History/Political Science paper by Hornyák, Árpád
National Self-Defence and Imperialism. The Balkan Policy of István Tisza’s Hungary during World War I
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
My paper to be presented at the 2017 AHEA conference deals mostly with the political views of Count István Tisza on the Balkans. Count Tisza was the most prominent Hungarian politician of the examined period. From 1913 he was the prime minister of Hungary, the ”strong man” who dominated Hungarian parliamentary life. He also enjoyed the full confidence of the Emperor-King Francis Joseph. Tisza’s views, therefore, can be considered as the official position of the Hungarian government and the political establishment.
His Balkan policy was influenced shaped by a three-pronged consideration: the economic interests of Hungary, rather than Austria-Hungary; the maintenance of Hungarian supremacy in the multi-national Hungarian Kingdom and lastly security of the Dual Monarchy.
It is worth to notice that the Hungarian political elite showed little interest towards foreign affairs before the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 since it was a common assumption that it is useless to deal with international relations as long as problematic issues of domestic politics remain unresolved. This point of view changed rapidly following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and led to Tisza’s reformulation of Hungarian goals in the Balkans which were backed by most of the Hungarian establishment.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Arpad Hornyak is associate professor of history at the University of Pécs (Hungary) and senior research fellow at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He gratuated at University of Pecs where he also obtained his PhD in history. His specialty is the history of the Balkans during the nineteenth and twentieth century, and twentieth-century Hungarian foreign policy. He has numerous essay publications that appeared in scholarly journals. He has a monograph publication that also appeared in English under the title Hungarian-Yugoslav Relations, 1918-1927 (2013) distributed by Columbia University Press. He recently edited a collection of articles written by Hungarian scholars and edited a volume of documents on Hungarian-Yugoslav relations.