Table Of ContentLászló Kontier
A History of Hungary
László Kontier
A History of Hungary
Millennium in Central Europe
palqrave
1 ^macmillan
© László Kontier, 2002
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Published 2002 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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Originally published in English under the title Millennium in Central
Europe: A History of Hungary © Atlantisz Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1999
ISBN 1-4039-0316-6 hardback
ISBN 1-4039-0317-4 paperback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kontier, László.
[Millennium in Central Europe]
A history of Hungary: millennium, in Central Europe / László Kontier,
p. cm.
Published in 1999 in Budapest by Atlantisz under the title:
Millennium in Central Europe.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-40390-316-6 (cloth)
1 . Hungary-History. I. Title
DB25.1 .K57 2002
943.9-dc21 2002075298
10 987654321
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Create Print 8c Design (Wales), Ebbw Vale
CONTENTS
PREFACE 11
INTRODUCTION
REFLECTIONS ON SYMBOLIC GEOGRAPHY 13
CHAPTER I
THE LAND, THE PEOPLES, THE MIGRATIONS 21
1. Before the Magyars: ancient cultures and nomadic invaders 21
From prehistoric times to the Iron Age - 21; The Celts - 25; The Romans - 27;
The great migration of peoples: Huns, Gepids, Lombards, Avars and Slavs - 29
2. Ancient homelands: Magyars from the heart of Asia to the
fringes of the Occident 33
Theories of origin - 33; The Uralian and the Finno-Ugrian community - 34;
The migration of the Magyars - 36
CHAPTER II
THE MAKING OF A MEDIEVAL MONARCHY (895-1301) 41
1. The arrows and the ploughs of Hungarians: conquest, raids,
settlement 42
The conquest of the Carpathian Basin - 42; Hungarian society in the tenth
century - 44; The plundering raids and their termination - 46
2. Dynasticism and Christianity, saints and lawgivers 50
Prince Géza - 50; The Christian monarchy of Saint Stephen - 52; The turbulent
mid-eleventh century - 59; Consolidation under Ladislas I and CoIoman - 61
3. Feudalism: Europe and Hungary to the mid-thirteenth century 66
State and society in the West and in Hungary - 66; Cultural life in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries - 71 ; Wars, power struggles and the reign of Béla III - 73;
Social and political change under Andrew II - 75; The Mongol invasion - 77
4. Hungary’s second founding and the last of the House of Árpád ’8
Recovery under Béla IV - 78; The disintegration of royal authority - 82
CHAPTER III
GOLDEN AGES AND DECLINE (1301-1526) 85
1. The Angevin monarchy 87
Charles Robert and the new foundations of royal power - 87; Fiscal reform and
economic conditions - 90; Foreign relations under the Angevins - 92; The no
bility and the peasantry - 96; Fourteenth-century culture - 98
2. Challenges and responses: unruly barons and faltering mon
archs, Ottoman conquerors and a charismatic warlord 101
Sigismund of Luxemburg, his barons and the Turks - 101; The free cities - 106;
The Church and its problems - 107; Ottoman advance - 110; Baronial strife and
the rise of Hunyadi -113
3. Hungary’s renaissance king Matthias Corvinus 118
A centralised monarchy? - 119; The quest for empire - 122; A seat for the arts
and learning -125
4. Socio-political crisis and Hungary’s ‘deviation’ from the West 128
The geographical discoveries and their socio-economic impact - 128; The evap
oration of royal authority - 131; Peasant war - 133; The Ottoman menace -135
CHAPTER IV
WEDGED BETWEEN EMPIRES (1526-1711) 137
1. A bulwark of Christendom, or tripartite Hungary 139
From the Battle of Mohács to the fall of Buda - 139; Habsburg Hungary - 142;
The Ottoman province -144; Frontier warfare - 146; The rise of the Principality
of Transylvania -148
2. Protestants and Catholics: a creative contest 150
The phases of the Reformation - 150; Culture and education in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries - 152; The Counter-Reformation -156
3. Peace, war, and the century of Hungarian decay 159
Economic conditions - 160; The Fifteen Years War and its impact on Hungarian
society - 162; The golden age of Transylvania and the Thirty Years War - 168;
The decline of Transylvania and Habsburg centralisation -175
4. Hungária eliberata? The expulsion of the Ottomans and
Rákóczi’s War of Independence 181
The expulsion of the Turks and its consequences - 181; The first anti-Habsburg
struggle for independence - 185
CHAPTER V
ENLIGHTENMENT, REFORM AND REVOLUTION
(1711-1849) 191
1. Monarch and estates, and the limits of compromise 195
The post-1711 settlement - 195; The situation of the Hungarian nobility - 199;
Maria Theresa’s administrative and tariff reforms - 203
2. Monarch and estates, and the limits of the Enlightenment 207
The Enlightenment and enlightened absolutism - 207: The peasantry, the agrar
ian sector and education - 209; Joseph II, Josephism and its opponents - 212;
Noble reformers and Jacobin conspirators - 218
3. Unenlightened absolutism and Hungary’s Age of Reform 222
The conservative settlement - 222; The cultural, social and economic condi
tions of a national revival - 226; Reform diets and the liberal nobility - 231;
Culture and national awakening among Hungary’s peoples - 241; Conserva
tives and liberals - 244
4. The Revolution and War of Independence of 1848-1849 246
The diet, the revolution and the constitution - 246; Armed conflict and struggle
for self-defence - 252; Independence, intervention and defeat - 257
CHAPTER VI
THE ADVENT OF MODERNITY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF
THE OLD REGIME (1849-1918) 261
1. Neo-absolutism and the Compromise 264
Retaliation and settlement - 264; Social and economic conditions in the post
revolutionary period - 267; Passive resistance and the Hungarian émigrés - 269;
The crisis of 1859-1861 - 272; The road to the Compromise of 1867 - 275
2. The ‘happy times of peace* and the mirage of greatness 279
Attitudes to the Compromise - 279; The nature of politcs, the nationality ques
tion and the parties - 281 ; The politics of consolidation and the Millennium - 284;
Towards the crisis of dualism - 293
3. Progress, prosperity and the flowers of decay 302
Agriculture and rural society - 303; Prospects of social mobility and the system
of education - 306; Industry, commerce and the urban classes - 307; Urbani
sation and urban culture - 310; Art, music and literature - 314
4. Hungary in the Great War 319
Military events - 319; Wartime diplomacy - 320; The tribulations of the hinter
land - 322; The challenge to territorial integrity - 323
CHAPTER VII
IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY (1918-1945) 325
1. Revolutions and dismemberment: Hungary in the new
order of Central Europe 328
The democratic revolution of 1918 - 328; The Hungarian Soviet Republic - 334;
Counter-revolution and the Peace Treaty of Trianon - 339
2. The consolidation and the trials of a conservative regime 345
The nature of the Horthy regime and politics in the 1920s - 345; Economy, so
ciety and culture in the interwar era - 351; The economic depression - 362
3. On a fixed course: Hitler’s reluctant satellite and
the Second World War 364
The radical Right in government - 364; With Germany, for the revision of Tri
anon - 371; Hungary’s involvement on the eastern front - 372; German occu
pation, the Hungarian Holocaust and the terror of the extreme Right - 383
CHAPTER VIII
UTOPIAS AND THEIR FAILURES (1945-1989) 387
1. Reconstruction, democracy and people’s democracy 391
The chances of democracy - 391; The communist take-over - 402
2. The Fifties: Stalinism, the ‘new course’ and the Revolution of
1956 407
The Rákosi dictatorship, political terror and the remoulding of society - 407;
The regimentation of cultural and economic life - 414; The power struggles of
1953-1956 - 421; The Revolution of 1956 - 426
3. ‘The longest path from capitalism to capitalism’,
or the limits of Realsozialismus 430
Retaliation and the consolidation of the Kádár regime - 43O;The making of
goulash communism and the economic reform of 1968 - 437; Liberties without
freedom - 442; Foreign relations under Kádár - 452; The resumption and the
failure of the reform process - 456; The road towards the transition to democ
racy - 459
EPILOGUE 469
LIST OF MAPS 483
NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION 484
BIBLIOGRAPHY
485
INDEX 492
