After Rákóczi's War of Independence had failed, the Peace of Szatmár was concluded in 1711: Habsburg control over Transylvania was consolidated, and the Princes of Transylvania were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors (Gubernatoren). In 1765 Maria Theresa and her son Emperor Joseph II proclaimed the Grand Principality of Transylvania, consolidating the special separate status of Transylvania within the Habsburg Monarchy, established by the Diploma Leopoldinum in 1691.
From about 1734 onwards, southern Transylvania became the settlement area of German-speaking Transylvanian Landler expellees, Crypto-Protestants from the Habsburg hereditary lands of Upper Austria, Styria and Carinthia, who were exiled to the easternmost outpost of the Habsburg Monarchy. The area around Sibiu (Hermannstadt) had been colonized by Transylvanian Saxons since medieval times; here the Landler had to settle in regions devastated during the Great Turkish War.
The majority of the Transylvanian population was Romanian, many of them peasants working for Hungarian magnates under the precarious conditions of serfdom. The 1784 Revolt of Horea, Cloșca and Crișan, however, and all demands of political equality were of no avail.
During the 1848 Revolutions, the Hungarian insurgents called for the re-unification of Transylvania with Hungary – opposed by Romanian (Wallachian) revolutionaries led by Avram Iancu and Austrian forces led by Karl von Urban – but also for the abolition of serfdom. The April Laws of 1848 proclaimed the re-unification, but after the Hungarian revolt was crushed, Transylvania remained under military administration for several years, and the March Constitution of Austria defined the Principality of Transylvania as being a separate crown land that is entirely independent of Hungary.[10]
In 1853, the Transylvanian Military Frontier, which existed from 1762, was abolished and again incorporated into Transylvania.
The 1863-1864 Transylvanian Diet summoned in Sibiu (the first meeting of Transylvania's governing body after the 1848 Revolution) proclaimed that the Romanian nation, language, and cults (Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) were to be elevated to the same rank as those of the other nations, thus granting Romanians complete equality of rights with the rest of the inhabitants of Transylvania. Also, it was on this occasion that the Romanians held the relative majority of seats in the Transylvanian Diet for the first time, following a provisional, liberal regulation (Romanians: 48 deputies for 1,300,913 inhabitants or one deputy for 28,280 people; Hungarians: 44 deputies for 568,172 inhabitants or one deputy for 12,913 people; Saxons: 33 deputies for 204,031 inhabitants or one deputy for 6,370 people).[11]
In September 1865, the emperor, now looking for a reconciliation with the Hungarians amidst the pressing Austrian military and economic crisis, dissolved the Sibiu Diet and convened a new diet in Cluj, chosen according to a different electoral regulation, one that grossly favored the Hungarian side. On 19 November 1865, this new Transylvanian Diet voted for the affiliation with Hungary. With the subsequent Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich), the centuries-long autonomous status of Hungarian nobility, Székelys and Transylvanian Saxons ended and the Grand Principality of Transylvania was incorporated into Hungary proper within the Dual Monarchy, codified on 6 December 1868.[12]
Following the Compromise, on 3 May 1868, during a popular assembly attended by some 60,000 peasants from throughout Transylvania, the representatives of the Transylvanian Romanians issued the Blaj Pronouncement, a political declaration against the Hungarian system of government that did away with Transylvania's long-standing autonomy. It called for the autonomy of Transylvania, the reopening of its Diet on the basis of proportional representation, and the recognition of the laws approved by the Diet of Sibiu. It specified that Romanians did not recognise the Parliament of Hungary or its right to make laws for Transylvania. At the same time, the document expressed the principles of the passivist doctrine of refusing to recognise Hungarian institutions and boycotting the country's political life.
Unio Trium Nationum, pact between the three Estates of Transylvania (Hungarian nobility, Saxon patricians, and free Székelys), which endured into the 19th century
^Prof. dr. PÁL Judit - Unió vagy autonómia? Erdély uniójának törvényi szabályozása. Magyar Kisebbség. Nemzetpolitikai szemle. Új sorozat. XIV. évf. 2009. 1-2. (51-52.) sz. 64-80. - Prof. dr. PÁL Judit - Union or autonomy? The legal reagulation of the union of Transylvania. Magyar Kisebbség. Nemzetpolitikai szemle. Új sorozat. XIV. évf. 2009. 1-2. (51-52.) sz. 64-80.
^Károly Kocsis, Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi, Ethnic Geography of the Hungarian Minorities in the Carpathian Basin, Simon Publications LLC, 1998, p. 102 (Table 19) [1]
^Acsády Ignác: Magyarország népessége a Pragamtica Sanctio korában, Magyar statisztikai közlemények 12. kötet - Ignác Acsády: The population of Hungary in the ages of the Pragmatica Sanction, Magyar statisztikai közlemények vol. 12.