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# The Partial Integration of Tradesmen with Special Legal Status

One source of social tension in the towns gradually disappeared: the barrier between citizens belonging to the estates and foreigners with special legal status. The main beneficiaries were the largest {2-659.} group of foreigners, the Armenians. When, in 1776, a young Armenian from Transylvania completed his studies with great distinction in Vienna, the government authorities remained adamant that he could not join the civil service. Incensed by this rigidity, Maria Theresa granted the right to all Armenians.

At the time, her act seemed to be one of royal caprice. In 1786, the two largest Armenian settlements, Szamosújvár and Erzsébetváros, were given the status of royal free boroughs. This would have entitled them to join the estates, subject to endorsement by the 1790–91 diet. However, the estates demanded that the two towns give up an exemption, not enjoyed by other royal free boroughs, from quartering troops and providing relay mounts. Decades of wrangling followed, and the issue was resolved only in the next historical period. In the meantime, the two Armenian towns exercised all the rights of royal free boroughs, and thus, apart from the matter of representation in the diet, their special legal status was effectively abrogated. In 1794, the third largest Armenian settlement, Gyergyószentmiklós, also sought the status of royal free borough, but it only managed to obtain the establishment of a separate commercial tribunal (Forum Mercantile) for members of the Armenian colony there and at Csíkszépvíz. In other respects, the municipal status of Gyergyószentmiklós remained the same as that of market towns and villages. Individual Armenians were already well on their way to integrating into Transylvania's sociopolitical order. The preceding period had already seen Armenians acquire letters of nobility and estates.

The situation was more complex in the case of the Greek, Aromân, and Romanian merchants who, by the beginning of this period, outnumbered Saxon merchants in Brassó. In 1781, of the 122 members of this group, only 15 were full-fledged members of the Greek company, while an additional 24 — mostly Romanians — were 'illegal' members. The legal status of the others remained essentially unsettled. Change came in various forms. In 1777, the {2-660.} Greek trading companies of Szeben and Brassó obtained new charters, but the benefits were mixed. On the one hand, members of the companies received the right to retail all goods in their homes and at markets as well as to open shops. On the other hand, they were required to swear allegiance to the crown, and to resettle their families from the Ottoman lands to Transylvania, thus losing the commercial advantages of being Turkish subjects. Thus they retained a special legal status.

Others in the group chose to obtain rights of citizenship in their place of residence as members of one of the recognized 'nations'. Most of the Romanian merchants in Brassó pursued a third option. Towards the end of the period, they tried, without success, to obtain the privilege of forming a separate trading company, which would have brought them special legal status.

The most eminent members of this category of merchants took a fourth route: following the example of some Armenians, they acquired estates and adopted the lifestyle of the nobility. The transition from the insecure circumstances of southeast European trader to the lifestyle of a nobleman followed a typical pattern. Mihail Ţumbru was a 'first generation', immigrant Aromân trader possessed of great wealth; he still made his clothes last by having them turned inside out, and he bought second-hand furniture at auctions, but he also ordered pewter dinnerware from Vienna as well as tablecloths from Linz and Rumburg. The 'second generation' children of the Marcu trading company's founder acquired estates consisting of mortgaged land as well as leased land in the Fogaras district and, for a time, vineyards in Wallachia. One of the Marcu brothers, Dimitrie, devoted all his time to the estates; he resided in a manor at Szombatfalva, or in Fogaras, and generally adopted the way of life of the nobility. Most of the brothers carried on commercial activities. Other links were forged: one of the daughters of Marcu, the firm's founder, married Dimitrie Eustatievici, the preeminent figure of the period's Romanian Orthodox intelligentsia. {2-661.} However, not all of these Aromân burghers were orientated toward Romanian culture. Toma Dimitriu, who originated in the Macedonian town of Seatişte, subscribed to the Greek paper Ephimeris, which was published in Vienna by Macedonian Aromân followers of Riga Velestin.

There was still no progress in the integration of Jews into Transylvanian society. In 1781, at the beginning of Joseph II's reign, the central government took the position that although Jews had been admitted to Transylvania at a time when the principality was short of merchants, there was now a surplus of merchants. It therefore ruled that only native-born Jews and those who had lived in Transylvania for at least thirty years were allowed to remain in the country, and, citing the Approbatae Constitutiones in justification, instructed that they be all resettled in Gyulafehérvár; the others were given twelve months to leave Transylvania. The decree was withdrawn within the year, but there was no favourable change in the status of the Jews over the rest of the period. Transylvania's Jews did not try to compete with the commercially dominant Armenians, Greeks, Romanians, Aromâns, and Saxons. Instead, many turned to distilling brandy and to operating mills and taverns under lease. Those who did not belong to the Gyulafehérvár colony became cotters, thus paying a considerable tax to obtain a landowner's protection.

Regardless of the degree to which these special groups of foreigners came closer to the legal status of the three 'nations', they continued to compete for a place in the sun and came to form distinct ethnic interest groups. In the next period, Brassó's Romanian merchants would come to embody a distinctive orientation in the national politics of Transylvania's Romanians.