Hungarians Talk Homeward from the Celestial Empire: Voices in the Hungarian Press on China and the Chinese

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper deals with the creation, transmission and application of stereotypic images of a country and its people by agents of a traditionally non-colonial state in the period of imperialism. By exploring the representation of China and the Chinese in the Hungarian-speaking press between 1869 and 1904, I have two purposes in mind. On the one hand I intend to contribute to the understanding of the emerging Hungarian Orientalism and Sinology as well as its place in the broader Euro-American discourses. On the other hand I am focusing on a phenomenon of talking about relevant issues at home under the disguise of the otherized foreign. In this paper I am introducing the concept of “homeward-talking”, and the reasons of its application in the Sino-Hungarian context.
Sources include reports from and news about a traveler-scientist writing about the status of Asian women, the accounts of a custom officer describing various aspects of Chinese life, two missionaries operating in turbulent periods, and a technocrat engineer of many superficial and biased ideas about China. I argue that all these individuals were largely part of the coeval Western discourses on China while partly had their own, specific topics for their Hungarian readers.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mátyás Mervay earned his BA in history at the Eötvös Lóránd University (Budapest, Hungary) and his master’s degree at Nankai University (Tianjin, China), majoring in modern and contemporary Chinese history. His master’s thesis dealt with Austro–Hungarian prisoners of war in China during World War I. He is currently a doctoral student in East Asian history at New York University. His first article, co-authored with Jiang Pei, “Yizhan qijian zai Zhongguo de Ao Xiong zhanfu” (Austro–Hungarian Prisoners of War in China during World War I), dealing with the reception of the refugee soldiers as well as the detention of the Austro–Hungarian garrison forces in Beijing and Tianjin, was published in Lishi jiaoxue (History Teaching), no. 5 (2017). His second article on the “Austro-Hungarian refugee soldiers in China” was published in July 2018 by the Journal of Modern Chinese History (2018). He is currently preparing his dissertation proposal with a working title: "Central European Diasporas in China 1910s-1950s".