Hungarian Studies Review

250 Pages·2010·18.66 MB·English

HSK.
Hungarian Studies Review
Vol. XXVIII, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall, 2001)
Special Volume:
Hungary: 1001-2001
A Millennial Retrospection
Essays on thousand years of Hungarian history
and Hungarian survival by:
Laszlo Veszpremy, Zoltan Kosztolnyik,
Geza Palffy, Janos Barta,
Peter Pastor, and Bela Bodo
with an introduction and a postscript by:
N. F. Dreisziger
HUNGARIAN STUDIES REVIEW
HUNGARIAN STUDIES NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF CANADA SZECHENYI LIBRARY
VOL. 28, NOS. 1-2 (SPRING-FALL 2001)
EDITORS
GEORGE BISZTRAY N.F. DREISZIGER
University of Toronto Royal Military College of Canada
EDITORIAL ADVISERS
OLIVER BOTAR GEZA JESZENSZKY
University of Manitoba Budapest and Washington
ILONA KOVACS MARIA KRISZTINKOVICH
National Szechenyi Library Vancouver, B.C.
BARNABAS A. RACZ ISTVAN MONOK
Eastern Michigan U. National Szechenyi Library
AGATHA SCHWARTZ THOMAS SAKMYSTER
University of Ottawa University of Cincinnati
THOMAS SPIRA S.B. VARDY
U.P.E.I. Duquesne University
SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER
EVA TOMORY
Toronto
Correspondence should be addressed to: The Editors, Hungarian Studies Review,
University of Toronto, 1 Spadina Cres. Rm. 104, Toronto, ON Canada M5S 1A1
E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]
Articles appearing in the HSR are indexed in: HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS and,
AMERICA: HISTORY AND LIFE.
Copyright © (2001) the Hungarian Studies Review.
ISSN 0713-8083 (replacing 0317-204X)
The Hungarian Studies Review is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the
publication of articles and book reviews relating to Hungary and Hungarians.
Since its launching in 1974, the Review has been a forum for the scholarly
discussion of issues in Hungarian history, politics and cultural affairs.
Subscriptions are $12.00 per annum. Membership in the Hungarian Studies
Association of Canada includes a subscription to the journal. For further informa-
tion, visit our web-pages: www.hungarianstudies.org and www.ccsp.sfu.ca/calj.hsr
Statements and opinions expressed in the HSR are those of the individual authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the journal's editors.
Desk-top typesetting by N.F. Dreisziger. Printed^ in Hungary. Distributed by the
National Szechenyi Library: Budavari Palota, F Eptilet, 1827 Budapest, Hungary.
Special Volume:
Hungary 1001-2001:
A Millennial Retrospection
Essays on thousand years of Hungarian history
and Hungarian survival by:
Laszlo Veszpremy,
Zoltan Kosztolnyik,
Geza Palffy,
Janos Barta,
Peter Pastor,
and Bela Bodo
with an introduction and a postscript by
N. F. Dreisziger
Forthcoming in out next volume:
(vol. XXIX, spring-fall 2002)
Women and Hungary
Part II
edited by
Agatha Schwartz
Essays in Twentieth Century Politics, Education,
History and Literature by
Katalin Fabian
Andrea Peto
s
Agnes Huszar Vardy
Maria Palasik
Agatha Schwartz
and
Lee Congdon
(plus book reviews)
CONTENTS
Thousand Years of Hungarian Survival: An Introduction 1
Medieval Hungary 4
The Ottoman Era 8
The Habsburg Era 14
The First World War and the Treaty of Trianon 28
The Second World War and its Aftermath 36
The Threat of Demographic Decline 46
Notes 55
N. F. DREISZIGER
Hungary's Conversion to Christianity: The Establishment of Hungarian
Statehood and its Consequences to the Thirteenth Century 73
Consequences 80
Conclusions 85
Notes 88
LASZLO VESZPREMY
Dynastic Intrigues and Domestic Realities during the Reigns
of Andrew I and Bela I 93
The Reign of Andrew I 95
The Reign of Bela I 100
Conclusions 102
Notes (and a note on sources) 103
Z. J. KOSZTOLNYIK
The Impact of the Ottoman Rule on Hungary 109
The Consequences of the Battle at Mohacs 110
Hungary as a Battleground: The Impact of Warfare .... 112
Economic and Other Losses 119
Changes in the Demographic and Ethnic Map 121
Hungary and Europe 124
Notes 125
GEZA PALFFY
Contents (continued)
Habsburg Rule in Hungary in the Eighteenth Century 133
Conditions in Post-Ottoman Hungary 136
Recovery from Ottoman Rule 138
Hardships of Life in 18lh Century Hungary 141
Habsburg Policies Promoting Progress 142
Habsburg Policies Causing Conflict 148
Hungary's Return to Europe 157
Notes 158
JANOS BARTA
Hungary in World War I: The End of Historic Hungary 163
Miscalculations and Disasters 166
The War's Impact on Hungary 169
Defeat and its Consequences 177
Notes 178
PETER PASTOR
Progress or National Suicide: the Single-Child Family in Hungarian
Political Thought, 1840-1945 185
The Controversy over Contraception before 1914 186
The Egyke Debate between the Wars 187
The Egyke in Modern Scientific Discourse 195
The Source of the Egyke as a Cultural Concept 197
The Debate's Outcome 202
Notes ; 204
BELA BODO
Hungarian Survival — in Hungary and Beyond the Borders:
A Postscript 209
Survival in the Neighbouring States 210
Survival in the Diaspora 222
Survival in Hungary: Conclusions 227
Notes 230
N. F. DREISZIGER
Our Contributors 237
Preface
Historians usually date the existence of the Christian Kingdom of
Hungary from the coronation of Stephen I a millennium ago. Because it
is not certain whether this event took place in the year 1000 or 1001
(some medieval chronicles give Christmas of 1000 as the date, while
others refer to January of 1001) we feel that we have the perfect excuse
to celebrate this anniversary in both 2000 and 2001.
Our commemorative activities in 2000 consisted of two feats.
One was the publication of another special volume of our journal (vol.
XXVII). It had the title Thousand Years of Hungarian Thought and
offered translations into English of the writings of two dozen of Hun-
gary's prominent statesmen and thinkers, starting with King Stephen I and
ending with several prominent twentieth-century figures. The other event
that we had undertaken was the organization of a conference: "Hungary
Through the Centuries: A Millennial Retrospection." The meeting was
held on September 22-23 at the University of Toronto, on the campus of
St. Michael's College. Several dozen scholars were in attendance as paper-
givers and session chairmen. The former came from Hungary, Canada, the
United States and elsewhere, while the latter Were mainly from among the
faculty and administration of the host university. The papers presented at
the conference dealt with the evolution of Hungary from the late tenth
century to the present. The conference was a part of the commemorative
celebrations, organized by the Hungarian community of Toronto, of the
1000 years of Hungarian statehood.
In the year 2001 we continue our celebration of the millennium of
the birth of the Hungarian state. We do this by publishing a selection of
papers from this conference. Our original plan had been the publication of
the conference's unabridged proceedings; however, pressures of time, limi-
tations on our resources, and the unavailability of some of the manu-
scripts, prompted us to abandon our initial intentions in favour of publish-
ing a selection of papers, all dealing with or touching on the theme of the
survival of the Hungarian state, and even the Hungarian nation, through
the second millennium of historical times. It is our hope that more of the
papers given at the conference, including those not yet submitted and
those on which rewriting and translation work has not been completed,
can be published by us in our journal in the not too distant future.
In the commemorative activities of the Hungarian Studies Review
throughout 2000 and 2001 there had been a sometimes calculated and
sometimes improvised division of labour between the journal's editors.
The year 2000 volume was the result of many years of work by George
Bisztray and his students in the University of Toronto's Hungarian studies
program, while Nandor Dreisziger's input was confined largely to the
preparation of a camera-ready copy. In making the 2000 gathering a
reality, most of the myriad tasks of conference organizing and local
arrangements were the lot of the Toronto-based member of the team,
while the task of writing an introduction and a postscript, and the editing
(sometimes the re-translating) of the manuscripts fell on the shoulders of
the historian member of the team.
A great many other people and several institutions also contrib-
uted to the success of our commemorative ventures. The conference in
Toronto had several sponsors and official supporters: the Ministry of
External Affairs of Hungary, the National Canadian Conference Commit-
tee and the Canadian-Hungarian Heritage Association; and, at the Univer-
sity of Toronto, the Connaught Committee of the Faculty of Arts and
Science, the School of Graduate Studies, the Department of History, the
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Centre for Russian
and East European Studies, and the European Studies Program. Dr.
Sandor Szakaly, of the Institute of Military History in Budapest at the
time, acted as one of the academic advisers and counselled on the selec-
tion of participants from Hungary, while Mrs. Eva Tomory of Toronto's
Hungarian Studies Program, helped with local arrangements. Still others,
too numerous to mention, offered encouragement, gave their time and
energies to the organizing of the larger community celebrations in Toron-
to, or assisted with the many mundane tasks of making a gathering of
scholars successful.
George Bisztray
Nandor Dreisziger
Thousand Years of Hungarian Survival:
An Introduction
N. F. Dreisziger
The perpetual struggle for room and food.
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)
If the history of mankind is an unending quest by nations for territory
and sustenance then it is inevitable that in this contest there would be
winners and losers.1 Anyone who looks at an atlas of the world produced
generations ago will find countries that cannot be located on today's
maps. A map of Central Europe, for example, printed in the early nine-
teenth century, is hardly recognizable to a person today who is not
familiar with the region's history. The changes do not suggest that the
political entities that exist on the old map and cannot be found on the
new one have all disappeared. Some of them united with other states and
assumed new names. Nevertheless it is a fact of human evolution that
some countries disappear from the map through the course of history
while others continue to exist in one form or another.
While states appear on and disappear from political atlases, the
same is not quite true of nations — those agglomerations of human
beings which social scientists often talk about but rarely define in a
satisfactory manner. In this connection Anthony D. Smith's description of
an ethnic community, "...a named human group claiming a homeland and
sharing myths of common ancestry, historical memories and a distinct
culture,"2 might as well be the departure point for a definition of the term
"nation," to which one should add one more criterion, the possession of
national consciousness, something which may or may not characterize an
ethnic community, especially if we talk of such a collection of individuals
in bygone times. Whatever definition we apply to nations, we have to add
that they tend to be more persevering than states, simply because the
latter can be abolished through acts of international or even domestic
politics, while nations tend to persist even if they are deprived of a
homeland and are denied, de jure if not de facto, of existence as separate,
readily identifiable political entities.
If the birth and survival of states is not a simple process, the
emergence and death of nations is an infinitely more complex one.
Similarly intricate is the question of why some ethnic groups manage to
become state-founding peoples — or, at least, are recognized as such by
the international community of their times — while others fail to do so.
Furthermore, and this is of immediate concern to us in this collection of
studies, there is the query why some nations persevere through the ages
while others fail and disappear from the stage of historical evolution.
Even the very process of the disappearance of nations is a com-
plex, multi-faceted and multi-phased development. It may begin with the
forfeiture of political independence and continue with the loss of some or
all of the usual trappings of nationhood: language, traditions and a
collective consciousness. Complicating all this is the fact that the evolu-
tion of nations in not a linear process; rather, for most of them historical
development seems to resemble not the simple path of rise and decline
but more of a roller-coaster ride in which times of greatness are repeat-
edly followed by political chaos, societal disintegration, foreign conquest
or some other great calamity.
Examples for the rise and near demise of nations abound. There
are many to be found in Europe alone. In the British Isles we have the
Welsh, the Irish and the Scots — all of whom have lost, at one time or
another since the Middle Ages, their status as separate political entities,
and even to a large extent their language. In the nineteenth century and
early throughout the twentieth, they seemed headed for extinction as
nations and yet, over the past several decades, they have started on the
path of national re-generation and even the rejuvenation of their distinct
languages. From the rise of an independent republic in southern Ireland
to the "devolution" processes affecting Scotland and Wales we have seen
the re-birth of nations that had been deemed by some as nearly extinct
only a few generations ago.
In East Central and Eastern Europe the Polish and Ukrainian
nations come to mind when we think of these rise-and-decline and rise-