The Banat Republic: Europe's forgotten state 100 years after its founding

The actual proclamation was made in the city of Timisoara, now in Romania, by a 41-year-old military officer and politician, Albert Bartha, who immediately became the Minister of Defence and military commander of Banat under a younger political figure, the socialist Otto Roth, who also took part in the proclamation and soon designed the Banat flag – unsurprisingly given his political convictions it was mostly or even all red.

The two men set to work to build a new nation as quickly as possible and almost immediately achieved recognition from the new Hungarian People’s Republic. Indeed it was established early on that Banat and the Hungarian People’s Republic would eventually merge, but as we shall see, that never happened.

NEVER HEARD OF IT?
THE vast majority of people across Western Europe and elsewhere on the planet have no idea that Banat ever existed as a country.

The region lies north of the River Danube, south of the River Mures, east of the River Tisa and west of the Southern Carpathian mountains.

It was recognised as a region in its own right by the Romans, and as a fertile and strategically placed enclave in the middle of Eastern Europe it was fought over and occupied by numerous empires over many centuries. The Bulgars, Hungarians, Ottomans and Hapsburgs all ruled there for varying periods of time, but by the early 20th century it was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Banat – the name means simply a frontier region – was also a curious mix of ethnicities due to enforced immigration. German Swabians, French families originally from Lorraine, Jewish settlers, and Serbs all mixed with the native largely Romanian and Hungarian people.

Perhaps that diversity was why the Banat republic from the outset recommended a Swiss-style structure of cantons for the new country, and if that idea had caught on, who knows how different European history might have been,

WHAT HAPPENED TO BANAT?
SADLY for the 1.6 million people of the new republic, their neighbours to the south and west were not having any of it. In mid-November, the Serbian army of what would soon become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia marched into Banat and occupied not only the territory they claimed as Serbian but most of the rest of it, too. In effect the new country of Banat had lasted just about two weeks.

The Serbs took control of the west of Banat and incorporated large areas into Serbia, but elsewhere they did not need a resistance movement growing up against them and in a smart move they allowed Banat to continue as an entity and installed Roth as governor.

By February 1919, however, all trace of the Banat Republic had been erased from the new map of Europe.

Later in 1919, most of the Banat was divided between Romania and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes which became Yugoslavia. A small area was allotted to Hungary, and the people in each of these areas agreed to the split which had been included in the Treaty of Versailles and was confirmed in the 1920 Treaty of Vianon.

The Banat still exists as a geographical region, but remains split between Romania, Serbia and Hungary and there is no appreciable movement for Banat independence.

As for the principals in 1918, Bartha went off to Hungary and became Minister of Defence after World War Two before moving to the US. Otto Roth trained as a lawyer and practised in Timisoara.

WHAT’S THE LESSON FOR SCOTLAND FROM BANAT?
FIRST of all, no one should expect Scotland to become independent by mere proclamation as it would not be recognised by the international community. There will have to be a referendum.

Banat also shows that states come and go all the time. The current state we occupy, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is not set in stone and is only 96 years old.

Despite many decades of autonomy, the Banat region was never a nation or state.

Scotland most certainly was both, and for a lot longer than a fortnight.