Nobility in The Kingdom of Hungary - The Modern Age

The Modern Age

After the obscure kuruc age and the relative quiet Maria Theresa's era, Joseph II (1780–90) brought important alterations for the Hungarian nobles. He was a dynamic leader who was influenced by the Enlightenment. He decreed that German replaces Latin as the empire's official language and granted peasants the freedom to leave their holdings, to marry, and to place their children in trades. Hungary, Slavonia, Croatia, the Military Frontier and Transylvania became a single imperial territory under one administration, called the Kingdom of Hungary or "Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen" (before Royal Hungary form was used). When the Hungarian nobles again refused to waive their exemption from taxation, Joseph banned imports of Hungarian manufactured goods into Austria and began a survey to prepare for imposition of a general land tax. Joseph II.'s reforms outraged nobles and clergy of Hungary. Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language and culture, and a cult of national dance and costume flourished. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Hungarians, and even those had become French- and German-speaking courtiers. The Hungarian national reawakening subsequently triggered national revivals among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, and Croatian minorities within Hungary and Transylvania, who felt threatened by both German and Hungarian cultural hegemony.

Natio Hungarica came to refer to the privileged group that had corporate political rights of parliamentary representation, i.e. the prelates, the magnates and the nobles. This conception was accepted in Szatmar Treaty of 1711 and in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1722; it remained valid until 1848.