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by aries1980 3455 days ago
True, there was not much Wallachian (Romanian, that time) names, but Wallachian was one of the many ethnicities. The old word oláh (“vlach”) was used not just for Wallachians, but Cumans as well. In the wikimedia list you might find “Radó” (Radu in Romanian), which was one of the oldest noble family in the Hungarian Transylvania.

You are right, the religion, common values and culture mattered more than ethnicity. This is quite a standard among the nations, Wallachia and Moldavia was no exception. There were not much tatar, cuman, bolgar or pecheneg among the boiars.

1 comments

You're moving the goal posts.

There were 3 million Wallachians in Hungary (15-20% of the total population) at the time and barely a handful of Wallachian nobles in Hungary. Meanwhile in Wallachia and Moldova Tatars, Bulgarians were just a handful, most likely less than 1%. Cumans and Pechenegs were long assimilated in 1800-1900.

My point is that the previous poster was right: magyarization was the downfall of the multiethnic Hungarian state. Hungarian nationalism couldn't accept that >50% of the population in the Kingdom of Hungary wasn't actually Hungarian, they tried to forcefully assimilate groups which had no problems with Hungarian rule as long as they were left alone. The assimilation attempt backfired.

Trianon was a political action with a solid social backing.

The Hungarian nationalism did accept the multi-ethnic Hungary. You possibly know in the 1848 uprising against the Habsburgs was led by 13 generals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13_Martyrs_of_Arad) you can barely see Hungarian names. The poet's, who wrote and read the proclamation and started the uprising had the family name Petrovich (Petőfi in Hungarian). One of the general was called Josef Bem, Polish. The finance minister was Ferenc Duschek (sounds a Czech to me) and justice minister Sava Vuković (sounds Serbian) in the new government. Yes, there was no Romanian, but neither Cumans, Jassic, Rusins, Saxon, Schwab or Armenian either. In the uprising, prime minister Lajos Batthyány was initiated a negotiation about reforms with Brătianu (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VtKypkRfLtUC&pg=PA102&lp...). In fact, Hungarians in the state capital (Budapest) was in minority that time.

I do understand your emotions and as I stated, the matter of ethnic discontent was not handled properly. But try to put this into the context with the rest of the world politics. In such context, the 19th century Hungary seems pretty open-minded to me. Just read the text of the proclamation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_points_of_the_Hungarian_Rev... . It claims equal rights regardless the religion, end of serfdom and general taxation. Too bad the revolution has fallen.