Romanian National Party
루마니아 국민당
The party that represented the Romanians of Transylvania, the Banat and neighbouring regions under the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. Formed in 1881 by the union of two regional parties, it organised the 1918 Alba Iulia assembly that brought Transylvania into union with Romania. Afterwards it became a major party of Romania and led the government in 1919–1920, and in 1926 it merged with the Peasants’ Party to form the National Peasants’ Party.
In depth
According to the Romanian source, the National Party of Romanians in Transylvania and the National Party of Romanians in the Banat and Hungary were founded in 1869, and the two united at the Sibiu conference of 12–14 May 1881. Greek Catholics predominated in its leadership. Its programme called for restoring Transylvanian autonomy, the use of Romanian in administration and justice in Romanian-inhabited areas, universal suffrage and opposition to Magyarisation. The party refused to recognise the 1867 Compromise and kept to “passivism”, abstaining from Hungarian elections, until it switched to electoral participation in 1905.
In 1892 the party submitted the Memorandum to Emperor Franz Joseph, for which its whole executive committee was prosecuted and sentenced to prison at the 1894 Cluj trial. After Ioan Rațiu died in 1902, Iuliu Maniu, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod and Theodor Mihali became its new leaders. Initially the party aimed at reforming Hungary rather than secession and repeatedly sought compromise with the Hungarian elites, without result.
In October 1918 its executive committee at Oradea declared Transylvania’s independence from Austria-Hungary, and together with the Social Democrats the party organised the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia on 1 December, which voted for union with Romania. After the union it called itself the National Party and in August 1919 elected Maniu as president. In the November 1919 election it won 169 seats while standing only in Transylvania, becoming the largest party; it formed a parliamentary bloc with the Peasants’ Party and others and set up the Vaida-Voevod government, which King Ferdinand dismissed in March 1920.
In the 1920 election it won only 27 seats. In 1922 it merged with the Conservative-Democratic Party and moved its headquarters from Cluj to Bucharest, and in 1925 it absorbed Nicolae Iorga’s Nationalist People’s Party. On 10 October 1926 a congress in Bucharest approved the merger with Ion Mihalache’s Peasants’ Party, forming the National Peasants’ Party.