Economic Nationalism in Transylvania
Economic Nationalism in Transylvania

Summary/Abstract: While state-level economic nationalism is well known in historiography, the economic component of regional national movements received less attention. This paper presents the main features of the economic nationalism promoted by the national entities from Transylvania via their cooperative movements. After a short chronological presentation, the paper focuses on features common or mutually adopted by Saxons, Romanians and Hungarians from Transylvania before World War I. The paper illustrates conscious nation building strategies articulated in political manifestos and realized in entrepreneurial statutes and economic programs. While they reassured the collaboration of institutions inside a national group, they were also serving to prevent the transgression of ethnic borders. The main functions were to be autonomous and national economy was to be coterminous with the boundaries of the national entity. Since national and political conflicts tended to overlap economic concurrence, economy, commodities and finances were voluntarily ethicized. Symbolic economic nationalism became inherent with institutionalized nation building.

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