Download Economic Nationalizing in the Ethnic Borderlands of Hungary and

Economic Nationalizing in the Ethnic
Borderlands of Hungary and Romania
Inclusion, Exclusion and Annihilation in Szatmár/SatuMare 1867-1944
Anders E. B. Blomqvist
Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History at
Stockholm University to be publicly defended on Saturday 15 November
2014 at 10.00 in hörsal 7, hus D, Universitetsvägen 10 D.
Abstract
The history of the ethnic borderlands of Hungary and Romania in the years 1867–1944 were
marked by changing national borders, ethnic conflicts and economic problems. Using a local
case study of the city and county of Szatmár/Satu-Mare, this thesis investigates the practice and
social mechanisms of economic nationalizing. It explores the interplay between ethno-national and
economic factors, and furthermore analyses what social mechanisms lead to and explain inclusion,
exclusion and annihilation.
The underlying principle of economic nationalizing in both countries was the separation of
citizens into ethnic categories and the establishment of a dominant core nation entitled to political
and economic privileges from the state. National leaders implemented a policy of economic
nationalizing that exploited and redistributed resources taken from the minorities. To pursue this
end, leaders instrumentalized ethnicity, which institutionalized inequality and ethnic exclusion.
This process of ethnic, and finally racial, exclusion marked the whole period and reached its
culmination in the annihilation of the Jews throughout most of Hungary in 1944.
For nearly a century, ethnic exclusion undermined the various nationalizing projects in
the two countries: the Magyarization of the minorities in dualist Hungary (1867–1918); the
Romanianization of the economy of the ethnic borderland in interwar Romania (1918–1940); and
finally the re-Hungarianization of the economy in Second World War Hungary (1940–1944).
The extreme case of exclusion, namely the Holocaust, revealed that the path of exclusion brought
nothing but destruction for everyone. This reinforces the thesis that economic nationalizing through
the exclusion of minorities induces a vicious circle of ethnic bifurcation, political instability and
unfavorable conditions for achieving economic prosperity. Exclusion served the short-term elite’s
interest but undermined the long-term nation’s ability to prosper.
Keywords: Economic nationalizing, ethnonationalism, nationalism, economic nationalism,
ethnicity, borderland, Hungary, Romania, Austria-Hungary, Transylvania, Holocaust, antiSemitism, political economy, assimilation, ethnic economy, ethnocracy, minorities.
Stockholm 2014
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-108032
ISBN 978-91-7649-003-7
ISBN 978-91-87843-10-5
ISSN 0491-0842
Department of History
Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm