SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE DIFFICULTY

OF CREATING NATION-STATES:
THE TRANSYLVANIA CASE*
WESLEY J. REISSER

ABSTRACT. In the lead-up to the World War I Paris Peace Conference the United States con-
vened The Inquiry-a group of leading scholars-to propose equitable terms, including new
borders, for the final peace settlements. In many areas throughout Europe, among them
Transylvania, coming to a settlement that fully accounted for Woodrow Wilson’s principle of
self-determination proved difficult. Hungary’s populace comprised many nationalities, some
very hostile toward Romania, the state that eventually acquired the entire region. In this
article I analyze how the American plan differed from that finally adopted at the conference
and how closely The Inquiry’s plan for Transylvania followed the principles laid out by Presi-
dent Wilson in his famous “Fourteen Points,”which provided the basis for American partici-
pation in World War I. The ethnic mix within Transylvania made it an especially difficult
region in which to apply Wilsonian principles. Keywords: Borders, Europe, nationalism, peace
treaty, Transylvania, WorLd War I.

Transylvania, the rugged region that marks the southernmost extension of the
Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe, evokes images of Count Dracula and
other elements of Western mythology. However, for both the Hungarian and Ro-
manian peoples, Transylvania symbolizes the birthplace of their respective na-
tions. Transylvania is, and for thousands of years has been, an ethnically mixed
region. As such, it was highly contested between the Hungarians and Romanians
at the end of World War I, and it remains a thorn in Hungarian-Romanian rela-
tions to this day.
Only in the period immediately after World War I did the study of borders in
political geography include analysis of the process of proposal and negotiation that
precedes the creation of a new border, rather than focusing on a new boundary and
its functions (Kolossov 2005,611). Through the use of primary resources, especially
maps contained in reports given to President Woodrow Wilson, along with the writ-
ings of scholars who worked for him, such as American Geographical Society (AGS)
Director Isaiah Bowman, I investigate the process of redrawing Transylvania’s bor-
ders. By parsing the American proposal for reallocating Transylvania, along with
other proposals for the region presented at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919,’it is
possible to analyze the difficulties faced by the peacemakers at Paris in creating an
equitable peace based on Wilson’s principles in as ethically heterogeneous an area

* Funding and guidance for this research were provided by the George Washington University Geography Depart-
ment; special thanks to Marie Price. I would also like to thank John Agnew, Joe Dymond, and Tristan Sturm for
their helpful comments, along with the anonymous reviewers for the Geographical Review. Thanks are also ex-
tended to the Bunche Library of the U.S. State Department and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of the Johns
Hopkins University for providing access to the original papers used by the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace
Conference.

9c, MR. REISSER,a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. Department of State, is a doctoral candidate in
geography at the University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angles, California 90095.
232 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

as Transylvania and reinforces the difficultieswe continue to face in trying to imple-

ment the concept of national self-determination.

EARLYTHEORIES
OF NATIONS, A N D BOUNDARIES
STATES,
The rise of concepts such as “self-determination” and “nation-state” in the late
nineteenth century opened a new chapter in how we view political divisions through-
out the world. On the eve of World War I, most of the world was divided into
multiethnic empires. Europe itself consisted primarily of large multiethnic states,
with much of its territory split between the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman,
and Russian Empires. However, emerging new concepts were challenging the valid-
ity of empires and championing the liberating influence of the nation-state.
Geographical scholars, among others, were already attempting to define the con-
cept of a nation-state by the time the so-called Great War broke out. The promise of
self-determination espoused by President Wilson made it necessary to group people
into national units in order to properly uphold their collective rights. Under his
doctrine of self-determination, Wilson made it clear that all nations should have a
say in the creation of their laws. Rather than defining all subjects of a given state
together, which proved especially problematic when considering large multiethnic
empires, experts defined peoples on the basis of their perceived membership in a
national group. Albert Perry Brigham, writing in the Geographical Review, defined
nationality as a “unity of ideal, derived chiefly from hereditary experience or from
geographical environment” (1919, 212). He wrote that such groups wished to live
and act together, as well as to share a government. He also noted that nations were
not clearly defined racially, unlike many researchers of earlier periods who based
national identity partly on racial characteristics. Brigham’s definition of nationality
is inherently qualitative; due to this problem, use of such a definition would not be
possible in “scientifically”determining what nation any given group of people be-
longed to, as there would be no data from which to draw upon.
Leon Dominian, a member of the American Inquiry-the team of American
experts who compiled the American peace proposals for the Paris Peace Confer-
ence under the aegis of the AGs-wrote that nationality is an artificial product de-
rived from race and shared history (i917,4). To him, nationality has three funda-
mental elements: population, history, and geography. Along with many other experts
of the time, he chose language as the best indicator of national identity, stating that
“to separate the idea of language from nationality is rarely possible” (p. 1). This
marked a shift from earlier periods, as the cultural distinction of language became
paramount over earlier foci on physical and military boundaries among peoples
(Minghi 1963,413). Language is easily measurable through census data, so it is a
convenient way to define nationality.
The concept of the nation-state-that nations are best represented by their own
state-was also beginning to take hold in the early twentieth century, replacing the
imperial-state model. Brigham believed it was the better criterion for determining
which state a people should live in (1919,202). However, he did not go so far as to
 SELF-DETERMINATION A N D NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 233

propose that every nation should have its own state, merely that the peoples of a
nation should be in the same state. At the outbreak of World War I, Romanians
lived in three states-Romania, Austria-Hungary, and Russia-making them a good
example of a divided nation. Rectifying this problem became a component of the
American plan for peace in Europe.
For the first time, nationality-defined by language-was presented as the most
legitimate basis for a state during this period. The doctrine of self-determination
had become part and parcel with the concept of nationalism (Knight 1982). Previ-
ously, European dynasties had relied on other factors to maintain their legitimacy,
and their failure to adapt led to their downfall (Anderson 1991). Stability, defense,
power, and divine right had held the state together in earlier periods of European
history. However, the rise of nationalism challenged the imperial order to its core.
With the creation of the League of Nations and the end of the age of dynasticism,
the end of World War I marked the maturing of the nation-state concept as the new
norm (Anderson 1991).
The nation-state concept, which prescribes that each nation should occupy its
own state, defines such an entity as a state in which the membership of a distinctive
nation closely matches the boundaries of a particular state (Agnew 1998). However,
few states actually meet that specific definition. Political interference has caused the
Earth to be divided in ways that do not map onto a cultural perspective. A handful
of states are culturally homogeneous and may be accurately described as a nation-
state, but states that contain members of many nations remain the norm, despite
the rise of the nation-state ideal. Nevertheless, the nation-state ideal continues to
influence modern national identities.
In the lead-up to the Paris Peace Conference many scholars promoted language
as the best way to determine which nation a populace belonged to. Language affili-
ates closely to territory, for the language someone speaks often reflects where he or
she comes from. Benedict Anderson concluded that national print languages laid
the base for national consciousness and the imagining of the nation as a group
(1991). However, he went on to point out that, although most modern nations do
have a national print language, many nations share a language, and in many other
nations only a fraction of the population speaks the national language.
Throughout the twentieth century the ideas of nation and state developed where
political boundaries had long played a role in how humankind administered space.
Douglas Johnson noted that “boundary disputes have ever been potent causes of
war” (1917,208). When analyzing borders, it is important to consider both the fea-
tures used in the delineation of boundaries and the roIe a border plays as a divider
or promoter of exchange. L. W. Lyde presented an early definition of the role of a
border: an international feature that should be a promoter of peaceful relations and
a barrier to war (1916). In the lead-up to World War I borders played a central part
in the discourse of political geographers, especially in Europe.
Moving beyond the old notion of using “natural” boundaries-physical fea-
tures-between states, many World War I-era geographers argued that a border
234 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

should follow a demographic characteristic as closely as possible. Dominian sur-

mised that political and linguistic frontiers already coincided in Western Europe; in
Eastern Europe only artificial measures imposed by the imperial structure of the
region left nonlinguistic frontiers intact (1917).He wrote that modern boundaries
developed through a process in which natural boundaries originally separated
differing groups and that human developments later elaborated on this process,
with the result that natural boundaries eventually lost value in relation to national
boundaries. This process suggests that at one time physical feature boundaries
worked best but that changing societal norms created a situation in which borders
between peoples of different nationalities took precedence. Surface features were
no longer the appropriate means through which to define national boundaries.
However, Dominian did have his critics, among them Brigham (i919), who argued
that language was a poor criterion for boundary making and pointed to the success
of such multilingual states as Switzerland and Belgium.
Isaiah Bowman, as director of the territorial division of the American Inquiry,
sided with the advocates of using lines of nationality. He believed that people were
more inclined to fight over issues of language, religion, and nationality than any-
thing else and suggested that lines following nationality were necessary (Bowman
1928,y-33). He did, however, concede that this was a difficult criterion for bound-
ary demarcation. Factors such as nationality and religion do not stop at a certain
point, but a border must be continuous and definite, therefore requiring a line that
does not alter for minor circumstances but instead follows a more broad and gen-
eral route through the divide between linguistic groups.
Beyond analyzing a border, it is also important to determine what justifications
were used to advocate for a certain boundary demarcation. Historical justifications
are often the ones touted by a claimant group. This holds true for the World War I
peace deals. Alexander Murphy noted that, “although ethnic in character, the terri-
torial claims made at the Paris Peace Conference centered around historical consid-
erations, since ethnicity was seen in part as a consequence of a shared territorial
past” (1990, 536). Almost always, a territorial claim against a neighboring state is
justified as an attempt to recover land that has been wrongfully taken away (p. 534).
In Western Europe, due to the prior existence of nation-states, these demands were
minor in most cases, with the only major historical claim being France’s demands
for Alsace-Lorraine, territories that Germany had gained only forty years before.
However, Eastern European states had to go back farther in their histories to find
empires through which they could territorially define their state (White 2000, 58-
59). This often caused claims to overlap, and in some cases historic claims from the
ancient past were sought to justify boundaries. During the interwar period Roma-
nia and Hungary continued to demand adjustments of the Paris borders, and they
relied on ethnic-cum-historical arguments to justify these claims.
It was thought that in order for a state to survive intact, it must secure the loyalty
of all inhabitants in all regions and that it must also ensure that loyalty to the state was
stronger than loyalties to any outside states (Hartshorne 1950). Over a long period of
 SELF-DETERMINATION A N D NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 235

time, many national minorities integrate, especially if the state undertakes a concerted
policy of assimilation through public education and other government programs
(Minghi 1963). These needs are diametrically opposed to Wilson’s concept of self-
determination. Scholars preparing for the peace conference were aware that minority
populations would continue to exist in the new Europe they were proposing. There-
fore, they agreed, small groups in each state should have the same freedom of lan-
guage and religion as did the majorities (Patten 1915). This freedom was to be assured
by including treaties that protected minorities in the peace settlement.
Although the nation-state concept has not died, it has undergone many revisions
since the turn of the twentieth century. This has brought about changing conceptions,
not just in defining the nation-state but also in how territory is demarcated and ad-
ministered. Whereas the creation of new states and large-scale border readjustments
once held primacy in dealing with minority national groups in states, other tools,
such as political autonomy within the state structure, are now considered more often.
Although our understanding of the concepts of “border,” “nation,” and “state” are
more nuanced and advanced today, many of the ideas enumerated in the early twen-
tieth century continue to influence international relations and national identity poli-
tics.

TRANSYLVANIA
PRIORTO THE PARISPEACECONFERENCE
In this article I refer to the entire territory transferred from Hungary to Romania at
the end of World War I as “Transylvania,”although it also includes portions of the
Greater Alfold (the eastern Hungarian Plain) and areas of the Banat given to Roma-
nia. For the purposes of investigating this region and the competing claims for-
warded on it, it is best studied as one unit.
Any investigation of Transylvania must address the striking diversity of groups
residing in this region (Bryce and others 1919). Not just Transylvania,but the entire
Kingdom of Hungary was one of Europe’s most diverse at the start of the twentieth
century. It presented major challenges to cartographers of the time, for it was home
to seven major ethnic groups (Wallis 1916,177). In 1910 Hungary had a population
of 21 million people, only 50 percent of whom were Hungarians living alongside
Germans, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Ruthenians, Jews, and the largest minority, Roma-
nians, who made up 16 percent of the population (Wallis 1918, 158). This left the
Hungarian state in a particularly difficult position at the end of World War I, for the
ethnic diversity did not fit Wilsonian principles. Geographically, the Kingdom of
Hungary resembled a Magyar nucleus surrounded by a group of subject nations
(Wallis 1921, 426). For many experts, this clearly meant that Hungary would shed
peripheral territories following defeat at the end of the war.
The Kingdom of Hungary emerged in the Middle Ages at a time when only a
small portion of the peoples of the region spoke Magyar (White 2000,70).How-
ever, language played an important role for the Hungarians, partly due to its unique-
ness as one of the few non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. The
Hungarian revolution of 1848 gave rise to the dual monarchy in 1867 and defined
236 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Hungarians partly by the speaking of Magyar-a generous definition at that time,

for it included peasants within the nation, whereas most other definitions of the
time included only the upper classes (Anderson 1991,81-82). By making language
an integral part of being Hungarian, the reformed kingdom made it possible for
any subjects to be part of the nation by adopting the language-anything but an
exclusive policy for the time. However, the diversity of peoples within the kingdom
led Hungarians in later periods to define their rightful territory not through their
linguistic identity but by using the borders of Hungary to define what territory
should be within their state. Throughout its existence, the Kingdom of Hungary
failed to assimilate and absorb these minority groups, despite geographical factors
such as the well-bounded Hungarian Plain that tie this region together and make it
well suited to support one nation (Hartshorne 1938).
Within Transylvania, one of the original constituent parts of the Kingdom of
Hungary, lived a substantial Hungarian population at the outbreak of World War I.
This population centered around the city of Kolozsvar, today Cluj, Romania.2One
of the great rulers of Hungary, King Matyhs, supposedly came from KolozsvAr, and
the landscape there is replete with institutions that are key to Hungarian national
identity (White 2000,95). Prior to the war only Budapest surpassed Kolozsvar as an
important center of Hungarian public life (Wallis 1918).
East of Transylvania’s main cities a second major group of Magyar speakers have
also been long present. These “Szeklers,”or frontier guardsmen, live along the eastern
edge of the Transylvanian branch of the Carpathian Mountains. Although they are
culturally unique, by sharing the language of Magyar the Szeklers are closely tied to
the main body of Hungarians. Today the Szeklers are important to ethnic Hungarian
nationalists as a group because they are credited with the long-term preservation of
Hungarian folk culture, which survived better in the isolated regions of Transylvania
than in the more urbanized and industrialized regions of central Hungary.
Another major population group in Transylvania is Romanian. The Romanian
people long viewed Transylvania as an important part of their nation’s territory.
Transylvania served as the safe place to which Romanians could retreat and save
their culture from the onslaught of the Slavic peoples and the Turks (White 2000,
147). This strong identification of Transylvania for the Romanians made regaining
this land exceptionally important to the young Romanian state. The Romanians
did not have a historic kingdom-although the Roman province of Dacia is similar
in area to the regions claimed by the Romanians-with which to define their state,
so they chose instead to include the long politically separated area of Transylvania
in their definition of state, along with the regions of Wallachia and Moldavia that
formed the pre-World War I state.
The last large group that resides in Transylvania are Germans. The German
settlements are mainly a relic of medieval Austria’s need to defend the frontier from
Tatar and Slavic invaders from the east (Dominian 1917,157-158). German military
garrisons eventually settled in the region, leading to prolonged German settlement
in Transylvania, despite its distance from German Austria, far to the west.
 SELF-DETERMINATION AND NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 237

More than just linguistic affiliation has divided the peoples of Transylvania. The
way of life and settlement patterns of the groups show a marked difference. The
German and Hungarian populations have focused on towns, whereas the Roma-
nians have been primarily rural and agrarian. In many parts of Transylvania, these
groups have lived in close proximity, often less than 5 miles apart (Wallis 1916,182).
Because the Hungarian populations were mainly urban, the overall appearance was
that of “Magyar islands” superimposed on a rural Romanian populace (p. 182).
A religious divide has also driven the mutual antagonism of Romanians and
Hungarians. The religious breakdown of Transylvanians before World War I was a
complex mix of Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants: 67 percent of Romanians
were Orthodox, with the rest mostly Uniate Catholic; more than half of the Hun-
garians were Roman Catholic, with the Szeklers mainly Unitarian; and the German
population was mostly Lutheran (Wallis 1918,166).
At the outbreak of the war, Transylvanians numbered almost 2.7 million people,
nearly 1.5 million of whom were Romanians (Wallis 1918; Bowman 1928). The re-
maining population divided mostly between 865,000 Hungarians and 218,000 Ger-
mans (Wallis 1918, 160). These groups lived together in only a small portion of
settlements. Single-ethnicity villages made up more than 80 percent of cases in
Transylvania, based on the 1910 Hungarian census (Wallis 1916,182). The Hungarian
population, though much smaller than that of the Romanians, assumed almost to-
tal dominance within Transylvania (Dominian 1917,159). Hungarians made up the
majority of large-scale landowners and bureaucrats, among other dominant pro-
fessions. However, these Hungarians remained a privileged minority in Transylvania,
living far from the Hungarian population core in the Danube valley around Budapest
(Wallis 1918). The Hungarian state sought to end this imbalance by attempting to
bring uniformity to the population through assimilating the Romanian popula-
tion. However, these attempts met with widespread Romanian resistance. Hungary
entered World War I with a huge minority problem still on its hands in Transylvania
and elsewhere.
Romania remained out of the war in its initial phases but finally chose to be-
come involved when the Treaty of Bucharest was signed with the United Kingdom,
France, and Russia in 1916. The treaty promised Romania all of Transylvania in
exchange for a declaration of war on Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria (Hill 1945).
More than any other promise from the Entente-the alliance of Russia, France, and
the United Kingdom-it was the desire to annex Transylvania that drove Romania
into the war (Stevenson 2004). Notably absent from this treaty was the United States,
which was still neutral 1916.

THEAMERICANPLANFOR TRANSYLVANIA
In preparation for the upcoming peace conference, the problems of the Hungarian
periphery, including those of Transylvania, became an important focus for The In-
quiry. The American experts believed that the Hungarians were unrealistic in their
expectation that Hungary would not be dismantled at the end of the war; at best
238 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

they could hope to keep those territories in which Hungarians constituted the ma-
jority (Bowman 1928,317-319).
Even before The Inquiry’s work began, American experts argued that an ad-
justed frontier between Romania and Hungary should follow the edge of the Hun-
garian Plain, leaving the hills and valleys of Transylvania to Romania (Wallis 1916,
186). Dominian believed it almost impossible to draw a linguistic boundary be-
tween Hungarians and Romanians due to the ethnic mix in the area separating the
Szekler region from the main body of Hungarians in the Hungarian Plain (1917,
161). He proposed that the new Hungary should comprise the lowland Hungarians
of the plains and not include the Magyar-speaking groups in other areas (Figure 1).
In what has become known as his “Fourteen Points” speech to the U.S. Con-
gress on 8 January 1918, President Wilson did not provide The Inquiry with any firm
guidance as to how to approach the issues in Transylvania. Points X and XI pro-
vided the only clues to his thinking on this matter:
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see
safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous
development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories re-
stored; . . . and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by
friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and
international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial
integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. (Wilson [1918] 1984,536)

In point X the president promised the peoples of Austria-Hungary only autono-

mous development, not full independence. In no way did he suggest the disman-
tling of Austria-Hungary following an American victory in the war. Point XI contains
additional contradictions to his proposal. At the time of the speech, most of Roma-
nia had been overrun by the Central Powers, so Wilson’s call for the evacuation of
that territory is not surprising. However, he called for new boundaries in the Balkans
along historicallyestablishedlines of both allegianceand nationality. In Transylvania,
no close tie existed between the two: The historic line placed the region firmly in
Hungary, but the national line was totally unclear. Inquiry members were left in the
position of having either to recommend that Austria-Hungary be retained, with
new laws protecting minorities, or to call for dismantling the empire in order to
place peoples within their respective nation-states along frontier areas.
In its final “Black Book” (the top-secret list of border proposa1s)report to Presi-
dent Wilson on 21 January 1919, The Inquiry presented recommendations for the
American position on Transylvania. “The Black Book” called for Romania to gain
all of historic Transylvania,along with the ethnic Romanian areas in Hungary proper:
The union of Rumanians of Transylvania with the Rumanian state is desirable in
order that they should be freed from Hungary, by whom they have been harshly
treated in the past, and in order that people of like sympathies and speech should be
segregated with a common frontier. If this recommendation is carried out provision
 SELF-DETERMINATION A N D NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 239

Transylvanian Borders Proposed

after World War I

Border Language
- _ . Inquiry border proposal Hungarian

. - - - - CSTQRRY
-- border proposal k~manian

-
- - - Romanian border proposal
1914 Hungarian border
German
Slavic languages
Mixed GermadRomanian
(//A Uninhabited
FIG. 1-Three proposals for the Transylvania border were presented at the Paris Peace Confer-
ence. The Romanian proposal was west of the current border; the American Inquiry proposal, east
of it. The conference eventually settled on the proposal by the Big Four’s Committee for the Study
of Territorial Questions Relating to Rumania and Yugoslavia (CSTQRRY): a border that approxi-
mates the current Hungarian-Romanian frontier. However, all three borders failed to place most
people in their respective nation-state and, instead, favored the Romanian position in this ethni-
cally diverse region where it is difficult to clearly separate the populations. Sources: Dominian 1917,
82; CSTQRRY 1919, map 1; The Inquiry 1919, map 10. (Cartography by the author)
240 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

should be made for the minority rights of the people in the Magyar (Szekler)area of
eastern Transylvania. (The Inquiry i919,36)
The Inquiry saw no possible way to include the Szekler area in Hungary, so they
appealed to other parts of Wilson’s principles by calling for minority protections.
The Inquiry addressed the regions adjacent to Transylvania with large Romanian
populations in the Hungarian plain next: “There should be united with Rumanian
contiguous masses of Rumanian peoples in eastern Hungary outside the borders of
Transylvania. It is essential, however, that there be careful delimitation of the Ru-
manian-Hungarian frontier so as to do full justice” (The Inquiry 1919, 36-37). In
effect,“The Black Book called for Transylvania to be redefined from its old borders
to include majority Romanian areas due west of Transylvania, areas now consid-
ered part of the greater Transylvania region.
The Inquiry clearly decided that the American position on this frontier was one
that would dismantle parts of Hungary and transfer a huge area of approximately
39,700 square miles to Romania. In fact, in the Hungarian chapter of “The Black
Book,”the report proceeded even farther, calling for all areas of Hungary that wished
to be freed from Hungarian rule to be released. The Inquiry believed that Hungary’s
new frontiers should not be based on historic lines, although they conceded that
the newly proposed Hungarian state would lose two compact masses of Hungarian
population, one to Czechoslovakia and the other to Romania (The Inquiry 1919,
36). In the case of Transylvania, experts played down the loss of Hungarian areas,
stating that they were sparsely inhabited and therefore of less importance than the
size of their areas might suggest (Wallis 1918,162). The long distance between the
Szekler area and the rest of Hungary made it impossible to suggest that it remain in
Hungary as part of any final settlement (Bowman 1928,324). Romania gained huge
areas in total in The Inquiry’s suggestions for new borders.
“The Black Book” went beyond what President Wilson called for in his “Four-
teen Points.” Romania stood to gain a significant amount of territory at the expense
of Hungary, although this was land where the Romanian population was the great-
est. The Inquiry seems to have favored the propositions of point XI, calling for lines
of nationality in the Balkans, over those in point X, calling for autonomy. Nowhere
did “The Black Book” call for autonomy for the Romanians-admittedly relatively
few in number-who would be left in Hungary. It did, however, take this principle
into account in the recommendation for autonomy of Hungarians in the newly
expanded Romanian state envisioned, for a significant population of almost 1 mil-
lion Hungarians was to be transferred into Romania.

A FINALSETTLEMENT
NEGOTIATING
As the Paris Peace Conference neared, the situation in Hungary changed dramatically.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire split in two in late 1918. With the empire’s dissolution,
any hope of keeping intact Wilson’s Point X became moot. Luckily for the American
negotiators, The Inquiry never envisioned keeping Austria-Hungary intact.
 SELF-DETERMINATION AND NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 241

Following the armistice, the Romanian government moved quickly to solidify

its territorial gains against Hungary. The Romanians called a gathering of promi-
nent Transylvanians in Alba Julia and unanimously declared on 1 December 1918
that Transylvania would join Romania (USDS 1942, 2: 395-396). The Romanians
sought to legitimize the claims they had staked in the Treaty of Bucharest, signed
two years earlier. They also requested more lands than originally promised, on the
grounds that many Romanians resided west of the promised border.
Many experts, not just from the United States but also from other countries,
viewed the new Romanian claims as excessive, mainly due to the large numbers of
non-Romanians within the territories that Bucharest claimed (Bryce and others
1919). Many Transylvanians sent additional appeals to the major powers. Despite
the “unanimous” declaration at Alba Julia, large numbers of non-Romanian
Transylvanians opposed Romanian annexation. Transylvanian Protestants, both Ger-
man and Magyar, appealed to the world to halt the dismemberment of Hungary,
for they viewed Romanian annexation as a threat to their rights of worship, long
protected in the religiously diverse Austro-Hungarian Empire ( USDS 1942, 2: 202).
The Hungarian government joined the chorus of those protesting the actions of
Romania and presented four points to the peace conference on how Hungarian
territory should be dealt with: the geographical, economic, and historic unity of the
Hungarian lands should be preserved; division of Hungary would place many people
under alien rule; Hungary would be willing to give equal rights to all their nation-
alities following the Swiss model if left intact; and plebiscites, if conducted fairly,
should be allowable to confirm Hungarian sovereignty over these lands ( USDS 1947,
12: 372-374). More than this, the Hungarians also appealed to the “Fourteen Points”
and believed that only by following President Wilson’s vision could they retain their
territory. These protests reached the American delegation, but by that time events
in Paris were moving against them.
The Romanian government, under Prime Minister Ion Brhianu, argued strongly
to the delegation in Paris for the full transfer of Transylvania and adjacent lands.
The Romanians asserted the Hungarian subject nationalities had been long op-
pressed and suffered as second-class citizens in Hungary (Bowman 1928,377). Not
only were Romanians the majority population in these areas, but their population
was growing faster than were those of the Magyars and the Germans (Hill 1945).
This placed the demographic argument firmly with the Romanian claim to Tran-
sylvania and earned them a strong bargaining position at the conference. In his
early statements to other delegations, Briltianu asserted that Transylvania was the
home of the Romanian nation and argued that Transylvania contained far fewer
Hungarians and Germans than others had claimed (USDS i943,3: 845-847).
The Hungarians needed nondemographic arguments to legitimize their con-
tinued claim to Transylvania. The Hungarians argued that people long accus-
tomed to living together within established boundaries should not be torn apart,
because the disruption would destroy the long-standing organization of the re-
gion (Bowman 1928,323-324). This argument did not conform to the new ideals
242 T H E GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

that had been outlined by President Wilson and widely accepted by many parties
at the conference.
Early in 1919 the conference sent an American professor, A. C. Coolidge, to the
former Austro-Hungarian Empire for an on-the-ground fact check of the situation.
The Coolidge reports clearly outlined the fulljustificationsboth Hungary and Roma-
nia made to substantiate their claims to Transylvania. Romania based its claim on: a
population majority; control of the majority of the area; oppression of the Romanian
majority under the old Hungarian monarchy; integration of Transylvania would vin-
dicate the Romanian historical claims to the area; and the Allies had promised the
territory to Romania in the Treaty of Bucharest. Hungary based its claims on: the
superiority of Hungarian over Romanian Kultur; the long-standing economic affilia-
tion of Transylvania with Hungary; the inefficiency of the Romanian government; its
historic territory should not be dismembered; and the transfer of Transylvania to
Romania threatened to disrupt the peace of Europe (USDS i947,12: 407-410). The
Romanians had mastered the rhetoric of Wilson; the Hungarians seemed to be re-
lying on both threats and old-school diplomacy to substantiate their claims.
Along with sending Professor Coolidge, the Big Four states-the United States,
Great Britain, France, and Italy-created the Committee for the Study of Territorial
Questions Relating to Rumania and Yugoslavia (CSTQRRY) prior to their discus-
sions about how to shape the new borders, so that a full study of the ethnic com-
plexities of the Balkans would be on record for use by the plenipotentiaries. The
committee included two members of the American Inquiry, Clive Day and Charles
Seymour, who were considered experts on Austria-Hungary (1919). Although only
the Big Four were represented on the committee,Romanian Prime Minister Brkianu
was among those called to speak before the group. The Hungarian side did not
receive the same opportunity.
On 6 April 1919 the committee published its report on Romania. With regard to
Transylvania, the CSTQRRY recommended principles for use in the final demarca-
tion of a border between Hungary and Romania. The committee stated that the
ethnic principle could not always follow the linguistic frontier due to its complex-
ity; therefore, weight should be given to the Romanian side in areas where Hungar-
ian towns were surrounded by rural Romanians. It also called for the final treaty
between the Allied powers and Hungary-the Treaty of Trianon-to guarantee com-
plete autonomy to all minority groups in Transylvania regarding local administra-
tion, education, and religion. The final border the committee proposed was less
than that called for by Romania but included more territory than did that of The
Inquiry line that the United States initially proposed, incorporating an area with 4.3
million people, including 2.3 million Romanians and 1.9 million others, into Roma-
nia (see Figure I). The committee line countermanded the line that Romania pro-
posed, which would have netted it 4.9 million people, including 2.6 million persons
not of Romanian nationality. Although the committee report ameliorated the Ro-
manian claim somewhat, this solution still left large minority populations within
the proposed frontiers.
 SELF-DETERMINATION AND NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 243

In discussions of the Council of Foreign Ministers only modest dissent con-

cerning the Romanian report emerged.3 The Romanian government accepted the
CSTQRRY’S proposed frontier, rather than its earlier and larger claim. It even admit-
ted that in some areas a closer ethnic border lay east of the committee line ( USDS
1943, 4: 672-673). The admission is surprising, for the line it claimed was west of
that proposed by the committee.
During the CSTQRRY’S deliberations, events in Hungary spiraled out of control.
In March 1919 the Romanian government invaded Hungary with the complicity of
the Allies, based on the rise of a Bolshevik government in Budapest (Stevenson
2004,427). The shift in the political calculus severely damaged any remaining Hun-
garian claims to Transylvania (Bowman 1928,327;Stevenson 2004,427). Prime Min-
ister Mihaly Karolyi was overthrown and replaced by BCla Kun, who declared
Hungary a Soviet republic, only the second one in Europe following the creation of
the Soviet Union in 1917. It took the Romanians a few months to rout the BCla Kun
government, but by midsummer the Romanian army had moved into Hungary
proper, well beyond the lines originally claimed. The Romanians now believed that
they deserved even more territory, due to their swift action in stopping the spread
of Bolshevism (Bowman 1928,377).
Despite the Romanian intervention in Hungary, as work on the Treaty of Trianon
moved forward the commission’s proposed line remained the basis for the final
settlement. The Bkla Kun government fell to a conservative government in Budapest,
which was then presented with the Treaty of Trianon in January 1920. The final
treaty removed huge segments of Hungarian territory and was only ratified that
November under intense pressure. Hungary ended up with only 36,000 square miles
of the original kingdom’s 126,000 square miles of territory; Romania, which re-
ceived 40,000 square miles of territory, was the principal beneficiary (Wallis 1921,
426-429). The new borders ran through areas of mixed nationality. In addition to
the dramatic loss of land, the treaty left Hungary with only three-fifths of its prewar
population, including the loss of 3 million Hungarians to neighboring countries
(Bowman 1928; Brubaker 1997). This was a staggering loss for the Hungarians.
The final treaty gave the benefit of the doubt to any party other than Hungary
(Hartshorne 1938,207-208). That, along with the fact that Hungary was not given a
chance to present its case to the peace conference, gave rise to a perception among
Hungarians that the terms were imposed on them (Bowman 1928,317). The Treaty
of Trianon ended up being the most severe of the World War I peace treaties, much
more so than the Treaty of Versailles. AGS Director Isaiah Bowman summarized
the Hungarian situation: “It was the fate of Hungary to be caught between the effects
of defeat on the one hand and of claims of oppression on the other and to suffer the
consequences” (p. 322).

CONSEQUENCES SETTLEMENT
OF THE TRANSYLVANIA

The Romanian state that emerged from World War I was double its prewar size and
physically much more compact than almost any other European state (Sanders 1923).
244 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Romania had gained almost all of its people, but at the cost of acquiring large mi-
nority populations (Wallis 1921, 428). The new Romanian and Hungarian states
would experience tension over Transylvania for decades to come.
Immediately following the Romanian takeover, reports of problems emerged
from Transylvania. Transylvanian refugees in Budapest reported that Romanians
were deporting Hungarians from Kolozsvar, including anyone who would not
swear fealty to the Romanian government and anyone who had moved to the
region after the war broke out (USDS i947,12: 683). The Romanian government
was also sending orphans to Hungary and persecuting peoples not of Orthodox
faith (p. 715).
The Romanian government immediately took steps to ensure full integration of
Transylvania. It began by giving all of the major settlements in Transylvania Roma-
nian names, a practice widely adopted throughout Eastern Europe in lands that
changed hands following the Paris Peace Conference. For example, Kolozsvar, the
capital of Transylvania and a major Hungarian cultural center, became Cluj (now
Cluj-Napoca) in order to deemphasize the Hungarian majority in the city. Because
of the Hungarians’ oppressive measures during the Hapsburg period, that favored
Hungarians over Romanians in the region, the Romanians faced other transforma-
tions too. Transylvanian society had long been marked by a contrast between the
industrial and landholding ethnic Hungarians and the relatively poor Romanians
peasants who lived alongside them. The Romanian government pursued policies to
deal with this disparity. It changed the land laws to favor Romanian ownership over
that by Hungarians. The Romanians also made major changes in the educational
system, including the implementation of policies that discriminated against Magyar
(Sanders 1923). These attempts to bring Transylvania more fully into Romania, led
to other consequences: The Romanians antagonized the local Hungarian populace,
thus fomenting irredentism.
Both the Romanian and Hungarian governments share blame for fermenting
problems. Even though they ratified the Treaty of Trianon, Hungarian leaders con-
tinued to pursue a policy directed at regaining territories lost at the end of the war.
Hungary settled into a precarious situation in which it was on unfriendly terms
with almost every neighbor (Deak 1997). The Hungarian government pushed its
claims on neighboring territory throughout the 1920s. Its policy toward Transylvania
was especially pronounced in the term ket huzu (two homelands) (White 2000,93).
Even now, many Hungarians still use this term to describe the national sentiment
toward Transylvania.
During World War I1 the Hungarian government alignedwith Adolf Hitler,partly
due to promises of regaining Transylvania (Cadzow 1983). Through the Vienna
Awards Hitler allotted the northern two-thirds of Transylvania, including the Szekler
area, to Hungary while maintaining the southern sections of Transylvania in Roma-
nia. Late in the war the Romanians joined the Red Army in an effort to wrest north-
ern Transylvania from Hungary. At the end of war the border was restored to the
Trianon-delimited frontier, where it has remained ever since.
 SELF-DETERMINATION AND NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 245

Despite no further changes to the border, the dispute over Transylvania has not
disappeared. Magyars in Romania continue to desire separation from Romania and
are an excellent example of an irredentist movement (Mikesell and Murphy 1991).
Under the communist government, Romanian oppression of Hungarians contin-
ued to rise throughout the 1950s and into the 1980s. Even so, during the 1960s and
1970s a cultural reconnection of Transylvania and Hungary began. The Hungarians
now closely identify with their folk culture, and because their traditions were better
maintained in rural Transylvania, this area has gained heightened meaning as the
region most representative of Hungarian folk culture.
Since the collapse of communism in 1989 in both Romania and Hungary, the
Hungarian government has continued its call for the ethnic autonomy of Hungar-
ians living outside its borders. However, it no longer publicly calls for the integra-
tion of Transylvania into Hungary.
The continued strife over Transylvania following the Paris Peace Conference
demonstrates that the final settlement failed to establish a peaceful order between
Hungary and Romania. The American proposal would have done little better, for it
only gave Hungary a slightly larger area of border region in the Hungarian Plain
than what presented to Romania in the Treaty of Trianon. The American experts
faced a difficult situation regarding Transylvania in several ways. The “Fourteen
Points” were unclear regarding the Transylvanian situation. They called for the main-
tenance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an impossibility by the time the confer-
ence began, because the empire was already unraveling. The points also called for
the borders to follow the principle of self-determination, a principle that could not
be easily applied to a region with such a mixed population, both in spatial distribu-
tion and demography. The political situation in Transylvania shifted rapidly be-
tween the publication of “The Black Book and the final decision-making process
in Paris, thus making its recommendations dated even before their presentation to
the Allied governments. The American proposal would have left a slightly larger
number of Hungarians in Hungary but would have removed both the Szekler re-
gion and the important Hungarian cultural center of Kolozsvar from Hungary. Hun-
garians based their claim to Transylvania in large part on intangible factors-history,
important sites in Hungarian national discourse-making it difficult to provide any
settlement with territorial gains by Romania palatable to the Hungarians.
The settlement cannot be viewed as a success by any measure of the word. The
ongoing strife over Transylvania led to Hungary’s support for Nazi Germany and
poisoned the relationship between Hungary and Romania, even during the com-
munist era, when both states were behind the Iron Curtain. The only territorial
adjustments made were short-lived, for Hungary lost all of its spoils at the end of
World War 11. The demotion of both states to mere satellites of the Soviet Union
during the cold war kept any territorial adjustment out of consideration.
The Transylvanian situation suggests that in certain circumstances Wilsonian
principles could not be fully applied, due to the complex cultural composition of
an area, a criticism that still applies today in many areas where the rhetoric of self-
246 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

determination is used to justify changes to the territorial order. The doctrine of

self-determination continues to be a cornerstone of international dialogue and is
applied as justification for border changes, such as the continued breakup of Yugo-
slavia, most recently with Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Scholars of na-
tionalism have leveled many criticisms of this doctrine; however, the inability to
apply the concept to ethnically heterogeneous regions needs further exploration.
The Transylvania case is interesting as one of the first places in which an attempt
was made to apply concepts of self-determination where it is least easily applied.
Any chance for a near-term territorial adjustment between Hungary and Ro-
mania ended with Romania’s accession to the European Union in 2007. Now that
both nations are members, they must recognize each other’s frontiers as settled.
European Union laws concerning human rights and the gradual opening of the
border between the two countries will give ethnic Hungarians better access to their
kin without compromising the rights of the Romanian population in Transylvania.
It is likely that, more than eighty years after the Treaty of Trianon was signed, a
situation will develop in Transylvania wherein ethnic Hungarians and Romanians
can coexist in this highly contested corner of Europe.

NOTES
1. The Paris Peace Conference convened in early 1919 to resolve all outstanding issues following
the signing of separate armistices with each of the Central Powers-Germany, Austria-Hungary, Tur-
key, and Bulgaria-and to not only redraw borders and set economic terms but also create the League
of Nations. The conference resulted in the signing of the now infamous Treaty of Versailles with Ger-
many, as well as of separate peace treaties with each of the other Central Powers.
2. For a discussion of the current ethnic rifts in Cluj, see Brubaker and others 2006.

3. The Council of Foreign Ministers comprised the foreign ministers of all of the states repre-
sented at the Paris Peace Conference other than those of the Central Powers.

REFERENCES
Agnew, J. 1998. Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics. New York Routledge.
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Refictions on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd
ed. London: Verso.
Bowman, I. 1928. The New World: Problems in Political Geography. Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World
Book Co.
Brigham, A. P. 1919. Principles in the Determination of Boundaries. GeographicalReview 7 (4): 201-219.
Brubaker, R. 1997. Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples. In After Empire: Multi-Ethnic
Societies and Nation-Building, edited by K. Barkey and M. von Hagen, 155-180. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press.
Brubaker, R., M. Feishmidt, J. Fox, and L. Grancea. 2006. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity
in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Bryce, L., D. Berry, A. Keith, and J. Berry. 1919. Transylvania and Its Relations to Ancient Dacia and
Modern Rumania: Discussion. Geographicaljournal 53 (2): 146-152.
Cadzow, J. 1983. Transylvania: The Roots ofEthnic Conflict. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.
CSTQRRY [Committee for the Study of Territorial Questions Relating to Rumania and Yugoslavia].
1919. Rumanian Frontiers. Report No. 1. Paris: Service GCographique de 1’Armke.
Deak, 1. 1997. The Hapsburg Empire. In Afier Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building, ed-
ited by K. Barkey and M. von Hagen, 129-141. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Dominian, L. 1917. Frontiers ofbnguage andNationality in Europe. New York Published for the Ameri-
can Geographical Society by Henry Holt and Go.
 SELF-DETERMINATION AND NATION-STATES: TRANSYLVANIA 247

Hartshorne, R. 1938. A Survey of the Boundary Problems of Europe. In Geographic Aspects of Inter-
national Relations, edited by C. C. Colby, 163-213. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1950. The Functional Approach in Political Geography. Annuls ofthe Association ofAmerican
Geographers 40 (2): 95-130.
Hill, N . 1945. Claims to Territory in International Law and Relations. London: Oxford University Press.
The Inquiry. 1919. The Black Book. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., Bowman Papers, Box
13.13.
Johnson, D. 1917. The Role of Political Boundaries. Geographical Review 4 (3): 208-213.
Knight, D. 1982. Identity and Territory: Geographical Perspectives on Nationalism and Regionalism.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 72 (4): 514-531.
Kolossov, V. 2005. Border Studies: Changing Perspectives and Theoretical Approaches. Geopolitics
10 (4): 606-632.
Lyde, L. W. 1916. River Frontiers in Europe. Scottish Geographical Magazine 32: 545-555.
Mikesell, M. W., and A. B. Murphy. 1991. A Framework for Comparative Study of Minority-Group
Aspirations. Annals ofthe Association ofAmerican Geographers 81 (4): 581-604.
Minghi, J. 1963. Boundary Studies in Political Geography. Annals of the Association of American Ge-
ographers 53 (3): 407-428.
Murphy, A. B. 1990. Historical Justificationsfor Territorial Claims. Annals of the Association ofAmerican
Geographers 80 (4): 531-548.
Patten, S. 1915. Unnatural Boundaries of European States. Survey 34: 24-32.
Sanders, E. M. 1923. The New Rumanian State: Regions and Resources. Geographical Review 13 (3):
377-397.
Stevenson, D. 2004. Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy. New York Basic Books.
USDS [U.S. Department of State]. 1942-1947. Foreign Relations ofthe United States, 1919: The Paris
Peace Conference. 13 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Wallis, B. C. 1916. Distribution of Nationalities in Hungary. Geographical Journal 47 ( 3 ) : 177-187.
. 1918. The Rumanians in Hungary. Geographical Review 6 (2): 156-171.
. 1921. The Dismemberment of Hungary. Geographical Review 11: 426-429.
White, G. W. 2000. Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Wilson, W. [1918] 1984. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Vol. 45, November 11, z917-January 15, 1918,
edited by A. Link. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.