middle-class and its activities, while workers and peasants were seen as inclined to become communists.

A closer look also reveals that at local/micro level the relationship of the three aspects was easily reconfigured and replaced with a more balanced one. Obviously this depended on the local context and on the personal attitudes of those who were responsible for the implementation of state policies.77 But in the end it was possible to establish an informal setting in which mutual recognition played a larger role than the public discourse would have suggested. The strong link between ethnicity and loyalty was loosened on the basis of common norms, values and the social practices of the middle-class, and these were often determined by Hungarians or Germans, as they held dominant positions in Transylvanian urban societies.

The language exams exemplify another means of redefining loyalty and ethnicity and generating a sphere in which mutual recognition determined the understanding of loyalty, while here alternative discourses also emerged. In exchange for accepting a specific identification which paired professional self-perception and a modified version of Hungarian ethnicity, minority officials were regarded as equal members of a professional body. Their loyalty was not questionable in the eyes of their immediate superiors and colleagues. Their contributions were indispensable for the good conduct of administration and they shared the modernizing goals of the state. Even if their ethnicity was regarded as fixed and unalterable (because it was the foundation on which their group was constructed as the cohort of minority officials), they were not treated with the same suspicion that was felt towards ethnic minorities in general.

Such informal reconfigurations certainly relieved individuals of pressure and sometimes even made it possible to develop alternative discourses of identity and loyalty. But these discourses always remained within a closed sphere or the boundaries of a locality, and they rarely challenged the dominant public discourse. In order to resolve the resulting tensions, such settlements were rarely spoken of and were excluded from larger public discourses. As a result, sometimes the respective groups, for instance minority public officials, remained hidden, figuring in the public discourse only when they were the target of nationalizing policies. It was possible to be a loyal Hungarian in Romania, but only below the surface and on the fringes.

Archival Sources

Arhivele Naţionale Istorice Centrale, Bucureşti [National Central Historical Archives in Romania].

Directia Generală a Politiei

Fond Sabin Manuilă

Ministerul Justitiei, Direcţia Judiciară, inventar 1116

Ministerul Justitiei, Direcţia Judiciară, inventar 1117

Ministerul de Interne, inventar 754

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Cluj. [National Archives, Section County Cluj]

Inspectoratul de Poliţie Cluj

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Mureş

Direcţia Regională Ministeriul Afacerilor Interne Mureş-Autonomă Maghiară inventar 1235

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Braşov

Legiunea de Jandarmi Braşov, Biroul Poliţiei, inventar 24

Prefectură Judetului Brasov, Serviciul Administrativ, inventar 374

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Timiş

Prefectură Judeţului Severin

Legiune Jandarmilor Severin, inventar 828

Prefectură Judeţului Timiş-Torontal, fond 69

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [National State Archives of Hungary]

Nemzetiségi és kisebbségi ügyosztály K28

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Note on Nomenclature: City and Place Names

I have used place names in this article either in their English form—if one exists—or

in the form officially adopted by the states in control (Romania) during the time period

in question. For the first reference to each place, I give alternative versions of the place

name for that location. Here are the most frequently mentioned city and other place

names in their various forms, for quick reference.

Cluj (Hungarian: Kolozsvár)

Odorheiu Secuiesc (Hungarian: Székelyudvarhely)

Târgu Mureş (Hungarian: Marosvásárhely)

Zălău (Hungarian: Zilah)

Dej (Hungarian: Dés)

Făget (Hungarian: Facsád)

 

 

Penka Peykovska

Literacy and Illiteracy in Austria–Hungary. The Case of Bulgarian Migrant Communities

The present study aims to contribute to the clarification of the question of the spread of literacy in East Central Europe and the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by offering an examination of Bulgarian migrant diasporas in Austria–Hungary and, in particular, in Hungary, i.e. the Eastern part of the Empire. The study of literacy among migrants is important because immigrants represent a possible resource for the larger societies in which they live, so comparisons of the levels of education among migrants (for instance with the levels of education among the majority community, but also with the levels of education among the communities of their homelands) may shed light on how the different groups benefited from interaction with each other. In this essay I analyze data on literacy, illiteracy and semi-literacy rates among migrants on the basis of the Hungarian censuses of 1890, 1900 and 1910. I present trends and tendencies in levels of literacy or illiteracy in the context of the social aspects of literacy and its relationship to birthplace, gender, age, confession, migration, selected destinations and ethnicity. I also compare literacy rates among Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary with the literacy rates among other communities in the Dual Monarchy and Bulgaria and investigate the role of literacy in the preservation of identity. My comparisons and analyses are based primarily (but not exclusively) on data regarding the population that had reached the age at which school attendance was compulsory, as this data more accurately reflect levels of literacy than the data regarding the population as a whole.

Keywords: Bulgarian migrants, literacy, religion, age, destination, Austria-Hungary, identity

Literacy is a dynamic concept the meaning of which has changed over time. The ability to read written texts has gradually become commonplace in the Western world and the public significance of the written text has increased dramatically. In the Middle Ages, the main literate stratum was the clergy, since literacy was considered a path to a more perfect knowledge of God, which was a blessing bestowed on only a few.1 The transition to widespread literacy took place in the period between the beginning of the seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries, and it was intertwined with the rise of the bourgeoisie and the development of services and technology that generated economic demand for literate workers. This transition was a slow and gradual process and took place at different paces in different geographical regions, but from a global point of view it was marked by unprecedented social transformation: while in the mid-nineteenth century only 10 percent of the adult population of the world could read and write, by the twenty-first century, despite the five-fold increase in population, 80 percent is regarded as possessing basic literacy.2 In recent decades this transformation prompted considerable interest in research on the history of literacy and the processes of overcoming illiteracy, but attempts to study literacy in Eastern Europe (including the Balkans) have yielded only modest results, although there is a wealth of information in various statistical sources (such as household inventories, censuses) and personal records (letters, diaries, travel notes, memories, etc.) in the former territories and successor states of the Russian and Austro–Hungarian empires.3

On the Subject of My Inquiry

One of the diasporas I examine in this inquiry is the Bulgarians of the Banat (a region the majority of which lies in Romania today, though the southern part extends into Serbia and also Hungary). The Banat Bulgarians, who were Western-rite Catholics, numbered 14,801 in 1890 and 12,583 in 1910. By the late nineteenth century, they had already been settled in the Habsburg Empire for a century and a half. They were refugees from Chiprovtsi (a town and municipality in northwestern Bulgaria) who had left Bulgarian lands after the unsuccessful anti-Ottoman uprising of 1688. Together with the Bulgarian Paulicians,4 they traveled through Wallachia and southwest Transylvania (the latter of which was under Austrian rule) in the 1730s and settled in the Banat, which had been devastated and depopulated during the period of Ottoman rule and then fallen under Austrian rule. There they were given new places to settle permanently. In 1738, the Paulicians founded the village of Star Beshenov (today Dudeşti Vechi, Romania) and in 1741 the migrants from Chiprovtsi (along with some of the Paulicians) founded the privileged town of Vinga (today in Romania).

In the second half of the nineteenth century (after the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848/49 and the abolition of serfdom), Banat Bulgarians developed as a rural community. Only Vinga had the status of a town, which representatives of the town wanted to disclaim in 1882 because the community was unable to pay the necessary taxes for the relevant rights. Nonetheless, according to the 1886 Law of Hungary’s administrative-territorial division Vinga became a settled council town, if only for a short time (until the early 1890s). From the perspective of levels of education among migrant communities this is important because in general rural populations have lower levels of literacy than urban populations. The question is whether or not this was true of the Bulgarian settlements.

When studying literacy, one should keep in mind that earlier levels of literacy exert a significant effect on subsequent levels of literacy, as literate parents seek to educate their children. In this sense, the tradition of education is relevant to levels of literacy. Banat Bulgarians brought from their homeland in Bulgaria centuries of the Franciscan educational tradition, which originally developed in connection with the active spread of Catholicism and Catholic teachings and followed the principle of mandatory primary education.

The Banat-Bulgarian literary revival began in the mid-nineteenth century, a few years before the Austrian–Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Until then, Bulgarian was taught in Banat Bulgarian schools on the basis of either German or “Illyrian” (Croatian) textbooks. In Bulgarian churches, priests held sermons in the “Illyrian” language.5 Banat Bulgarians were exposed to strong Orthodox propaganda by the neighboring Serbs because of their linguistic closeness. After Banat again became part of Hungary in 1860 and fell under the jurisdiction of the Hungarian government, the Hungarian Catholic clergy decided to support initiatives to allow the use of Bulgarian in schools and churches and efforts to establish Bulgarian literature in order to neutralize the growing Croatian and Serbian influence over Bulgarians, to hinder the spread of the Pan-Slavic (i.e. “Illyrian”) movement, and to foster among the Bulgarians a sense of distinctive national identity and an attachment to the multi-national Hungarian state.6 The newly created Banat Bulgarian literary language was written not with Cyrillic but with the Latin alphabet.

Labor migrants from Bulgaria constitute the other significant group on which I focus in this inquiry. They were primarily seasonal migrants, Orthodox market-gardeners (vegetable growers and vegetable traders). In 1910, they constituted 88 percent of the Bulgarian community in Budapest. The other 12 percent was comprised of artisans and traders who were already settled and who belonged to different confessions. The growth in this community can be traced on the basis of the census data on citizenship (though the numbers should be understood as approximations, their apparent precision notwithstanding):7 817 people in 1890, 1,674 people in 1900, and 3,139 people in 1910.

The source of this seasonal migration was the county of Veliko Tarnovo (in North-Central Bulgaria) and in particular the districts of Gorna Oryahovitsa, Elena, Tarnovo, Kesarevo, Dryanovo, Svishtov, and Sevlievo. The social group of agricultural workers, which came into being in the region during the period of Ottoman rule and specialized in vegetable farming, could not earn an adequate living in their homeland. The lack of sufficient fertile land and markets prompted the farmers from Lyaskovec, Draganovo, Polikraishte and other villages around Veliko Tarnovo and Gorna Oryahovitsa to migrate first to neighboring countries (Romania, Serbia) and then to more distant destinations (Austria–Hungary, Germany, and Russia). At first, Bulgarian market-gardeners were drawn to the Habsburg Empire in the mid-nineteenth century by the growing markets in Hungarian towns. Following the Austrian–Hungarian Compromise, the increasingly rapid industrialization and modernization of the capitalist economy led to a tremendous increase in the urban population, which needed to be fed.

A characteristic feature of this seasonal labor migration was that it consisted almost exclusively of young men. In 1900, they constituted 80 percent of the group that spoke Bulgarian as its mother tongue and 90 percent of the group with Bulgarian citizenship. The primary reason for this was the way in which the work was organized. The workers formed associations called “taifas.” A taifa was organized by a gazda, who was the leader of the group. The members of a taifa participated in a joint venture, investing both their capital and labor. They worked together, ate together, and lived together, and at the end of the working season they distributed the profits according to their participation and their investment of labor. Bulgarian market-gardeners usually resided in Austria–Hungary while working in the gardens, which they did from early spring to late autumn. They then left the country and returned the following spring. So they worked abroad seasonally for several years until they they were able to set aside capital. Compared to a Bulgarian small-holder, whose yearly revenue from the sale of crops did not exceed 800 francs, gardeners in Hungary earned more than 2,000 francs in a season. However, even in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries very few of these migrant workers chose to settle in Hungary or stay for longer periods of time. In this regard, the number and proportion of families was small and birth rates were low.

At first glance, the timing of the sources seems to set the chronological limits of this inquiry, specifically the two decades between 1890 and 1910. In a broader sense, however, the lower chronological limit is determined by the proportion of literate among the oldest group recorded in the first census (i.e. those over 60 years of age), who began learning to read and write in the 1830s. In fact, literacy, which was one of the categories in the three censuses in question, referred to the ability of the population to read and write, an ability that could have been acquired in previous decades. In other words, the results of the censuses actually yield insights into this process among members of the Bulgarian migrant population (as well as the rest of the population) for almost the whole nineteenth century and the first decade of twentieth century. In the case of the Banat Bulgarians, the process of learning to read and write continued (to the extent possible) during their exodus from Transylvania to Banat. It then continued after they had settled in Banat. There already existed a network of schools in Banat. The Jesuits had been the first to create an organized educational system in the region following the liberation of the area from Ottoman rule. But while the Jesuits had only provided educational opportunities for boys from wealthy families, the Franciscan monks attempted to educate the poor.8 The Franciscan tradition was preserved primarily in the educational initiatives of Vinga citizens, who had had their own school since the late 1740s and early 1750s.9 In Beshenov, a school for the “children of the people” was also created in 1804, and there was another one, a private one (for children of the wealthy), led by a Hungarian teacher (where instruction was in Hungarian). In 1845, a school was opened in Bolgártelep (today Colonia Bulgară, Romania). These were all primary schools. Vinga was the only settlement to have a higher, two-year Latin School, and it only had it for a short period of time. In the second half of the nineteenth century there were ten Bulgarian schools at different times in Temes and Torontál counties, specifically in the settlements of Bolgártelep, Brestye (today Romania), Vinga, Denta (today Romania), Kanak (today Konak, Serbia), Lukácsfalva (today Lukino Selo, Serbia), Módos (today Jaša Tomić, Serbia), Óbesenyő (today Dudeştii Vechi, Cтар Бешенов, Star Beshenov, Romania), Székelykeve (today Skorenovac, Serbia), and Szőlősudvarnok (today Banatski Dušanovac, Serbia). In these schools children learned to read and write in Bulgarian and, as of the last decade of the nineteenth century, in Hungarian as well. Where there was no Bulgarian school, Banat Bulgarians attended Hungarian schools or schools of other ethnic communities. Similarly, for example, the Bulgarian school in Bolgártelep was attended by the children of settlers from other national communities, including Germans, Croats, Hungarians, and Romanians.

On the Features of Censuses and Data

Bearing in mind the specifics of the censuses as historical sources, in this essay I regard mother tongue as a marker of ethnicity (as has become commonplace in the historiography, even if this assumption merits some interrogation). I present the diaspora of seasonal labor migrants from Bulgaria on the basis of statistical information on the Bulgarian (i.e. speaking Bulgarian as its mother tongue) population of Budapest, municipal towns (so-called “törvényhatósági jogú városok,” of which there were 30), and settled council towns (“rendezett tanácsú városok,” of which there were 110 in 1910), which for the sake of brevity I will refer to simply as “towns.” In this case, the selection of these sources is justified by the fact that the seasonal migrant workers (market-gardeners) settled primarily in the capital and in Hungarian towns, where they rented land and created their gardens and were better able to sell their vegetables. For 1900, I also consider the data for larger municipalities (“nagyközségek”) that were subsequently elevated to the status of settled council towns and were listed as such in the 1910 census.

In Hungarian censuses the Banat Bulgarians (who lived in Temes and Torontál Counties) can be identified on the basis of the data on those who declared Bulgarian to be their mother tongue and the data on those who practiced Western-rite Catholicism. Krashovans, who were also Catholics and who resided predominantly in Krassó-Szörény (the third county in Banat), were added to the Bulgarians in the Hungarian statistics. They figured together in a column headed “mother tongue Bulgarian, Krashovan.” The reason for this lay in the fact that at the time scholars in Austria–Hungary were of the opinion that the Krashovans were of Bulgarian ethnic origin. Krashovans were strongly influenced by Croatian culture, but in the eighteenth century they still identified themselves as Krashovans (after the Karash River, on the banks of which their settlements lay). Therefore I have deducted their numbers from the total number of Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary, using the data from the primary tables for literacy where they were specifically noted.

In censuses (both Hungarian and Bulgarian), the question of language was not an issue in the assessment of literacy. In other words, someone who could read and write in any language was considered literate regardless of the language. Language as a category was included as early as the first modern Hungarian censuses of 1870 and 1880, but literacy was not correlated to mother tongue. For the Eastern part of the Austrian–Hungarian Empire, we have literacy data correlated to Bulgarian mother tongue from 1890, 1900 and 1910. Literacy data from 1890 referred to Temes and Torontál counties and were correlated with mother tongue and age. Data from 1900 and 1910 referred not only to the Banat, but also to towns throughout Hungary and separately to Budapest, i.e. they reflected literacy within both groups, Banat Bulgarians and (seasonal) labor immigrants. In 1900, census data on literacy included confession as well, and the data of the 1910 census correlated literacy and level of education.10

In the Hungarian censuses of 1890, 1900 and 1910, literacy was measured according to three categories. One could be classified as literate (i.e. able to read and write, regardless of education), semi-literate (able to read, but not write), or illiterate (able neither to read nor write). The semi-literate were presented in a separate group in accordance with the realities of the epoch. Semi-literateness was typical among women. In the particular case of the Hungarian censuses, the reason for the creation of the category of semi-literate lay in the perception of writing as a man’s job, which was widespread among the Hungarian peasantry. It was regarded as adequate for a woman to be able to read the Bible and prayer books, which is why girls were given less opportunity to attend school. They were taught to read, but not to write well, and often, since they were given few if any opportunities to practice writing, they forgot what little writing they might have learned.11

In practice (with rare exceptions), anyone with at least one year of elementary school was regarded as literate in the Hungarian censuses, even if he or she did not use or had already forgotten how to read and write because of illness or due to aging. In Hungary, illiteracy was examined for the population over the age of 6. The population under the age of 6 was a priori considered illiterate. The literacy of children in their first year of school was recorded in accordance with their declarations in questionnaires.12

Regarding indicators of literacy and illiteracy within the community of Bulgarian seasonal migrants, one should keep in mind that, given their horizontal mobility and the very small number of newborns, children, and adolescents, the numbers reflected mostly the achievements of the Bulgarian education system, which were then “reported” according to the “model” of the Hungarian one, since only a smaller number of children of wealthy and permanently settled Bulgarian migrants actually studied in the schools in Hungary (which, since the first Bulgarian school was not established until 1917, were either Hungarian schools or schools in which the languages of other national minorities were used as the language of instruction).

In Hungary, compulsory elementary education was introduced for boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 by the 1868 Educational Act, while in Bulgaria this occurred only later, in 1879, with the formation of the new Bulgarian state and the ratification of the Tarnovo Constitution. Thus one should bear in mind that the Bulgarian educational system during the period in question was in a state of flux. It began to assume a modern form later than in other European countries. The architects of the Bulgarian educational system did have the advantage of being able to learn from the mistakes that were made elsewhere, however, and thus were able to create an institutional framework that was quite modern for its time. Drawing on the experiences of other countries, the Bulgarian educational system bore affinities with the Hungarian one. Basic compulsory education, for instance, was extended from 4 years of schooling to 6 in 1891, after which pupils could pursue two further degrees, the first of which took 4 years to complete (this was introduced in 1906), while the second took an additional 3 years (this was introduced in 1909). In both cases schooling was tuition-free. There were some differences, however. For instance, from the outset education in Bulgaria was independent of the church and primary education was free. In Hungary, elementary school was tuition-free only as of 1908. Unlike in Hungary, in Bulgaria the laws on public education treated the number of obligatory years of schooling and the age of compulsory school attendance differently. Obligatory elementary school lasted for 3, 4 or 6 years (usually 4 years), and the mandatory age at which a child had to attend school ranged from 7 to 13, 6 to 12, and 7 to 14. The new and completely different cultural and educational environment of the host country (Austria-Hungary) influenced the seasonal migrants from Bulgaria. This influence was indirect at first, simply a consequence of the perceptions among migrants of the well-established, time-honored traditions in Hungarian society for children to learn, and then quite direct, when the migrant families began sending their children to Hungarian schools. This practice was followed not only by wealthy and prosperous immigrants, but also by the poor. Since they were constantly moving between Austria–Hungary and Bulgaria, they took home their positive foreign influences from the host country. It is no coincidence that in Bulgarian literacy statistics by districts in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War I Tarnovo county stood out among the counties in Bulgaria. In 1905, the average literacy rate in the county for the population at the age of compulsory school attendance and over was 47.4 percent (64 percent among men and 31 percent among women), while the average for the country as a whole did not exceed 34.8 percent (50.6 percent and 18.2 percent respectively).13

Literacy, Gender, and Age

Gender is a crucial factor in the question of literacy. Women were predominant among the illiterate, which was one of the important factors in their disadvantageous position in society, reflecting gender inequalities in education (for instance) in the nineteenth century. Gender imbalance is a common phenomenon in the history of illiteracy. Due to migrations and regional effects, the level of this imbalance varied.14

 

Literacy (%)	Men			Women
	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate
County	1890
Temes	66.3	0.9	32.8	52.7	3.1	44.2
Torontál	62.4	0.3	37.3	44.6	3.4	51.9
1910
Temes	80.5	0.7	18.8	72.0	4.0	24.0
Torontál	76.0	0.6	23.4	62.4	5.1	32.5

 

Table 1. Illiteracy rates among the Bulgarian15 population over the age of 6 in Temes and Torontál counties by gender in, 1890 and 191016

As a comparison of the data on the two genders reveals, literacy rates among the Banat Bulgarians did not differ from the typical trends. Literacy rates were higher among men and there were more semi-literate women as a percentage than men. Both trends emerge clearly on both the county (Table 1) and the village level (Table 3). The trend for the entire period was towards an increase in literacy and a corresponding drop in illiteracy in both counties and for both genders, while differences between the genders were gradually diminishing.

In 1890, in the Bulgarian population at or over the age of compulsory school attendance in Temes and Torontál counties (taken together) the ratio of the literate to the illiterate (including the semi-literate) was 57 to 100 for men. This number dropped to 29 by 1910. In 1890, there were 112 illiterate women for every 100 literate women, a figure which decreased to 51 by 1910. Analyzing the dynamics of elementary literacy education in both counties (together and separately), for the period between 1890 and 1910 in Table 2 one finds an approximately equal drop in illiteracy among women and men, though this drop was a bit more rapid in the case of women.

 

Gender	Men		Women
County	Temes	Torontál	Temes	Torontál
1890	52	60	90	127
1910	24	32	40	60
Total for 1890	57		112
Total for 1910	29		51

 

Table 2. Number of people regarded as illiterate (or semi-literate) for every 100 literate people in the Bulgarian population over the age of 6 in Temes and Torontál counties, by gender, 1890, 191017

In addition to gender, another prominent factor in the question of literacy and trends in literacy is age. Although the importance of gender to illiteracy is much more striking than age, the two are in fact closely interrelated. Literacy data correlated to age for Banat Bulgarians is available only for the male population of Vinga. In the Bulgarian male population of Vinga, the literacy rate in the age group of 11–15-year-olds and 16–20-year-olds, i.e. among those who had been born after the Hungarian educational reform of 1868 (which introduced compulsory primary education), was the highest (88 percent and 85 percent respectively). According to Table 3, literacy rates declined as the age of the cohort group rose, especially in the groups over the age of 50, i.e. among those who had been born in the 1830s and 1840s. Among the group of people 60 years of age and older, the literacy rate did not exceed 50 percent. Groups among which illiteracy was high were comprised largely of people who had grown up in periods of significantly less educational opportunity.

 

Mother tongue	Bulgarian	German	Hungarian	Romanian
Age (born in ...)	literacy as a percent of the total population
Under 6 (after 1885)	0	0	3	0
6–10 (1880–1884)	73	61	89	27
11–15 (1875–1879)	88	98	92	31
16–20 (1870–1874)	85	91	90	50
21–30 (1860–1869)	79	95	83	32
31–40 (1850–1859)	80	91	97	28
41–50 (1840–1849)	76	85	95	16
51–60 (1830–1839)	59	76.5	100	18
Over 60 (before 1830)	51	87.5	94	0
Total	75.3	87	92.6	27.2

 

Table 3. Literacy among the male population of Vinga by mother tongue and age, 189018

Literacy and Confession

Research on literacy has long demonstrated a close interrelationship between denominational belonging and literacy, since religion has played a key role in its spread.19 I examine these relationships in the Bulgarian communities in Austria–Hungary on the basis of the data for municipal towns and settled council towns, where the population (migrants from Bulgaria or Banat) belonged to different denominations. In 1900, Uniates20 (Eastern-rite Catholics) and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church prevailed (43 percent and 41 percent respectively). Western-rite Catholics comprised only 15 percent of the total population.

These percentages were slightly different among women. Western-rite Catholics (63 percent) dominated, while only 26 percent of the female population was Orthodox and only 10.5 percent was Eastern-rite Catholic. Bulgarian diasporas in Austria–Hungary were clearly defined by religious affiliation. The members of the Orthodox Church were (seasonal) labor migrants, primarily market-gardeners and a small number of craftsmen. The Catholics of the Eastern rite were former seasonal migrants who had settled and changed their faith as a sign of their loyalty to the host country (and in the interests of ensuring their well-being and welfare). The fact that their children attended Hungarian schools was unquestionably a significant factor in this shift. In the towns, Western-rite Catholics were migrants.

In 1900, literacy rates were highest among Western-rite Catholics in urban Bulgarian diasporas (regardless of gender). Western-rite Catholics represented 54.7 percent of literate Bulgarian men and 58.5 percent of literate Bulgarian women. The second-highest rates were found among Eastern-rite Catholics, with 28.5 percent of men and 24.4 percent of women being able to read and write. Literacy rates were lowest among the Orthodox (16.5 percent and 17 percent respectively; Figure 1).

On the basis of data regarding illiteracy within different age groups, I examine the pace at which literacy rates changed among the different confessions (Table 4). For Western-rite Catholic men, who were Banat Bulgarians migrating from villages to towns, illiteracy gradually decreased in the younger age groups. Table 4 shows that among children between 6 and 10 years of age who were enrolled in school after the implementation of 1892/93 educational reform illiteracy completely disappeared. It decreased by 18 percent among the group of people who had been born between 1860 and 1869, i.e. among students who were enrolled in school after compulsory education was introduced in 1868.

Indicators of illiteracy among Orthodox men vary widely and no clear trends emerged. Illiteracy is conspicuous in the group of youths between the

Figure 1. Literacy rates in urban Bulgarian populations over the age of 6 in Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia, without Budapest), by confession and gender, 190021

 

ages of 11 and 15. They were adolescents from poor families who sought work abroad instead of studying to earn a living or support their families. The smaller proportion of the illiterate is noteworthy among adolescents between the ages of 16 and 20 who went to school in Bulgaria in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when the modern Bulgarian educational system had finally taken clear form.

 

	Men			Women
Confession   Age (born in ...)	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics
Under 6 (after 1895)	100	100	100	–	100	100
6–10 (1894–1890)	50	–	0	0	–	62.5
11–15 (1889–1885)	77	20	12.5	0	–	20
16–20 (1884–1880)	44	29	0	20	0	50
21–30 (1879–1870)	69	6	20	75	50	67
31–40 (1869–1860)	41	33	21	100	73	50
41–50 (1859–1850)	71	75	39	–	0	80
51–60 (1849–1840)	50	–	37	–	100	75
Over 60 (before 1839)	67	–	69	–	67	71
Total (for the population ages 6 and over)	53	24.5	18	56	54.5	62

(–) No people in the group.

 

Table 4. Illiteracy rates (%) in urban Bulgarian populations in Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia) by confession and within different age groups, by gender, 190022

Illiteracy rates among Eastern-rite Catholic men were average and were declining. This drop in illiteracy can be observed in the group of men between the ages of 21 and 30 who studied reading and writing immediately after the introduction of compulsory education in Hungary.

Orthodox women born before Bulgaria’s liberation (1878/79) were illiterate. An acute change is noticeable in the group of women between the ages of 16 and 20 who started schooling just after the creation of the independent modern Bulgarian state, when literate women predominated among the women who chose to migrate. There was no illiteracy at all among the Orthodox women who were at or above the age of compulsory school attendance (they were settled young women). Among Western-rite Catholic women illiteracy rates were similar to rates among Orthodox women.

The available data for the Bulgarian diaspora in Budapest regarding the correlation of literacy, confession, and age were reported separately in the 1900 census for people born in Bulgaria and people born in Hungary (Table 5). Comparing these data with the data for towns in Table 4, one notices similar overall trends: illiteracy was highest among Orthodox men (all of whom were born in Bulgaria). Illiteracy rates were second highest among Eastern-rite Catholics, while they were lowest among Western-rite Catholics (especially those born in Hungary).

There are some striking and significant differences in the data depending on whether the members of the cohort group were born in Bulgaria or Hungary, and these differences suggest conclusions that might otherwise not have been evident. Specifically, in the Orthodox community there were no illiterate men over the age of 50, which could be an indication that only men with the ability to read and write dared undertake long, international journeys in search of work as migrant laborers. The same was true of women. The few Orthodox women who had been born in Bulgaria were all literate.

Illiteracy was significantly lower among Eastern-rite Catholic men born in Bulgaria than it was among members of the Orthodox Church between the ages of 16 and 40, which implies a positive impact of the local educational environment in Austria-Hungary on the Bulgarian migrants. This effect was most pronounced among children between the ages of 6 and 10, among whom the literacy rate was zero. The fact that among Western-rite Catholic men who had been born in Hungary the illiteracy rate was also zero offers further support for this conclusion.

 

	Men			Women
Confession Age (born in ...)	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics
	Born in Bulgaria
Under 6 (after 1885)	–	–	–	–	–	–
6–10 (1880–1884)	–	0	–	–	–	0
11–15 (1875–1879)	0	15	–	–	100	–
16–20 (1870–1874)	31	18.5	–	–	–	–
21–30 (1860–1869)	33	26	50	0	–	–
31–40 (1850–1859)	75	33	0	–	–	–
41–50 (1840–1849)	33	40	100	–	100	–
51–60 (1830–1839)	0	50	–	–	–	–
Over 60 (before 1840)	–	0	–	–	–	–
Total (for the population at compulsory age and over)	35.4	22.1	40	0	100	0
	Born in Hungary
Under 6 (after 1885)	–	100	–	–	–	–
6–10 (1880–1884)	–	–	–	–	–	–
11–15 (1875–1879)	–	–	0	–	–	–
16–20 (1870–1874)	–	–	12.5	–	–	0
21–30 (1860–1869)	–	0	25	–	–	–
31–40 (1850–1859)	–	0	25	–	100	–
41–50 (1840–1849)	–	–	0	–	–	–
51–60 (1830–1839)	–	–	–	–	–	–
Over 60 (before 1840)	–	100	–	–	–	–
Total (for the population at compulsory age and over)	–	40	14.3	–	–	75

 

(–) No people in the group.

Table 5. Illiteracy rates (%) among Bulgarian populations in Budapest by confession, birthplace, gender, and age, 190023

Illiteracy among Orthodox men was higher in provincial towns than it was in Budapest, regardless of age. It was 53 percent among Orthodox men in towns and only 35.4 percent in Budapest. The same was true of Eastern-rite Catholic men, among whom the illiteracy rate was 24.5 percent in the towns and 22.1 percent in Budapest (among people who had been born in Bulgaria). The opposite trend prevailed among Western-rite Catholics: illiteracy rates among people who had been born in Bulgaria were lower in the towns (18 percent) than in the capital (40 percent) and evidently higher than for Hungarian-born Catholics, among whom the illiteracy rate was 14.3 percent (Tables 4, 5).

Literacy and Migration

In this discussion of the social nature of literacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the ways in which literacy varied according to gender, age and confession, questions regarding the relationships between literacy and processes of migration have arisen repeatedly. I offer an additional example indicating a clear relationship between literacy and migration, specifically the literacy levels among the Bulgarians of Budapest in 1900 correlated with place of birth, i.e. whether one was born in Bulgaria or Hungary (Table 6). In this case, the effect of the foreign cultural milieu on the wider spread of literacy among Bulgarian men born in Hungary in comparison with Bulgarian-born migrants is not negligible.

 

	Men			Women
Birthplace	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate
Hungary	74.1	3.7	22.2	40	–	60
Bulgaria	75.3	0.3	24.4	40	–	60

 

Table 6. Literacy rates among Bulgarian populations in Budapest ages 6 and over by birthplace and gender, 190024

 

The conclusions I have drawn here regarding the relationship between literacy and migration confirm the findings of earlier scholarly inquiries. Migrants are unusual, “select” individuals, and literacy is a common feature among them. Usually literacy rates are higher among migrants than they are among people who remain in their homelands, regardless of background, age or gender.25 Literacy influences not only the willingness of an individual to choose to emigrate, but also the distance he or she may be willing to travel.26 Literacy rates are only slightly higher among migrants who travel only short distances than in the communities they leave behind, but literacy rates are significantly higher among migrants who travel long distances.

What are the peculiarities of the relationships between literacy and other factors among the Bulgarian migrant communities in Austria–Hungary? The case of Banat Bulgarians in the town of Nagybecskerek (today Zrenjanin, Serbia), who were migrants from neighboring villages with compact Bulgarian communities, offers insights into the relationship between literacy and distance traveled in the case of migrants from communities that were relatively nearby. In the Bulgarian diaspora of Nagybecskerek, the Banat Bulgarians predominated. In 1890 they constituted 94 percent of the Bulgarian community, 95 percent in 1900, and 90 percent in 1910. How did literacy rates of a small Banat Bulgarian migrant community change over time in an urban environment? The literacy rate among Bulgarian men was 67 percent in 1890, 76 percent in 1900 and 72 percent in 1910, while the literacy rate among women was 21 percent (1890), 38 percent (1900) and 79 percent (1910). The decline in literacy among men between 1900 and 1910 was due to an influx of Orthodox Bulgarians. According to the available data, literacy rates among Bulgarian men in Nagybecskerek were as high as they were among men in traditional Banat Bulgarian villages. Unlike Bulgarian men in Nagybecskerek, according to the three censuses all Bulgarian women were Western-rite Catholics. The data regarding literacy among Bulgarian men in Nagybecskerek in 1890 was also broken down by age (Table 7). The pattern differed from the pattern observed in the compact Bulgarian community in Vinga. In Nagybecskerek, the illiteracy rate among people between the ages of 6 and 40 was zero. The literacy rate among men was as high as it was among men in traditional Banat Bulgarian villages. Among women in Nagybecskerek, however, in earlier censuses literacy rates were low, but they peaked in 1910, just as they did among women in the compact Bulgarian village diaspora in Banat. Thus while among women the urban milieu had a positive influence with regards to the spread of literacy, among men the impact was negative.

	In Figures		Percent
Age (born in ...)	Literate	Illiterate	Literate	Illiterate
Under 6 (after 1885)	0	2	0	100
6–10 (1880–1884)	3	0	100	0
11–15 (1875–1879)	1	0	100	0
16–20 (1870–1874)	2	0	100	0
21–30 (1860–1869)	2	0	100	0
31–40 (1850–1859)	4	0	100	0
41–50 (1840–1849)	4	3	57	43
51–60 (1830–1839)	0	1	0	100
Over 60 (before 1840)	0	5	0	100
Total	16	11

 

Table 7. Literacy among male Bulgarian Western-rite Catholic populations in Nagybecskerek by age, as absolute figures and percentages, 189027 (compare with Vinga, Table 3).

 

Bulgarian census data from 1900 and 1910 on Banat Bulgarians who returned to Bulgaria shed light on the relationship between literacy and distance traveled in the case of migrants from communities that were relatively far away. The return of a significant number of Banat Bulgarians to Bulgaria in the 1880s and 1890s was caused in part by high birth rates for a period of decades, as a result of which the land they had been given by the Hungarian state was no longer sufficient to ensure their livelihood. It was also prompted in part by a few consecutive years of agricultural hardship (1880–81), when due to high taxes the members of the Bulgarian diaspora were forced to travel across the country in search of work to make a living as laborers. Problems related to the ability of the Banat Bulgarians to earn a livelihood motivated many among them to return to the recently liberated “homeland” in the hopes of finding a reliable livelihood and a better life. I focus in this inquiry on five compact villages founded by returning emigrants: Asenovo (Nikopol district, Pleven county), Dragimirovo (Svishtov district, Veliko Tarnovo county), Gostilya (Dolna Mitiropolia district, Pleven county), Bardarski Geran (Byala Slatina district, Vratsa county) and Bregare (Dolna Mitiropolia district, Pleven county), which was already inhabited by Orthodox Bulgarians and where their ethnic presence was most notable. Literacy data was broken up according to nationality in the censuses, with the use of the category “nationality Bulgarians (without Pomaks28).” However, literacy rates were not broken up according to confession, which would have helped us distinguish the level of literacy among Banat Bulgarians (as Catholics) from that of the other (local Orthodox) Bulgarians. (Data on confession refer to the entire population of the settlement.) The data on literacy was also not broken up according to age.

In 1900, of the five villages Asenovo had the highest literacy rate (54 percent) among Bulgarian men, followed by Gostilya with 52.2 percent and Bardarski Geran with 47.4 percent (Table 8). These figures were much lower than the average for the Banat villages ten years earlier. In 1900, Asenovo was almost entirely a village of Banat Bulgarians. 98 percent of the men and 95 percent of the women were Banat Bulgarians, so the rest of the Bulgarian population (Orthodox and Protestants) had only a minor impact on the overall literacy rates.29 The majority of Banat Bulgarians in Asenovo came from Vinga, and they returned to Bulgaria after 1889. Literacy rates among them in 1900 were far below the literacy rates in Vinga even in 1890, which had been 67.3 percent (Table 8). Banat Bulgarians in Gostilya came originally from Star Beshenov and Ivanovo (today in Serbia), and those in Bardarski Geran came from Star Beshenov. Literacy rates among men there were lower than literacy rates among men in Star Beshenov in 1890 (55.6 percent) (Table 8). Literacy rates among female Banat Bulgarians who had returned to their homeland were highest in Asenovo, where the literacy rate was 38.2 percent in comparison with 57.9 percent among female Banat Bulgarians in Vinga in 1890 (Tables 8, 9). Gostilya was second with 24.2 percent and Bardarski Geran was third with 20.1 percent in comparison with 39.3 percent among female Banat Bulgarians in Star Beshenov in 1890 (Tables 8, 9). The Bulgarian migrants who returned to Bulgaria in the 1880s from the region of Banat were mostly poor, landless,30 and, as evidenced by the statistical information presented here, less able to read and write than their compatriots in Banat. Thus those who were illiterate also comprised a kind of “select” group of migrants. They usually came from regions in which literacy rates were above average and where they consequently found themselves at a disadvantage and therefore were more inclined to consider returning.31 As the statistics indicate, many people who were unable to read or write also traveled significant distances. In this sense, with respect to migration literacy constituted an important factor in at least two distinct ways. On the one hand, the ability to read and write seems to have made someone more likely to consider emigration (a significant decision involving risk and investment), while at the same time illiteracy may have been a contributing factor in the decision to return to the country of origin, an equally significant decision requiring similar investment. Whatever the case, in their “old-new” country these immigrants represented a significant human resource with special skills, whether in their new countries or upon return to their homelands.32 For instance, Banat Bulgarians brought farming technology from Banat, where agriculture was at a higher level than in the post-liberation Bulgaria. They introduced the so-called “Austrian iron plow,” which was pulled by horses, and other new agricultural tools. And as I demonstrate below, even the illiterate among them quickly embraced the innovations and “absorbed” the culture of the host country.

 

	1900		1910		Increase
	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
Asenovo	54.0	38.2	68.8	64.1	+14.8	+25.9
Bardarski Geran	47.4	20.1	60.5	49.9	+13.1	+29.8
Bregare	37.5	6.2	54.6	21.7	+17.1	+27.9
Dragomirovo	35.7	15.8	46.4	21.8	+10.7	+6.0
Gostilya	52.2	24.2	54.0	32.3	+1.8	+8.1

 

 

Table 8. Literacy rates (%) in the whole population of Bulgarian nationality (excluding the Pomaks) in the villages of Asenovo, Bregare, Bardarski Geran, Gostilya and Dragomirovo, by gender, 1900, 191033

 

In the early twentieth century, literacy rates among the Bulgarians of Banat were higher than the average literacy rates in the Bulgarian villages (with the exceptions of Dragomirovo and Bregare for men and Bregare for women) (Table 7). According to the first Bulgarian official statistics, in 1890 the average literacy rate was not more than 5 percent among men and 1.5 percent among women. Within two decades, these rates rose to 41.8 percent and 14.9 percent respectively (without excluding the population under the age of 6).34 But during the post-liberation period, Bulgaria made an educational jump and school attendance became a central part of its educational system. The immigrant community also benefited from this process. In 1910, literacy rates among the denizens of the five aforementioned villages were still growing. Asenovo led in literacy among men (68.8 percent), followed by Bardarski Geran (60.5 percent), Bregare (54.6 percent) and Gostilya (54 percent) (Table 7), each of which had literacy rates higher than the Bulgarian average. Literacy rates among women grew by twice as much as they did among men (in Gostilya the difference was four and a half times as much) (Table 7).

 

	1890				1910
	Men
Mother tongue County, village	Bulgarian	Hungarian	German	Other	Bulgarian	Hungarian	German	Other
Temes
Vinga	67.3	72.7	72.3	Romanian 22.7	54.6	76.8	35
Torontál
Bolgártelep	52	64.3	35.7		64.3	45.5	66.1
Star Beshenov	55.6	69.4	57.3		65.1	54.1	82.5
Ivanovo	50.8	28.6	55		61	55.8	64.3
	Women
Temes
Vinga	57.9	×	×	×	72.3	54.6	76.8	Romanian 35
Torontál
Bolgártelep	35.4	43.5	36.7		52.6	40	64.7
Star Beshenov	39.3	59.3	45.6		54.4	57.9	65.2	Romanian 0
Ivanovo	29.8	14	37.9		54.2	41.6	55.8

 

× No data.

Table 9. Literacy rates (excluding people who had completed secondary or high school) in the total population by gender in some villages in Temes and Torontál (with a Bulgarian population of over 100 people), 1890 and 191035

Levels of Education in 1910

In the 1910 Hungarian census the question of literacy was broken down according to additional factors. In addition to the question of the ability to read and write (to which one responded by indicating one of the three aforementioned categories, literate, semi-literate, or illiterate), two further questions were asked about the level of education and separate columns were included for those who had completed elementary school (“általános/elemi iskola”) and those who had completed secondary school (“középiskola”). In Hungary, one received one’s first degree after having completed elementary school, which consisted of six classes and two upper classes called “repeating school” (“ismétlőiskola”), which were not visited by masses. The focus of education in elementary school was on acquiring the ability to read and write. One received one’s second degree after having completed “secondary school,” which included eight classes and was offered in institutions of two types, gymnasia (in which pupils were given classical and humanitarian education) and “real” secondary schools (which prepared students for careers in engineering). A level of “general education” was achieved through training in the first four years of secondary school.

Records in the original census tables show that Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary (primarily Banat Bulgarians) attended elementary school only up to the fourth grade, after which few were enrolled in secondary school. I analyze the levels of literacy among Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary, drawing a distinction between the capital city and provincial towns in the case of seasonal migrants. I also examine town-village relations in the case of Banat Bulgarians (Table 10). In the Banat region, I take the data into consideration separately for each of the three counties, omitting towns, since the Catholic Bulgarians were a rural population. I present the towns separately in the three counties, because the Bulgarian population in these counties was of mixed confession. As I have already mentioned, Banat Bulgarians were Western-rite Catholics, seasonal migrants were Orthodox, and Eastern-rite Catholics were converts from the Orthodox church who had settled down permanently.

In Temes county, I take into account the towns of Fehértemplom (today Bela Crkva, Serbia) (a settled council town), Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania), and Versec (Vršac, Serbia), both of which were municipal council towns. Temesvár had the largest Bulgarian population. Of the 64 men, one had completed each of the three levels, while none of the women had. In Versec, one of the six Bulgarian men had completed the fourth grade. In Torontál county there was

	Males who completed the			Females who completed the
	8th grade	6th grade	4th grade	8th grade	6th grade	4th grade
	of the high school			of the high school
Temes county (without the towns)	0.46	0.06	0.13	0.0	0.0	0.26
Temes county – towns	1.37	1.37	3.2	0.0	0.0	0.0
Torontál county (without the towns)	0.07	0.04	0.23	0.0	0.0	0.02
Torontál county - towns	0.0	0,0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Krassó-Szörény county (without the towns)	2.94	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Banat region (total)	0.24	0.05	0.19	0.0	0.0	0.26
Budapest	0.6	0.6	0.8	0.0	5	5
Towns in Hungary (without those in Banat)	0.4	0.2	0.6	0.0	3	0.0
Individual towns
Temesvár	1.56	1.56	1.56	0.0	0.0	100

 

Table 10. Bulgarian high school graduates as a percentage of the literate Bulgarian communities in Banat, the capital city of Budapest, and towns throughout Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia), also broken down by gender, 191036

 

one municipal council town, Pancsova (Pančevo, Serbia), and two settled council towns, Nagybecskerek and Nagykikinda (Kikinda, Serbia), in which there were small communities of Bulgarians of different confessions. Not one of them completed high school. In Krassó-Szörény county there were two settled council towns, Lugos (Lugoj, Romania) and Karansebes (Caranşebeş, Romania). None of the members of the Bulgarian communities of these two settelments completed secondary school either. According to the Hungarian censuses (summarized in Table 10), Banat Bulgarians from the villages in Temes county had higher levels of education than those from villages in Torontál county. They had a comparatively sizeable number of eighth-grade graduates, which largely exceeded the number of sixth-grade and fourth-grade graduates. In the early twentieth century, girls in the communities of Banat Bulgarians did not attend high school (with the exception of a few girls from Temes county, who completed the fourth grade), although in the Eastern part of the Monarchy girls were granted access to high schools as early as 1895.

Among the men of the Bulgarian community of Budapest (568 of the total 608 people who were Bulgarian by mother tongue), who were of various confessions (though the Orthodox Church dominated), the proportion of students who studied at high schools was greater than among the men of the Banat Bulgarian communities. Bulgarian women in Budapest (the other 40 people), who were mostly migrants, had lower levels of elementary literacy than the Bulgarian women of Banat, but those who pursued studies were seeking to acquire a better education.

Conclusion: Parallels of Literacy

As a kind of conclusion, I compare literacy rates among the Bulgarian migrant communities in Austria-Hungary with the levels of education prevailing among the populations of the Dual Monarchy and Bulgaria in general. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the general trend among the Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary was towards higher literacy rates. Among women, this was lower than for men in both groups (the Banat Bulgarians and Bulgarian seasonal workers). In this respect, the Bulgarian immigrant women were not an exception, neither in comparison with women in Hungary nor in comparison with women in other European countries.

In 1910, literacy among men was the highest in Budapest, and it was higher among Banat Bulgarians than among Bulgarian market-gardeners in provincial towns (Table 12). The highest literacy rates were found among the men of the Budapest Bulgarian community, among whom there was a big jump in the first decade of the twentieth century (from 75.2 percent in 1900 to 87.8 percent in 1910). Literacy rates were higher among the women of the Banat Bulgarian community than among female seasonal migrants.

One trend among Bulgarian women is noticeable: in Budapest and in the provincial urban diaspora women who had the opportunity to pursue studies strove to acquire a better education. This is revealed by the 1910 census, which includes not only data regarding literacy but also data concerning people who had completed secondary school. 9 percent of the women among the literate Bulgarian migrants in Budapest had completed secondary school in comparison with only 2 percent of the literate men, and in provincial towns (except in Banat) 3 percent of literate women had completed secondary school in comparison with 1.2 percent of literate men.

In 1910, elementary literacy rates were higher among Banat Bulgarians than the average for Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia), which was 66.7 percent. 37 This was also the case in earlier censuses. In 1890, the average level of elementary literacy among Banat Bulgarians was 58 percent (taking both women and men into account), compared with 50.6 percent for the lands of the Hungarian crown (i.e. including Croatia-Slavonia). Within the diaspora of labor migrants, in 1900 it was 65 percent (again taking both women and men into account) among Bulgarians in Budapest and the towns, whereas the national average was 59.3 percent.38

It is worth noting that the elementary literacy level of seasonal Bulgarian migrants, most of whom were market-gardeners, was much higher than the average of 30 percent for Bulgaria at the time39 and the average of 22 percent for the rural population in Bulgaria. This again confirms the relevance of literacy and education as factors in the processes of emigration.40 But illiteracy data on Bulgarian seasonal migrant market-gardeners in Budapest are not so favorable compared to the host country. The illiteracy rate was above the municipal average, while among Banat Bulgarians in Temes County illiteracy was lower (23% in 1910), than the county average (30 %) (but still higher than illiteracy among Bulgarians in the capital city).41

 

Nationality by mother tongue	1890
	Men	Women	Total
Banat Bulgarians	56	44	50
Croats	50	34	42
Hungarians	59	48	54
Germans	68	58	63
Romanians	11	8	14
Ruthens	13	7	10
Serbs	39	22	31
Slovaks	51	37	43

 

Table 11. Literacy rates in Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia and the population under the age of compulsory school attendance) by nationality and gender, 189042

In the lands of historic Hungary Bulgarians lived in multinational communities. According to quantifiable data regarding literacy (in this case including the population below the age of compulsory school attendance), Banat Bulgarians were in the forefront. In 1890, they were third after the Germans and Hungarians, taking men and women into account separately (56 percent and 44 percent, respectively) and as a whole (50 percent) (Table 11). For Banat Bulgarians, higher education was a natural pursuit, since in the second half of the nineteenth century they experienced their literary revival.

 

	Men				Women
Educational level County, Budapest, towns	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Total	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Total
1890
Temes and Torontál counties	63.8	0.5	35.7	100	47.5	3.3	49.2	100
1900
Budapest	75.2	0.6	24.2	100	40.0	0.0	60.0	100
Towns	65.6	0.6	33.8	100	77.8	0.0	22.2	100
1910*
Budapest	87.8	1.2	11.0	0	59.5	5.4	35.1	100
Towns not including towns in Temes and Torontál counties	68.8	0.6	30.6	100	48.9	0.0	51.1	100
Temes and Torontál counties	76.7	0.7	22.6	100	65.5	4.5	30.0	100

 

* “Literate” also includes people who continued their education.

Table 12. Literacy rates among Bulgarians at or over the age of compulsory school attendace in Temes and Torontál counties, Budapest, and other Hungarian towns by gender, 1890–191043

 

During the period under examination, from the perspective of literacy Hungary lagged behind the countries of Western Europe (England, France, Germany). For example, by 1911 England had already overcome illiteracy (which had been reduced to 1 percent, both among women and men). In 1900, the rate of illiteracy in France was 5 percent among men and 6 percent among women. In 1870, the rate of illiteracy in Prussia for the population over 10 years of age was 10 percent among men and 15 percent among women. In the Western part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire (Cisleithania), the average rate of illiteracy for the population over the age of 10 was 21 percent among men and 25 percent among women. However, Hungary was far ahead compared to the Balkan countries, including Bulgaria, and this undoubtedly contributed to the higher rates of literacy and higher levels of education among the Bulgarian immigrant population. In 1899, the illiteracy rate among the population at or above the age of compulsory school attendance in Romania was 78 percent. It was 61 percent in Greece in 1907 and 80 percent in Serbia in 1900.44 In Bulgaria, the rate of illiteracy for the population over the age of 7 was 70 percent in 1900 and 58 percent in 1910.45

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (Hungarian National Archives, further MNL OL), KSH-XXXII-23-h

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Translated by Thomas Cooper

Ágnes R. Várkonyi

Gábor Bethlen and His European Presence

 

This paper studies the European presence of the most important ruler of the Principality of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen (1580–1629) in the light of predominant developments of the Early Modern Age such as the general crisis of the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War, the international networks of alliances, the absolutist governments, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, the nation states, the modern expectations towards governments, the new science of political cultures, the explosion of information networks and the law of concluding peace.

The study gives an overview on the extreme views on Gábor Bethlen in the early modern era as well as in posterity. This ruler of the Transylvanian state—a tributary of the Ottoman Empire, but also belonging to the power sphere of the Habsburgs—was on the one hand regarded as a creature of the Turks, on the other as a monarch who had profound influence upon the fate of Europe. The paper shows how Bethlen created tranquility, security and economic stability in the country which had been ruined, destroyed by Ottoman and imperial military interventions and on the verge of civil war. Having a wide range of political experience and a good knowledge of contemporary political theories, the prince managed to accommodate absolutist government and mercantilist economic policies to Transylvanian circumstances. He was nevertheless unable to compete with the propaganda campaign against him.

Keywords: general crisis of the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War, the international networks of alliances, the absolutist governments, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires

 

Prelude

He is like a star, and “no astrologer can iudge of him till he bee worne out.”1 The report on Prince Gábor Bethlen of Transylvania by Sir Thomas Roe, English ambassador to Constantinople, has lost none of its validity four hundred years after his election.

The 1630 London edition of Giovanni Botero’s world chronicle devotes a whole chapter, “The State of Bethlen Gábor in Transilvania,” to this brave and exceptionally talented prince and his deeds in defending his country against the Ottomans and the House of Habsburg.2 The opinions of his detractors were put succinctly by the “Tacitus of Europe,” Virgilio Malvezzi, who wrote that Bethlen was inscrutable and untrustworthy.3 Samuel Richardson’s opinion was glowing: “in warfare and diplomacy, he was one of the most greatest rulers of his age.”4 Leopold Ranke wrote, “one of the most powerful figures of the world upheaval that was the Thirty Years’ War.”5 Others took up the words of the propaganda his enemies put forth against him: a creature of the Turks, circumcised, Mohammedan.6 In the enormous literature on the Thirty Years’ War, the prince of Transylvania has appeared in various lights up to the present day.7 Through all of it, he has remained, in the words of Botero’s world chronicle, “a man much talkt of, but little knowne.” After the storms of four hundred years, Hungarian historians say much the same. He has been called a “man of the Turks,” but also praised for his statesmanship, “after St Stephen and King Matthias (r. 1458–90), perhaps our finest ruler.”8 To date, however, Hungarian historians have not paid enough attention to his European presence.

I will discuss here the concept of “presence” in the period of European change, the qualifications required for statesmanship, and Bethlen’s part in the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation and the Hague Alliance.

Options for Presence

Upon his election as prince by the Diet of Kolozsvár on October 23, 1613, Gábor Bethlen announced the essence of his program: only peace could save a nation so reduced and ruined by wars from utter destruction.9 Circumstances, however, were not favorable to the intentions of this Calvinist prince. Ottoman forces had escorted him into Transylvania, the Diet had been called by Iskender Pasha, Beylerbey of Kanizsa, who made camp beside Torda near Kolozsvár (now Turda and Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Tartar armies plundered the villages along the River Szamos, and on the western border of the country, castles were being captured by Matthias II, Holy Roman emperor and king of Hungary. In Vienna, the election was seen as both a Protestant and an Ottoman onslaught. Bethlen was proclaiming a vision of peace while his country faced the threat of civil war and an eruption of the Habsburg–Ottoman conflict.

Bethlen managed to persuade the Ottomans to leave the country after his accession to the throne, but immediately found himself in an impossible position. Kadizade Ali, Pasha of Buda, seizing control of the region in 1614, suddenly imprisoned Bethlen’s protector, Iskender Pasha and started to promote a claimant to the princely throne, György Homonnai Drugeth.10 A Catholic, Homonnai also secured the support of the dominant statesman of the Habsburg Empire, Bishop of Vienna and President of the Geheimrat Melchior Khlesl.11 At the very moment of Bethlen’s election, Khlesl launched a well-organized propaganda campaign against the new prince. Accusations made in terms like “Türkischer Bethlehem” and “Mohamedanischer Gábor” fed the flames of public opinion which had been ignited by tales of Tartar soldiers’ brutality and Ottoman plans to conquer the world.12 The accusations were not yet widely disseminated in German-speaking areas, but the tone was set for future developments.13

It was following the cataclysms which befell the kingdom in the sixteenth century—the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and Sultan Süleyman’s occupation of its capital, Buda, in 1541—that the eastern part of medieval Hungary was involuntarily and violently shaped into the Principality of Transylvania (Principatus Transylvaniae).14 Transylvania’s geopolitical position constrained the ambitions of its princes, although neither the Ottoman nor the Habsburg Empires succeeded in annexing its territory. In all of their many attempts, the military forces of both countries found their strength exhausted after breaching Transylvania’s borders.15 The new Hungarian state established itself by virtue of medieval traditions, European power relations and the adaptability of its society; its international recognition was presaged by the Peace of Adrianople (1568) and legalized by the Treaty of Speyer between Maximilian I of Hungary and Holy Roman emperor and John Sigismund (king-elect of Hungary 1541–1571, prince of Transylvania 1571) in 1570.16 From that time on, Transylvania appeared on a separate page in Ortelius’ atlas. In pursuing its “national interest”, however, it was constantly subject to the varying pressures of a dual dependence.17

The history of Gábor Bethlen’s family was intertwined with the formation of the Principality. He fully experienced the fragility of the Transylvanian state in his youth. His grandfather fought in the Battle of Mohács (1526), where the forces of Sultan Süleyman shattered the unity of the Kingdom of Hungary. The estates the family had held since the fourteenth century, together with the family seat of Iktár, lay in the two-thirds of the kingdom occupied by the Ottomans. His father Farkas Bethlen, after defending the castle of Gyula on behalf of the king against an Ottoman siege, resettled in Transylvania.

Gábor Bethlen was born in the family’s castle of Marosillye in Hunyad county on November 15, 1580, in one of Transylvania’s last years of tranquility following its establishment as a state, and spent his childhood there. His father was captain-general of the Principality and the military honors he earned in the service of Stephen Báthory, prince of Transylvania and king of Poland, earned him estates with many villages (1576), but after his early death, Prince Sigismund Báthory took his castle—which was in the border country—under control of the treasury. His mother, Fruzsina Lázár, came from a senior family of Székely land, an area of Transylvania with considerable autonomy and border defense duties. She followed her husband shortly after his death.

After being orphaned, Gábor and his younger brother spent some time, perhaps a few years, in the fortified house of András Lázár, a Székely king’s judge (iudex regius), in Gyergyószárhegy. He was employed as page in the political center of Transylvania, the court of Prince Zsigmond Báthory. It was to be a formative experience for him, where as an adolescent he had his first glimpse of the new political culture, a subject we will return to. It was while he was there that the Principality’s relative balance within the grip of two great powers was violently upset by war. When the conflict broke out between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires in 1592, Prince Zsigmond Báthory entered the fray in alliance with Emperor Rudolf.18 Bethlen was among the victors at the Battle of Giurgiu in 1595, but soon experienced the agonies of the Habsburg–Ottoman war: for a decade, Transylvania was the theater of a protracted, static war, prey to a pointless struggle between a succession of princes and generals.19 Bethlen lived through the anarchic consequences of Zsigmond Báthory’s abdication and return, experiencing the despotism of the pro-Habsburg Voivode Michael and the imperial mercenary leader Giorgio Basta and the violent persecution of the nobility and the Protestants. He fought beside András Báthory and, bleeding from many wounds, fled to Ottoman lands. With Ottoman assistance, he took part in the military ventures of Prince Mózes Székely, who attacked Basta twice (1602–1603), and he was an eyewitness when the princely palace in Gyulafehérvár burned and the cathedral tower with its clock fell to the ground. That was when Bethlen started to seek out for himself political options that could free the Principality from the stifling grip of the Habsburg and Ottoman powers. His soldiers elected him prince, and the Porte supported him even then. But Bethlen considered István Bocskai, former counselor to the prince and Captain of Várad (now Oradea, Romania), as better suited to defend the constitution of Transylvania and Hungary and to lead the way out of a horrific war which had pitched the land into anarchy.

When the throne again became vacant after Bocskai’s death (1606) and old Prince Zsigmond Rákóczi’s abdication (1608), Bethlen assisted in the election of the eighteen-year-old Gábor Báthory (r. 1608–1613). This talented and ambitious scion of the Báthory family might have upheld the broad political vision of his ancestors, but his attempts to balance the conflicts of Transylvania’s complex society caused him to assume unlimited powers. He abolished the privileges of the Saxons, led a campaign against the Romanian voivodates of Moldavia and Wallachia, and lived the life of a gilded youth. He was not mature for princely power.20

By this time, Bethlen had become one of the foremost landowners in Transylvania, regaining his family legacy and extending it by several thousand acres, and his wife, Zsuzsa Károlyi, who bore him two children, brought a substantial dowry. He was a pivotal figure in Transylvanian politics, the captain-in-chief of the household cavalry, főispán of Hunyad county, and captain-in-chief of Csíkszék, Gyergyószék and Kászonszék. In 1612, fallen from grace, he had to seek refuge in Ottoman lands. We can only speculate as to what soured his relations with the young prince. He clearly did not approve of Báthory’s foreign policy, his aspirations to the Polish throne, or his campaigns against Moldavia and Wallachia.21

Bethlen made thorough preparations for his own election as prince. He visited all of the pashas of the Ottoman castles, travelled to Belgrade and Buda, won over the Catholic aristocrats of Transylvania, had an audience with the sultan in Adrianople, and got the Saxons behind him.22 His election got a mixed reception among contemporaries. An account of the circumstances “resting on the documents” was written by his court historian, Gáspár Bojti Veres. The Diet held in St Michael’s Church was initially divided. Some wanted an interregnum. Others proposed that Transylvania be governed by a triumvirate rather than a prince. In the end, the desire to be free of the Ottoman troops drove the estates to unanimously lay down their votes for one of the two candidates, Gábor Bethlen. In his welcoming address, János Mikola, president of the Transylvanian high court (tabula principalis) said emphatically that the election had “followed the customs of Christian countries.”23 In the eyes of some Transylvanians, however, it was the Ottomans who had made Gábor Bethlen prince.

The traditions of the little country’s presence in Europe eased Bethlen’s position as he took the throne, but there were also new demands to be faced. Government and politics were in transformation throughout the continent, with new shared values emerging in the economy, in culture, and in forms of governance. Discoveries were making the world bigger. The inclusion of both Transylvania and China in Botero’s world chronicle, for example, was no longer a novelty.

The potency of a country’s presence in Europe depended on how much it could adopt new order and value systems, and what it contributed to these. The methods by which it could assert its presence, however, lay in a new and invisible “great power” which was redefining what European presence meant: the information explosion. The centers of this new power were the cities with the largest printing presses: Venice, Vienna, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam. The printed media rapidly and efficiently disseminated the news to serve political interests, but on a commercial basis. News-hungry Europe enjoyed an information honeymoon during the Thirty Years’ War, finding out about everything and its opposite quickly, served up to different sections of society in the way they demanded.24 How often did Gábor Bethlen’s name appear in print? It is impossible to tell with any precision, but he was certainly the first Hungarian statesman to become what we would now call a media star.

Bethlen appreciated how the Turks, and the frightening image of them, could be put to use as a propaganda weapon. He also knew, however, that there were new interests exerting influence on Europe’s rulers. He wrote in a letter to Melchior Khlesl that Transylvania, “lying in the throat of the Turks,” could do no more than maintain “peace and covenant.” Even larger Christian countries, further from the Ottomans, were doing the same thing. “Emperor Rudolf has accepted the present Turkish emperor as a son … and this has been confirmed by oaths and charters. Why, if this is no dishonor for such fine kings, emperors and realms and does not lead to their ejection from the company of Christian countries, is Transylvania alone so accused, and scourged and condemned without mercy?”25 Set down in private correspondence, hidden from public view, these arguments were ineffective. As far as we know, the prince did not make the circumstances of his election public. It was a serious mistake, but unavoidable. Transylvania had neither the means nor the capability to connect into the information network.

The Statesman

Following Bethlen’s election, the estates, by custom, presented the new prince with the conditions which delineated his duties and powers. More modern procedures for the exercise of power, however, were being demanded by the changes in Europe. Bethlen took up the princely scepter fully prepared, with a definite program, and built up his power as a true sovereign.

His appointments to the governing body, the Princely Council, were designed to serve his interests, but he made realistic deference to the political, religious, ethnic and economic composition of feudal society and included men with special expertise.26 He started rebuilding castles and towns and attempted to pass on some of the costs to the tax-exempt nobility. He repossessed previously alienated treasury estates and sources of income. He restored the Saxons’ privileges and moved to settle the internal affairs of the Székelys.27 Regarding Transylvania’s constitution, he proclaimed the unity and equality of the three feudal nations. Despite many compromises, he introduced strict central governmental control and, over the years, suppressed the political influence of the Diet.28

To implement the reason and interests of state, the new system of government which was emerging in response to far-reaching economic, executive, military and scientific changes demanded qualified counselors and a properly-organized administrative staff. Above all, it demanded a sovereign—or a statesman advising the sovereign—who was capable of employing the new techniques of politics and diplomacy. Politics had become a science, with a language differentiated for specific aims and requirements.

Bethlen was lacking in traditional schooling, and had not attended a foreign university. As a result, it was thought for a long time that his grasp of political science was instinctive in origin.29 Recent research, however, has discovered that he gained much from the Báthory court traditions and that his familiarity with the new ideas which he adopted so adroitly was the result of systematic study. In the court of Zsigmond Báthory, he was exposed to the open culture of the Báthorys’ court and a milieu rich in Italian influences.30 He learned taste, customs, communication and the rules of contact. He became familiarized with the requirements of a Catholic court and princely image-building. He gained insight into foreign relations, the forms of expression of power and culture, simulation, and the new methods of politics.31 It was here he acquired his love of the arts, and was so deeply affected by music that the aspiration to improve musical life at court remained with him throughout his reign.32

In his youth, he became familiar with the centralized methods of Habsburg rule. He went to Prague, Emperor Rudolf’s Central European cultural and scientific capital.33 In 1608, he led a fifty-strong embassy to Constantinople. He was present at the 1609 Diet of Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia), the city beside the Danube which had become capital of the Kingdom of Hungary after the fall of Buda. A military campaign took him to the Romanian voivodates, and he acted as a peace intermediary between the Poles and the Ottomans. He learned Turkish, and the mode of political communication in the Sublime Porte. As part of Bocskai’s staff, he learned about the Habsburg war machine and peace negotiations, and became familiar with the Netherlands’ Europe-oriented policies and propaganda network.34

He lived with books from an early age. On his campaigns, he always had a wagonful of books with him, and he read on the road. Brief references in his will tell us that he knew the wisdom of the Greek and Latin classical authors.35 The breadth of his reading is apparent from his several hundred letters and the marginal notes he made in the manuscript of the Latin History of Transylvania by the greatest historian of the age, István Szamosközy.36 His court library and private library in Gyulafehérvár were destroyed in a fire, but two of the books which survived rank among the essential manuals of modern government. One is an atlas, Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, on whose title page the twenty-eight-year-old Bethlen, setting out on a diplomatic mission to the Porte, wrote “Lord of the armies, bless my journey, that it may be fortunate …”37

The other book to escape the flames was Antonio de Guevara’s Horologium principum. In the early seventeenth century, books on political science were manuals for practical rule. The original source was Machiavelli, read even by those who banned him. Il Principe was at hand in Richelieu’s study, the central offices of the Burg in Vienna, and the libraries of the aristocrats behind the Bohemian Revolt. De Guevara’s book quotes both the over-criticized Il Principe and the Discorsi. The president of the Prague Chamber remarked of Khlesl: “He is closer to Machiavelli than to the breviary.”38 The theories of state that proliferated at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries refined the requirements of the modern state. The directives of Justus Lipsius, highly popular in Hungary, also found their way to Transylvania. Basilikon Doron, the instructions which James I of England (whose grandson became Bethlen’s godson) wrote to his son, was published in Hungarian in 1612 under the title Királyi ajándék [Royal Gift], translated by Bocskai’s preacher György Szepsi Korotz.39

Bethlen’s intensive interest in the subject is also evident from two Hungarian books on political science. A Reformed Church minister who had attended university in Heidelberg, János Pataki Fésüs, dedicated his book Királyok tüköre [Mirror of Kings] to the prince. It highlights the relationships between counselors and prince and establishing internal peace in the country. István Milotai Nyilas also dedicated his directives for successful governance of countries, formulated in a commentary to the Twentieth Psalm of King David, to “the God-Fearing Christian Prince of Hungary and Transylvania,” Gábor Bethlen. These works effectively extended the thoughts of Justus Lipsius. A cultured sovereign was the key to the internal peace of the realm, and also essential were law, understanding and “intelligence.” Even war is not decided by individual valor, but by diplomacy, negotiations, conference tables and money. The key words were necessitas, fortuna and fama. For effective government, the ruler must be in sovereign control, but with the help of his counselors.

Bethlen has left us thorough analyses of the rapidly-changing political situations in several-page letters and ambassadorial instructions, written in angular script. His intentions and decisions, however, are difficult to discern.40 His rapid changes, multifarious contradictory plans, which nearly drove his enemies mad, are clear and understandable in terms of the prevailing principles of statecraft. Simulation was occasionally a justified recourse for a ruler, an essential means of obtaining and holding on to power.

Justus Lipsius dwelt at length on the requirements of good, successful rule. His Politics was translated into Hungarian by the loyal disciple of the Bethlen family, János Laskai. Lipsius copies Machiavelli almost word for word in this book, and advises the prince to be a lion in action and a fox in his plans. “Where the lion skin does not serve, he must put on the fox skin.” Lipsius invests misleading politics with moral content. The whole world is treacherous, he declared, and only he who overcomes the treachery will prevail. Consequently, the good ruler must blend some deception into his intelligent ideas. The fox must be treated foxily. “The prince must be Lion and Fox.” There were critical predicaments and circumstances when cunning was essential: every statesman of the time kept his plans secret, played with several cards, and it was everyday practice to capture the enemy’s correspondence and deceive the public with forged letters. The statesmen of the Habsburg government made extensive use of deception politics, as did Sultan Osman II, who disguised his plans for the war against Persia as a pilgrimage to Mecca.41 Lipsius backed up his view with classical authors: “Like Pindarus, I always praise a statesman who executes his affairs like a roaring lion and negotiates like a fox.”42

The techniques of deception were essential to Transylvanian politics, and were deployed with masterful skill to keep the two threatening powers at bay.43 The governmental procedures implemented by Bethlen correspond closely to the model of the prince set out in the books on political theory. His priorities in building up his power bear this out. Soldiers enlisted into the army were to receive regular pay, as provided by a patent he issued in the days before his election.44 He appreciated the crucial importance to a modern state of a regularly paid standing army. Some countries took nearly a century to establish one; Bethlen only had a few years, and limited means. He built up his army from Székelys and Hajdús, soldiers who had pledged their military service to Bocskai in return for being settled in the Partium with their families.45 Regular pay, which Bethlen saw as crucial, was a serious challenge for every country. He was often obliged to make grants of land in compensation for failure to pay his officers and men. He demanded hard discipline, and his army regulations punished the most serious and intractable delinquency of contemporary warfare—pillaging, arbitrariness and robbery—with execution.46

He employed a centralized and mercantilist economic policy.47 He promoted schooling and provided scholarships with a view to developing a highly qualified administrative staff for his modern princely court.48 Right from the start of his reign, he built up his princely seat in Gyulafehérvár (now Alba Iulia, Romania). His broad vision shows up in the development of the city and the two-phase construction of his princely palace.49

He organized the Transylvanian state, and his court, to follow the norms of European royal display, carrying on the customs of the Báthorys. Bethlen knew that the prince’s court was the country itself. It was a diplomatic, political, academic and artistic center, and the seat of government. It had a library, archives, and collections of coins and portraits.50 He took a personal interest in stocking his library, the “fine Bibliotheca,” although we do not know who his buyers were. He had his books “splendidly bound and adorned with crested supra-libros.” He was aware of the library’s practical and academic significance and its status as a collection, expressing the image of the realm. He intended to recover the highly valuable books of the library of King Matthias, the great renaissance king of Hungary. These were manuscripts, known throughout the world as Corvinas, richly illustrated codices which had fallen into the hands of the Ottomans upon the fall of Buda. He set up the country’s archives and gathered foreign documents on government. He required of his diplomats that they keep two diaries, one general and one with confidential information. The confidential diaries were to be deposited in the archives upon their return. He had the printing press moved from Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia) to Gyulafehérvár, and he founded the Collegium Academicum, for which he recruited Martin Opitz, the “German Virgil,” Johann Heinrich Alstedt of Herborn, Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld, and Ludovicus Philippus Piscator, with an eye on more than education: he intended his court to become a center of scholarship.51

He recognized the power of obtaining and disseminating information. His instruction to his ambassador to Constantinople, Tamás Borsos, presages the instruction of a modern press chief: “From whatever corner of the world, news good or evil, what changes on land or see, you may hear or reach something, write it down, make a note, and write what you hear to us, with full explanation.”52 Delay was always a danger, exacerbated in Transylvania’s case by a particular circumstance. Bethlen could only maintain a permanent diplomatic agent in one place. Constantinople, the world capital of European embassies, was the obvious choice, but like the rest of the Ottoman Empire it had the great disadvantage of lacking a printing press. Information could be obtained only by the slow traditional routes, and could not be disseminated in the efficient form of printed text.

He summed up his politics, with due heed to the realities of power, in terms of balance between the two empires: “we can serve Christendom with good intentions and sincerity, and the Turks too, I can look for their favors as such a great enemy, so that they are not irritated because of us.”53 Between 1613 and 1619, he won recognition for his principality from both Vienna and Constantinople, and secured a time of tranquility and abundance for Transylvania.54

Recent research, informed by the findings of modern Turkish studies and source criticism, has shown that Bethlen’s Ottoman policy was much more complex than “Turkish vassalage,” the oversimplified term common in the old literature, applied in accusatory or embarrassed tones. His relationship with the Porte was extremely varied,55 responding to the rapid turnover in high positions in the Porte and elsewhere, European political affairs, and the highly intensive Habsburg–Ottoman relations which went on over the heads of the Hungarians. It was influenced by the Bohemian Revolt, Polish–Ottoman relations and not least the Constantinople policies of the Netherlands, England and France. Then there was another “great power,” propaganda. Captured and forged letters and false information were put into print and disseminated, setting traps for the objective but unwary modern researcher. For Bethlen, however, everyday realism demanded the maintenance of good relations. The Porte’s demand that he fulfill the promise of the Habsburg emperors and Transylvanian princes to hand over the castles of Lippa (now Lipova, Romania) and Jenő (now Ineu, Romania) weighed down heavily on him. He delayed the handover as long as he could, but on June 14, 1616, the gates of Lippa, captured by a siege of his own soldiers, were opened to Deak Mehmed, Pasha of Temesvár (now Timişoara, Romania).56

The new sultan ordered Bethlen to hand over Jenő castle, pay the annual tribute without delay and join the Moldavian campaign, and prepared to attack Poland. Bethlen managed to forge an alliance with the new Voivode of Moldavia, Radu Mihnea. He was unable, however, to establish a workable cooperation with Sigismund III of Poland after warning him of the impending Ottoman campaign and mentioning the possibility of joint action.57

The half-century following his election, however, indisputably proved that the princely scepter was in the hand of a statesman who was educated and successful in practical politics.

The Central European Confederation

The Bohemian nobles’ declaration of their secession from the Habsburg Empire by the symbolic rite of defenestration in Prague Castle on May 23, 1618 opened a new chapter in Bethlen’s politics. By entering the struggle on the Bohemian side, Bethlen was pursuing his vision that he could best safeguard the statehood of the Principality and defend the constitution of the Kingdom of Hungary by joining forces with his Protestant neighbors and more distant Protestant countries and thus link into the system of European states.58

In requesting assistance, the Bohemian nobles raised the prospect that if Bethlen was elected king of Hungary, they would make him a candidate for the Bohemian throne. After long preparation, Bethlen’s army, under the command of Count Jindřich Matyáš Thurn and together with rebel forces, marched in August 1619.59 Recently discovered Ottoman sources refute the old hypotheses that the Porte gave him its backing. It did not even give clear permission, because the sultan was sticking by his peace treaty with the Habsburg emperor.60

He justified his campaign on several grounds: defense of religious freedom, freedom of the Kingdom of Hungary, and fulfilment of the Bohemian rebels’ request.61 The pamphlet Querela Hungariae, published in Latin and Hungarian in Kassa (now Košice, Slovakia), informed Hungary and foreign countries that the nobles and cities of the Kingdom had summoned the prince of Transylvania because of the emperor’s failure to keep the terms of the Treaty of Vienna, signed with the Hungarian estates in 1606. He was oppressing Protestants, was incapable of defending the kingdom, and the Turks had annexed dozens of villages to the Ottoman Empire under cover of peace.62 The author of the pamphlet, the Reformed Church minister Péter Alvinczi, who had studied at the universities of Wittenberg and Heidelberg, was arguing from fact, arranging the details in the political language of the age to appeal to readers. A particularly powerful argument was Bethlen’s reference to the Peace of Vienna, whose terms the Habsburg government had not kept. Bethlen’s course of action, however, principally followed his general, broad-based, long term political ambition.

Historians who aim at objectivity have long acknowledged his exceptional political sharp-sightedness, as many of his enemies did. The decision was consistent with his appreciation of the European situation. He recognized that Europe was preparing for a war which would put all of its countries under arms. Although not even he could foresee the course of the war, the conflicts of interests among European powers were clear to him. He had a notion of the political superiority of the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria and the rising tensions between France, the Netherlands, England and other countries. He counted on England, Holland, Denmark, Brandenburg, Switzerland and the Protestant countries in general to stand beside the Bohemians, and expected James I of England to send assistance to his son-in-law.63 His mistake was in believing that the Protestant powers would immediately hasten to defend the Bohemians. Although pained by the disappointment, he did not abandon his vision, and declared that the highest aim of his reign was to secure peace for his country.64 He saw the only guarantee for the future of the Principality of Transylvania as a state, squeezed between two great empires and sitting in the jaws of the Ottomans, as being accepted into the great family of European countries. Until then, Bethlen would take every chance to break out on to the international arena.65 If he failed to take this opportunity, Transylvania would be isolated from Christendom. The fundamental necessitas deriving from the division of the Kingdom of Hungary itself forced him to accept the substantial costs and risks of war, and grasp the bona occasio.66

Sources variously estimate the strength of his army at between 15,000 and 40,000.67 He quickly occupied the northeastern area of the Kingdom, known at the time as Upper Hungary. In mid-October, in fierce fighting, he took Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia) whose four-towered castle was the repository of the Hungarian royal crown, which thus fell into Bethlen’s hands. Two Diets subsequently elected him king of Hungary, the first called by Palatine Zsigmond Forgách at Pozsony (November 1709–February 1620) and the second at Besztercebánya (now Banská Bistrica, Slovakia; August 25, 1620). From that time on, he issued his charters as elected king of Hungary and prince of Transylvania, had coins struck with his royal title, and exercised his sovereign rights with grants of land, but he never had himself crowned.68

Why not? Various answers have been put forward by Hungarian historians. To the friends who urged him to accept coronation, he answered that the ancient right of crowning the king lay with the archbishop of Esztergom, and his chances were nil as long as Péter Pázmány held this title.69 Bethlen was aware that being Catholic was a definite requirement, but in addition to the deep faith and conviction which tied him to the Reformed Church, he made the realistic calculation that a Protestant prince converting in order to become a Catholic king could no longer count on the support of Calvinist and Lutheran countries.

Research is made difficult by Bethlen’s statement in a letter to Iskender Pasha dated November 4, 1619: “The crown is in my hands, thanks be to God … after the tenth day I will be elected king of the Hungarians.” The lines of this letter, which was printed in many copies, are interpreted to mean that Bethlen was, with Ottoman help, preparing to be elected and crowned king. The only trouble is that the original of this letter has never been found; the closest is a copy held in Vienna.70

The fortunes of the Bohemian–Moravian–Hungarian–Transylvanian confederation seems to have had a profound effect on Bethlen’s delaying position with regard to ascent to the Hungarian throne and to the act of coronation.71 On January 2, 1620, the Pozsony Diet notified the royal commissioners that they were entering an alliance with the Bohemians and other provinces of the Habsburg Empire.

In its eighteen points, the treaty establishing the Confederation declared that the alliance was eternal and indissoluble. Joint defense was to be organized at a joint diet, and the Bohemian and Moravian nobles would contribute a prescribed sum for maintenance of the border defense castles. Offensive and defensive wars and peace talks could only be entered into by common consent. The countries of the confederation would permit mutual free trade and would mint a common currency. Disputes would be settled at a joint diet. Kings and princes of every country would take an oath to the Confederation upon their election. Peace would be made by common consent.72

This—probably still preliminary—confederation agreement was signed by Bethlen “in view of the interests of Christendom,” on January 15, 1620 and by King Frederick of Bohemia on January 25. It was also initialed by representatives of the Bohemian and Hungarian estates.73 Bethlen was aware of the realities: the circumstances were grave, and the Bohemians would also have to make peace with the Habsburg emperor. A Bohemian and Hungarian embassy set out for Istanbul to solicit the indispensable approval of the Sublime Porte.74 Ferdinand II’s counselors considered the Bohemian–Hungarian confederation a threat to both the empire and the interests of the Catholic Union, and the Hofburg mobilized various diplomatic channels to counter it.

The Ottoman Empire also maintained its claim to be the undisputedly dominant factor in the region. It did not interfere in the Bohemian Revolt, and offered the prospect of help for Bethlen only if he was crowned king and his campaign was a definite success.75 Bethlen informed the Porte of the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation in a Memoriale largely written in his own hand.76 This extensive proposal remarkably finds a precedent for the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation in the time of “Old King Matthias” (Corvinus). With many exaggerations and arguments designed to win over the Porte, he explains how much the Ottoman Empire would profit from the Confederation. The Confederation would provide defense in case the Habsburg regime prepared to attack and would secure peace in the region; the Porte would also gain tribute and gifts from Bohemia. We do not know what the Porte’s views were, but Sultan Osman II’s dispatch of a mere letter of support to the Besztercebánya Diet instead of the requested ahdname must have been significant.77

The Diet aroused great international interest, and the Transylvanian estates sent representatives to “negotiate the Confederation.”78 In his princely proposition, Bethlen stated that members of the Confederation had the chief collective duty of making peace; only thus could tranquility be achieved in the region. The imperial delegates, however, objected that Bethlen was usurping royal rights, and as prince could not make a proposition to the Diet which was the reserve of the king.

The sultan’s letter was read out at the Diet. It implied a very cautious, general guarantee in two major questions. “We will not be negligent towards … the honorable Hungarian nation” for the sake of Emperor Ferdinand, and “our sublime gate … is open” to the Bohemians. In the matter of Bethlen’s kingship, the letter was reserved but not hostile: if the Diet wished to elect a king, it should elect one who would be well-intentioned towards the Porte and keep the kingdom in peace. A Bohemian–Hungarian–Transylvanian delegation from the Diet set out for Constantinople to seek a charter declaring defense of the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation. Despite all this, Bethlen again failed to win the sultan’s patronage of the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation.79

It was of fundamental importance for Bethlen to gain the recognition and support of the Protestant countries. Writing in April 1620 to Imre Thurzó, who was negotiating in Prague, he explained in detail how much he counted on the assistance of England, Denmark, the Netherlands and the German princes, and how much it saddened him that they had not even sent envoys to the Diet and had not provided the support he hoped for.80

There are therefore several arguments why Bethlen tied his decision on coronation to the fortunes of the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation. Only the Confederation had the chance of representing an effective force in the region, but in order to consolidate its position and win the support it needed for recognition, it would have to manifest its strength.

The Confederation did not have a battle-ready army or a joint system of operation. There is no evidence that military plans were coordinated, and there was no central command. At the Battle of White Mountain on November 8, 1620, the forces of the allied estates suffered a devastating defeat. This put the seal on the Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation. It came to an end without becoming a substantial factor in Central Europe, because it proved unequal to the task of bringing the war to an end and stabilizing the region’s affairs.

Despite the defeat, Bethlen signed a satisfactory treaty with Ferdinand II in January 1622. Under the Peace of Nikolsburg, he returned the crown and renounced his royal title and gained substantial territory in the form of seven counties of Upper Hungary, giving him control of the trade routes to Poland. He also acquired the Duchies of Oppeln and Ratibor in Silesia.

In the Hague Alliance

The prince’s emissaries arrived in Constantinople on September 1, 1622. András Kapy, together with Count Thurn, the general of the defeated Bohemian Revolt who was in service in Transylvania, had been sent to find out about affairs in the Porte and the matter of support from the European powers. The reputation of Transylvanian diplomacy was at its lowest point. The Porte was dissatisfied by the Peace of Nikolsburg and the king of Poland was demanding that Bethlen be deposed or crushed. The English Ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, who had taken up his station in Constantinople in late 1621, had instructions to keep his distance from the prince of Transylvania and not to establish contact with his emissaries.81

A series of European propaganda documents designed to undermine Bethlen’s standing appeared between 1619 and 1622. They alleged that the prince of Transylvania was a creature of the Turks, was circumcised, and was by nature a Mohammedan, untrustworthy and barbarian. A letter allegedly by Bethlen to the Tatar khan dated April 1, 1621, printed in Latin, German and French and finding its way even to England, aroused particular outrage. In the letter, Bethlen congratulates the Tatar khan on his victory over the Poles, is insulting about the Poles and makes the offer that if the khan comes with 20,000 Tatars, he will lead them into the wealthy neighboring countries where they may pillage and take prisoners at will.82

A historical-political pamphlet published anonymously in Hungarian and Latin, entitled On the Current State of Hungary, Advice of a True Hungarian Who Loves His Homeland published this and another eight letters. Among its untruths were that the sultan wanted to make Gábor Bethlen—a tyrant “who bathes in Christian blood”—king of Hungary and that the Confederation served the Ottoman Empire’s plans for conquest and for destruction of Christendom. Research has not yet discovered the originals of the published letters, especially the highly influential letter to the Tatar khan, casting serious doubt on the truth of this pamphlet’s contents.83

Bethlen’s followers, and the Protestants in general, put up a defense against the charges. János Keserűi Dajka, Reformed Church bishop of Transylvania, wrote his views in a letter which was printed and disseminated by David Pareus, a professor in Heidelberg. “We are far from the German emperor, truly in the lion’s throat, and the lion could easily tear us to pieces and maul us while his Holy Highness the emperor takes counsel on our cause. If countries, lands, kings and princes so far from the Turk strive to obtain peace from the Turks at great expense, what is so astonishing if we, broken by the wars of so many years and utterly drained of strength, are forced to do the same? But we are still not Turks, for whom we desire that they might perish and disappear, whatever lies people tell about us; the gracious and dignified manner of his rule is witness that our glorious prince is a true Christian.”84 And despite the unprecedented condemnatory propaganda, Bethlen’s significance in Europe grew.

The Protestant countries initially showed some degree of sympathy with Bethlen’s policy. Written expressions of public opinion in the Netherlands unreservedly applauded the Principality of Transylvania. As the Netherlands were split in two, a fight for survival started with the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg. A broad section of Dutch society expressed interest and sympathy towards the Principality of Transylvania and its joint struggle alongside the Bohemians. They looked on the Hungarians as a brave sister nation. Amsterdam was the media center of the information world, gathering, classifying, expanding and forwarding the news. Pictures, writing and newsletters concerning Gábor Bethlen told of how he and his followers were struggling against the tyranny of the Habsburg emperor, and had entered the fight for freedom of conscience and the wider freedom of their countries.85

Cornelius Haga, ambassador to the Porte of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, immediately welcomed the Bohemian Revolt. In spring 1620, his government, the Staten Generaal, authorized him to support the Confederation. From that time onward Cornelius Haga consistently interceded at the Porte in Bethlen’s interests and persuaded the sultan to write a letter to the Staten Generaal recommending it to assist Bethlen in his efforts.86 Cornelius Haga was the only Western diplomat who immediately expressed his intent to cooperate with Gábor Bethlen’s emissaries, András Kapy and Count Thurn, when they arrived in Constantinople in 1622.

The plan for Bethlen to marry Catherine, younger sister of the elector of Brandenburg, probably first arose in the thoughts of Sir Thomas Roe and of Elizabeth, daughter of James I and Queen of Bohemia, whose tutor he had once been and with whom he had remained in intensive correspondence. It was perhaps also related to the diplomatic intrigues of Frederick, Elector Palatine, who was in contact with Bethlen. The marriage, conducted in full splendor in Kassa in March, 1626, was not a fortunate one with regards to Catherine’s personality, but it raised the international authority of the prince of Transylvania, making Bethlen brother-in-law to King Gustav Adolf of Sweden. Nonetheless, several years of diplomacy were needed to gain entrance among the countries collaborating against the Austrian and Spanish Habsburg empires in the Hague Alliance. Only through a complex combination of circumstances did Bethlen overcome the enormous distance between Transylvania and the Hague.

England had long-standing trade relations with the Ottoman world. The English ambassador had accompanied the sultan in his Hungarian campaign during the Long War in 1596, and English ambassadorial reports show that City men with interests in Baltic marine trade paid increasing attention to Ottoman–Transylvanian–Polish political relations. For them, the Ottomans were trading partners rather than ruthless conquerors.87 The English ambassador to Constantinople, Sir Thomas Roe, had broad diplomatic experience and an overview of politics throughout Europe. His detailed reports to the Secretary of State, Sir George Calvert, show how keenly he appreciated the significance of the Ottoman Empire and its influence in conflicts between Christian countries. In September 1622, he reported on his negotiations with the grand vizier, where he learned that King Sigismund III of Poland had approached the Porte to demand that Bethlen be deposed, or indeed crushed.88 He stated the view that Bethlen was in contact with the king’s opponents and could himself gain the Polish crown.

Roe became increasingly admiring of Bethlen’s policies, particularly as regards his Ottoman contacts. Bethlen knew how the pashas thought; he could handle complicated Ottoman politics; and he commanded authority at the Porte. He could have been very useful to the Protestant League and to England in tying down the Habsburgs’ strength in the east and in mobilizing the Ottomans.

Bethlen explained to Adam von Schwarzenberg, the elector of Brandenburg’s representative in Catherine’s retinue, that if the candidate powers for the alliance currently in formation, England, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Sweden and Venice, did not put their relations in order, all of their efforts would be built on sand.89 If they could not bring the Porte to their side, then the enemy would do so, and they would be unable to open the “eastern front.” Bethlen realistically calculated the danger of having an enemy at his back.

Bethlen’s ambassador, Matthias Quadt,90 was present at the talks between England, the Netherlands and Denmark which led to the Hague Alliance. Since he did not have the prince’s authorization, however, Transylvania was not included in the treaty, which was signed on December 9, 1625. Bethlen signed his authorization on April 18, 1626, but it was slow to arrive.91 The objectives of the Hague Coalition included a coordinated international attack against the armies of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg powers. Bethlen’s task was to tie down the Habsburgs in the east, secure the support of the Ottomans, and thus prevent Vienna from obtaining open or indirect Ottoman assistance.

The Staten Generaal accepted Quadt’s proposal in a decision of August 25, 1626. The prince of Transylvania reasoned that the enormous strength of the enemy required the Protestant forces to join together. The Ottoman Porte also had to be considered; it was prepared to weigh in with a strong army, but laid conditions: a monthly subvention of 40,000 imperial thalers and the inclusion of the Principality of Transylvania into the peace talks.92 Roe considered this a relatively trifling sum,93 but the Hague Coalition had severe financial problems. Ultimately, it was decided that the king of England would provide half of the 40,000 thalers a month payable to Bethlen, the king of Denmark a further 10,000 thalers, and the remaining 10,000 thalers would be put up jointly by France, Venice and Savoy.94 Bethlen launched his campaign on August 25, 1626 with 15-20,000-strong army. Scriptural quotations and a sword crossed with an olive branch on his red standard expressed that peace could only be achieved through battle, with God’s help. After being joined by Murteza, pasha of Buda and Mansfeld’s army, the Transylvanian military strength was estimated at 40,000.95

Epilogue

His death was mourned in verse written in Hungarian, German, Greek, Latin and Hebrew.96 He modestly summed up the greatest achievements of his reign in his Testamentum: “the feet of our enemy’s horses did not trample the soil of our homeland.” A later, otherwise critical historian recognized his European significance: “To Hungary and the seventeenth-century system of European states was given a gifted and very successful prince, who alone in the centuries of the Habsburg era proved that a son of the Hungarians, connected to the great European currents, in favorable circumstances, as sovereign and statesman, could perform as well as or better than the best of his European contemporaries.”97

In 1631, all of Europe learned of the great personages of the age in a splendid portrait album with Latin verses, the work of the diplomat and humanist Johann Joachim Rusdorf. In the contemporary Hungarian translation, the anthology Sebes agynak késő sisak [Helmet Late for Wounded Head], Bethlen, in the company of Gustav Adolf, Wallenstein and Richelieu, speaks the words For all the Hungarians / And so for the Christians / I am the great Gedeon / There are princes great / And men of noble estate / Who owe the light of their eyes to me / They raise up their hats / And turn a respectful ear / On hearing my godly name. 98

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Translated by Alan Campbell