Iosif Sterca Sulutiu, "Ioan Dragos. Biografie,"
Transilvania, XXIX (1898), Nr. 2-3, 25-60.
Silviu Dragomir, Avram Iancu Bucharest, 1965.
Ambrus Miskolczy, "Roumanian-Hungarian Attempts at Reconciliation
in the Spring of 1849 in Transylvlania: Ioan Drago's Mission,"
Annales Universitatis Eötvös, Historica, X
XI
(1981), 61-81.
JGC revised this file
(http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/dh/dragos.htm) on
February 20, 1999.
Please E-mail comments or suggestions to chastain@www.ohiou.edu
© 1999 James Chastain.
Ioan Dragos (1810-1849) One of the most controversial
personalities of the 1848-1849 Revolution in Transylvania, Ioan
Dragos was born in Oradea. A noble
man by birth, he was educated
mostly in Hungarian schools at Beius and Oradea, and then worked as
a jurist comitatens. Radicalized by the outbreak of the revolution
in 1848, Dragos became active in the political movement of the
Romanians in Hungary and in confronting the Magyar oligarchy in the
Bihor. He did not, however, concur with the decisions of the
Romanian national assembly at Blaj in May, 1848, opting to support
the union of Transylvania with Hungary. In June 1848, he was
elected to the Pe
st Diet, where he became a fervent support of
Lajos Kossuth.
In April of 1849, he was commissioned by Kossuth to negotiate
with the leaders of the Transylvanian Romanian movment in an
attempt to bring about rapproachment between Romanians and
Magyars. Dragos' mission to the Apuseni Mountains, suspect from
the start, ended tragically. While he was negotiating with Avram
Iancu, Ioan Buteanu, and others, Kossuth ordered the resumption of
military operations against Romanian forces in the Apusen
i region.
Two Romanian prefects, Buteanu and Petre Dobra, were captured (and
later executed) by Emeric Hatvani's forces, who also burned the
city of Abrud. Dragos, whose mission had wittingly or unwittingly
betrayed the Romanian cause, was captured and executed by the
Romanians following their successful recapture of Abrud.
Dragos remains to Romanian nationalists a striking example of
unlikely efforts to achieve compromise between the Romanians and
the Hungarians, of someone who was manipulat
ed by the Magyars
against the national interests of his own people.
Gelu Neamtu
Bibliography