History/Political Science paper by Bordás, Bertalan
The Public Image of Austria-Hungary in Britain and British Foreign Policy Decision-Making in the Last Years of the Great Eastern Crisis, 1876-1878. (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
The paper aims to discover the image of Austria-Hungary in the British press and its links to the formulation of foreign policy in the preceding years of the Congress of Berlin. British and other international experts in the field have conducted similar research to support their claims of linking public attitude and alliance systems of the time before the Great War. The sources of these studies consist mainly of newspapers and other periodicals of the time, as well as archive materials of diplomatic history. Although these works heavily favour the German allegiance to the Monarchy in retrospect, in this study the emphasis lies on the alternative option to the German alliance: the British-Austrian rapprochement. The existing literature briefly mentions that decision-makers saw such an alliance as an option. The engagement of the public – whether it supported or neglected the unlikely cordial relations – has been yet unstudied. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to examine what extent the public had a voice in foreign policy decision-making in the exemplary democracy of the continent at a moment of international crisis.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Bertalan Bordás is a Ph.D. student of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School of the University of Pécs. He has obtained his MA degree in International History in 2015 at the University of Pécs, and an MA in International Relations at the Corvinus University of Budapest in 2018. In his doctoral thesis, he investigates the international history of Austria-Hungary and Britain