History/Political Science paper by Hornyák, Árpád
Panel Proposal: Trianon Issues. I. The Hungarian-Serbian Baranya Republic. Antecedences and Consequences of a Desperate Political Attempt (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
After World War I following the Padua armistice in November 1918, a considerable part of the former Kingdom of Hungary came under Serbian occupation. Among others almost the whole county of Baranya and some parts of northern Bácska. The Serb military rule had a serious impact on the multi-ethnic population of the area that had least three major nationalities: Hungarians, South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Bunjevtsi) and ethnic Germans. While the
Hungarian population together with the Hungarian state administration wanted to preserve the
Hungarian civil administration in the concerned area, the Serbian military authorities together with the local South Slav population wanted to replace the Hungarian with a Serbian administration and thus promote the annexation of these territories by the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. My paper aims to introduce those international and local events and trends that led to proclamation of the Hungarian-Serbian Baranya Republic on August 14, 1921. I also want to shed light on the consequences of this futile political attempt by the local South Slav leaders, Serbian civilian and military authorities that kept the Baranya Republic alive for only eight days as the victorious Great Powers refused to recognize the blatant Yugoslav land grab.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Árpád Hornyák, PhD, 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. 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.