The Rise of Titans? Economic Transition and Local Elites in Post-1918 Banat and Transylvania

Egry, Gábor (2024) The Rise of Titans? Economic Transition and Local Elites in Post-1918 Banat and Transylvania. EUROPEAN REVIEW OF HISTORY = REVUE EUROPÉENNE D'HISTOIRE, 31 (5). ISSN 1350-7486 (print); 1469-8293 (online) (In Press)

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Abstract

The article analyzes two interrelated aspects of the reconfiguration of business and managerial groups in the southern Banat, an industrial powerhouse of pre-1918 Hungary, and Transylvania, annexed to Romania in 1919. First, it analyzes the role of managerial groups in the survival of Budapest and Vienna high capital, and, second, the cooptation of new Romanian political elites into the existing structure of informal cooperation between economy and politics. The special position of the region within Austria-Hungary’s economic space created strong ties with the center, including notable investment by transnational capital in partnership with Vienna and Budapest business elites. However, while these companies were represented on the ground by managers and administrators, it was rather a multiethnic local economic elite that was entangled with other groups of local elites prior to 1918. After 1918, the attempt by Romania to strengthen Romanian capital at the expense of Austro-Hungarian businesses and the takeover of some of the administrative and most of the political elite positions at the local level by Romanian parties created a dynamic that endangered the existing balance. Subsequently, high capital used its existing business networks and engaged with Romanian capitalists to establish partnerships that preserved the influence of Austro-Hungarian owners. The managerial group of the transnational companies gained national significance as go-betweens, and the new local political elites were coopted with informal means to shield the owners from nationalization. Thus, the transition brought about a functional change of the role of the managerial group, but without making them more embedded locally. This equated to a partial reorientation of the region away from Budapest and Vienna and toward Bucharest as the new source of political but less of economic power, and a change within the political subgroup of the local elite, without, however, significantly modifying their practices of capital accumulation.

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