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Hungary Ruled Transylvania for 800 Years. So Why Not Hungarian? — Transcript

by EmpireTongues · 2,251 words · 361 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00A comment under my Muldova video asked
0:03this. Hungary ruled Transylvania for
0:06over 500 years. So why does it still
0:08speak Romanian? Count it all and it's
0:11closer to 800 years. So why isn't it
0:14Hungarian? 8 centuries of Hungarian
0:16kings, princes, and nobles, and Romanian
0:19outlasted all of it. Here's what makes
0:21it strange. Transylvania was the core of
0:24Romania. Rome held it for roughly 165
0:28years. In my first video in this series,
0:30I traced Romanian back to Latin. Hungary
0:33held this same land for close to five
0:35times as long. And yet, when Hungarian
0:38rule ended, the largest group here still
0:41spoke Romanian. This is part four. After
0:44Romania, Muldova, and the Balkan Latin
0:46video, and the usual answer to this one
0:48is quick. Romanians resisted
0:50magurization.
0:52They held on under pressure. That's only
0:55part of it because for most of those 800
0:57years, the system wasn't built to make
0:59Romanians Hungarian. It was built to
1:01keep them out. And the state itself
1:03wasn't running in Hungarian for most of
1:05that time either. We'll get to that. It
1:08changes the whole count. First, the
1:10number. Britannica puts Transylvania
1:12inside Hungary from the 11th century to
1:14the 16th. Then it was a principality
1:17under Ottoman overlordship, then part of
1:20Hungary again from the end of the 1600s.
1:22and it joined Romania in 1918. So my 800
1:26is the whole stretch and I want to be
1:28plain about what's inside it. It
1:30includes the Ottoman era principality
1:32when Hungarian nobles still held power
1:35and it includes the Habsburg years when
1:37the emperor's governors were in charge.
1:39I'll flag each of those chapters when we
1:41reach it. Count only direct rule by the
1:43Hungarian kingdom and you land nearer
1:46the commenters 500. Either way, it's a
1:48very long time. long enough to change a
1:51language. Or so you'd think. The
1:54Maguars, the Hungarians, took this area
1:57at the end of the 9th century. Hungarian
2:00objects found here date from the first
2:02half of the 10th. The exact date of the
2:05conquest is unknown. Britannica says
2:07they firmly established their control in
2:091330. That's when their king Steven I
2:13according to legend defeated the native
2:15prince Uler. Those three words,
2:18according to legend, matter because they
2:20open the argument that fills my
2:22comments. Who else was living here? In
2:24my Romania video, I walk through three
2:26origin theories. Here, two of them
2:29collide and each gets the same time. The
2:32first is continuity. It's the mainstream
2:34Romanian view. A Romanized Deco Roman
2:37population stayed after the Roman
2:39withdrawal of 271 to 275.
2:43It sheltered in the mountains and became
2:45the Romanians. Its supporters site
2:47Christian objects, Roman bronze coin
2:50hordes and Roman style pottery and river
2:52names. The kish comes from the ancient
2:55Chrisus through Romanian sound changes.
2:58The second is later arrival. It's the
3:00mainstream Hungarian view. Here the
3:02Roman population left with the legions.
3:05The Hungarians found Slavs in
3:06Transylvania. Its supporters site mostly
3:09Slavic place names and no river names
3:12that come from Romanian. And the first
3:14Hungarian royal document that mentions
3:16blacks, meaning Romanians, is a charter
3:19from 1222. They date Romanian settlement
3:22to the late 12th century. Romanian
3:24historians reply that documents of any
3:27kind are scarce before the 12th century.
3:29Even the population estimates refuse to
3:31agree. For the early 1300s, Laos Tamar
3:35puts Romanians at about 5%. Yoel Pop
3:38puts them at about 65%. For around 1495,
3:43Kubini and Katsus estimate 22% Romanian
3:46and 55% Hungarian. By 1700, Yangso
3:51estimates about half. Hungarian
3:53demographers link that rise to centuries
3:55of war and migration. I'm not picking a
3:58number. Victor Freriedman notes that
4:00nationalist historians on both sides use
4:02these readings to back present-day
4:04claims. So, here's how I'll handle it.
4:06By 1222,
4:08Romanians appear in Hungarian royal
4:10documents. From there to 1918 is 7
4:14centuries. Whichever theory you hold,
4:16the question stays the same. Why didn't
4:19they switch? To hold Transylvania, the
4:21kingdom settled two groups, the Seikles
4:24and the Saxons, who were Germans,
4:27probably as frontier guards. That split
4:29medieval Transylvania into two kinds of
4:32land. noble counties run by landlords
4:35and worked mostly by Hungarian and
4:37Romanian surfs and seats the
4:40self-governing lands of the free seal
4:42and Saxons hold on to that pairing.
4:45Hungarian and Romanian surfs working the
4:48same fields because in 1437 they rose up
4:51together. It's called the Budai Nagi
4:53Antal revolt. One rebel leader appears
4:56in a document, a standard bearer of the
4:58Union of Hungarian and Romanian
5:00inhabitants, Hungarian and Romanian,
5:03side by side in one phrase. The
5:05privileged answered a year later with a
5:08union of their own. On the 2nd of
5:10February 1438, the Hungarian nobles, the
5:14Saxon elite, and the Secles made their
5:16alliance official, the Yuno Triumph
5:19National, the Union of the Three
5:21Nations. It was aimed at peasant revolts
5:23and Ottoman raids. Now, a detail that
5:26gets lost a lot. Nations here meant
5:29estates, social classes, not ethnic
5:32groups. Hungarian surfs were shut out,
5:35too. The ethnic meaning only came in the
5:3719th century. But look at who stood
5:39outside. In practice, Romanians, who
5:42were mostly surfs and Orthodox, the
5:44union never named Romanians. It didn't
5:47have to to leave most of them outside.
5:49Catholic Hungary treated the Orthodox
5:52faith as heretical. Later in the
5:54principality privilege covered three
5:56nations and four churches, Lutheran,
5:59Calvinist, Unitarian, and Catholic. The
6:02Orthodox Church wasn't one of them.
6:04Neither were the Romanians, and by the
6:06mid700s,
6:08they were at least half the population.
6:10In the 1500s, Antonune Vanchic, a
6:13churchman who rose to be primate of
6:15Hungary, wrote that Romanians had no
6:17liberties, no nobility, and no rights of
6:19their own. A small group in the
6:21Heartache District was the exception.
6:23Made nobles under John Hunyadi. Here's
6:26the twist. My reading being shut out was
6:29terrible for Romanians rights, but it
6:31left their language alone. With no door
6:34into the privileged class, there was
6:36little reason to change how you spoke to
6:38get through it. A Romanian village
6:40stayed a Romanian village with its own
6:42Orthodox priest. Then in 1526 at
6:45Mohacks, the Ottomans crushed the
6:47Kingdom of Hungary. Transylvania became
6:50in effect independent. It turned into an
6:53autonomous principality under Ottoman
6:56overlordship. Britannica dates that to
6:581566.
6:59Other sources give 1570 or 1571. Princes
7:03like the Barthures, Bethlean, and the
7:06Rakois ran it. and Hungarian nobles
7:09still held power. The overlord was
7:11Ottoman. The people running Transylvania
7:13were Hungarian. That's why these years
7:15are in my account. And inside that
7:17principality, something quiet happened.
7:20In 1559, a deacon named Caressi moved to
7:24Bras, a Saxon town. He printed books in
7:27church savonic and in Romanian, about 35
7:31titles in all. His patrons were
7:32Calvinist, Lutheran, and Orthodox. The
7:35earliest printed Romanian books were
7:37made inside Transennylvania in a Saxon
7:40town with Protestant backers. So even
7:43the first Romanian print came out of
7:45Transennylvania's mix of churches and
7:47towns. My reading the language didn't
7:50need the state's help. It had its own
7:52church and now its own books. Between
7:551687 and 1711, Transylvania came under
7:59Hapsburg rule with the emperor's
8:01governors in charge. In 1765, it became
8:04a grand principality with a separate
8:06status. Hungarian historians call that
8:09separation a formality. Britannica
8:11counts it as part of Hungary again from
8:13the end of the 17th century. So I count
8:15it too. But these were Habsburg years
8:18and I'll call them that. Then the church
8:20story turns. Between 1698 and 1701, the
8:25Orthodox Metropolitan Atanai Angel and
8:2838 senior priests joined their
8:30communities to Rome. That created the
8:32Greek Catholic Church. In 1701, a
8:35diploma from Liupold I promised Greek
8:38Catholics the same rights as Roman
8:40Catholics, and that link to Rome led
8:42somewhere bigger. In the 18th century,
8:45Greek Catholic clergy started a movement
8:47now called the Transian School. It
8:49peaked between 1785 and 1815. Its aim
8:53document the Latin origin of Romanians
8:55and win them political rights.
8:57Inosentenu Miku Klene was one of its
9:00forerunners. Its petition the suplex
9:03libellis valorum dates from 1791. So the
9:06case for Romanian rights was made in the
9:08name of Latin and Latin it turns out was
9:12also the language of the Hungarian
9:14state. This is the fact that reframed
9:16the whole video for me. From the year
9:181,00 to 1784, the official language of
9:22state, law, and schools in the Kingdom
9:24of Hungary was Latin, not Hungarian,
9:27Latin. Hungarian only came into civil
9:30records gradually from 1844. So for most
9:33of those 800 years, there was no
9:35Hungarian state language to push on
9:37anyone. That's why Romanians resisted
9:40magurization can't be the whole answer.
9:43For most of that time, there was no
9:44language campaign to resist. In 1848,
9:48revolution. The Hungarians of
9:50Transylvania backed it. The Romanian
9:52peasants sided with the Hapsburgs. Same
9:55land, same year, opposite sides. After
9:58the revolt was put down, Transylvania
10:00became a separate Hapsburg crown land.
10:03Then in 1867, it went back to Hungary.
10:07And only now in the last half century of
10:09Hungarian rule does the real language
10:11push begin. It started with a promise.
10:14The 1868 Nationalities Law, Act 44,
10:17offered legal equality, including in
10:20language use. In practice, only
10:22Hungarian was used in government, the
10:24courts, and higher education. Then the
10:26laws tightened. 1879, the Primary
10:30Education Act. 1883, the Secondary
10:33Education Act. Both cut back
10:35non-Hungarian languages. Sources
10:37described them as breaking the spirit of
10:39the 1868 law. 1897 the Bani law.
10:44Official village names had to be in
10:47Hungarian. 1907 the Apony law. Every
10:50pupil had to express themselves in
10:52Hungarian spoken and written by the end
10:55of fourth grade. It covered church
10:57schools too. And from 1909, religion had
11:00to be taught in Hungarian. My reading.
11:03For the first time, the state's language
11:05was reaching into the church schools.
11:07But one number from a Hungarian source,
11:09Rafé, belongs beside those laws. In
11:121880, AustriaHungary had 2,756
11:16Romanian only schools. The Kingdom of
11:19Romania itself had 255.
11:23So, did it work? Partly. The 1910
11:26Hungarian census for the land later
11:28given to Romania counted 2,831,220
11:34to Romanians. That's 53.8% 8%. In the
11:38same area, the Hungarian share rose from
11:4024.9% in 1869 to 31.6% in 1910. The
11:46Romanian share fell from 59.0%
11:49to 53.8%.
11:52The policy was having a measurable
11:54effect. In 41 years, the Hungarian share
11:56grew by almost 7 points. That's what a
11:59real language policy looks like. It just
12:02arrived at the very end. And it wasn't
12:04enough. One caveat, the census recorded
12:08mother tongue and Hungarian speaking
12:10Jews were counted as Hungarian. So where
12:12did it fall short? In the villages.
12:15Magarization mostly reached towns and
12:17the middle class. It hardly touched
12:19rural peasant and peripheral
12:21populations. There language borders
12:24barely moved between 1800 and 1900. By
12:271910 about 87% of the kingdom's
12:30minorities could not speak Hungarian at
12:33all. And in 1910, only 28.2% of
12:37Romanians in the kingdom could read. For
12:40Hungarians, it was 67.1%.
12:43My reading, a school law only reaches
12:46people through school. And far fewer
12:48Romanians than Hungarians had been
12:50through one, and the push had started
12:53late. 1867 to 1918 is about 50 years. On
12:58the 1st of December 1918, a gathering of
13:01elected Romanian delegates in Albuia
13:03declared Transylvania's union with
13:05Romania. It's Romania's national day.
13:08The Treaty of Trionon was signed on the
13:104th of June 1920 and came into force in
13:13July 1921. Hungary signed under protest.
13:17It kept 28% of its pre-war land and 36%
13:21of its people. 3.3 million Hungarians
13:24ended up in neighboring states. more
13:26than 1.5 million of them in greater
13:29Transylvania became a minority in
13:31Romania. Two countries remember those
13:33years very differently. I'll leave both
13:35memories as they are. And Hungarian
13:37never left. In Romania's 2021 census,
13:411,2,151
13:44people said they were Hungarian. About
13:466% 1,38,86
13:50gave Hungarian as their mother tongue.
13:53Look at those two numbers again. About
13:5536,000 more people name Hungarian as
13:58their mother tongue than name themselves
14:00Hungarian. In Seikal land, Hungarians
14:03are 85.67%
14:05of Hagittita County and 73.74%
14:08of Kavasna. Murash and Satumare have
14:12large shares too. Remember the Seikles
14:14settled as frontier gods. Their name is
14:17still on the map. Back to the puzzle.
14:20Rome about 165 years. Hungary about 800.
14:25Here's where I have to be careful. It's
14:27tempting to say Rome's Latin stuck and
14:30Hungary's language didn't. But whether
14:32Roman Deia's Latin simply carried on
14:34here is exactly what the two theories
14:36fight about. So the years can't settle
14:38it. What I can say is this. Years don't
14:41decide a language. Systems do. And look
14:44at the system that ran here. The
14:45privileged union of 1438 had three
14:48members. And most Romanians weren't
14:50among them. Their church wasn't one of
14:53the four recognized ones. The state ran
14:55in Latin until 1784. And when the hard
14:58push for Hungarian came after 1867, it
15:02moved the towns and barely touched the
15:04villages. So why doesn't Transylvania
15:07speak Hungarian? Because for most of 800
15:09years, the system kept Romanians out
15:11instead of pulling them in. And when
15:13Hungary finally pushed its language
15:15after 1867, it had about 50 years and it
15:19barely reached the villages. And that
15:21turns the question around. Next time
15:23it's the Hapsburgs and Hungary. If an
15:26empire sat on top of Hungary, why didn't
15:29Hungarians end up speaking German?
15:32That's the next video. And if you're
15:33Hungarian, Romanian, Saxon, or Sikil,
15:36and your family story fits this or
15:39doesn't, tell me in the comments. That's
15:41where this video came

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