Lorman, Thomas; Barker, Philip; (2023) The Hungarian Nation between East and West: The Limits of the Nationalist Imagination in the Long Nineteenth Century. In: Hewitson, Mark and Vermeiren, Jan, (eds.) Europe and the East. Historical Ideas of Eastern and Southeast Europe, 1789-1989. (pp. 183-209). Routledge: Abingdon, UK.

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Abstract

This chapter outlines the contested nature of Hungarian national identity in the long nineteenth century and highlights some of the tensions between the perceived ‘eastern’ origins of the Hungarians and the desire for ‘western’ forms of political and economic reform. Beginning with the millennial celebrations of 1896, the text traces the origins of modern nationalism to medieval texts, the myth of Scythian descent, and the challenge of Finno-Ugric theories of linguistic origin that accompanied the rise of linguistic nationalism in the late eighteenth century. The chapter then highlights the struggle for autonomy and reform that began in 1790 and culminated in the 1848 revolution. It also describes the conservative shift in politics that followed the 1867 Ausgleich and charts the rift that emerged between conservative and liberal visions of nationhood that separated into ‘western’ liberal and ‘eastern’ conservative camps by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter concludes by noting that the symbolic importance of Hungary’s eastern and western political affiliations continues to the present day.

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