Learning the Rules of “Fair Play”: ‘English’ Influences on Hungarian State-Building, 1867-1918

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Focusing on the Dualist era (1867-1918), my paper examines Hungarian elites’ appeals to what they saw as ‘English’ models in debates over what direction the Transleithanian half of Austria-Hungary should take in the decades following the Compromise of 1867.
To that end, I focus on Dualist Hungary’s proposed “solutions” to the Kingdom’s “nationalities’ question.” I see these as attempts to create a “modern” nation-state, rather than simply as manifestations of chauvinistic nationalism (which they certainly also were). In particular, I examine the Kingdom of Hungary’s increasingly forceful Magyarization policy as an effort at state-building and modernization based, at least in part, on perceived Western models.
My paper highlights the role that Hungarian elites’ own sense of their Kingdom’s backwardness played in their search for foreign models of political and economic “modernization” during the Dualist era. I examine the extent to which we can understand Hungarian elites’ project of centralization and ‘Magyarization’ as an effort to implement foreign, “Western” models in their own country. Specifically, I show the ways in which an Anglocentric strain of political and developmental thought existed across the political spectrum, to influence both nationalist elites, and their more progressive, socialist opponents. By highlighting appeals to English models in arguments over Magyarization, I hope to shed greater light on the intersection of nationalism, modernization, and state-building. In particular, by focusing on Magyarization campaigns as a function of state-building, one deeply influenced by elites’ perceptions of foreign examples and models, I hope to shed light on the material impacts of self-ascribed ‘backwardness’ narratives, and to deepen our scholarly understanding of the operation of ‘modern’ state-building outside of ‘classic’ Western examples such as France or Britain.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tom Szigeti is a PhD Candidate in the history department at New York University. His research field is modern Central and Eastern Europe. His work focuses on the ways in which nationalist policies in both Dualist and interwar Hungary can be understood as attempts at state-building; an attempt, in other words, to take the multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic kingdom, and transform it into a “modern” nation-state. In particular, he is interested in the ways that Hungarian elites’ implementation of what they perceived as “Western” models influenced the development of such policies.