Made in Paris? Contested Regions and Political Regionalism during and after Peacemaking: Székelyföld and Banat in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

After World War I, when boundaries were redrawn in Europe, two territories were contested. Székelyföld, the eastern‐most part of the defunct dualist Hungary, was predominantly inhabited by Hungarians. Banat, which was to become a borderland of Greater Romania, was home to four significant ethnic groups (Serbian, Romanian, German and Hungarian) and a thriving Jewish community. These historically distinct regions were united with Hungary after the Settlement (Ausgleich) in 1867, but when borders were redrawn they were portrayed as specific entities within distinct national spaces. This article compares how different state and non‐state actors capitalized on the distinct nature of Banat and Székelyföld, how different types of arguments were deployed, and how proxies for a plebiscite (national councils, mass assemblies and demonstrations, deputations and memoranda to the Paris Peace Conference) were used to sway the decision to include these regions in Hungary or Romania. These efforts were part of a broader repertoire championing national goals, but in both cases the historical peculiarities and the pre‐1918 local social realities fueled regional identities that were distinct from Transylvanianism. The symbolic recognition of these regions as the most authentic Hungarian and Romanian ones during the mobilization of the masses around the Peace Conference reinforced Banat and Székely regionalism, which was then used by rival Hungarian and Romanian nationalist politicians to question the other nationality (distinguishing Székelys from Hungarians or emphasizing the loyalty to Hungary of certain Banat Romanian groups before 1918) leaving the Banat and Székelyföld entangled with different varieties of nationalism.