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by endriju 3455 days ago
"Vienna was the heart of an Austro-Hungarian empire of about 53m people that stretched from Innsbruck in the west almost as far as the Black Sea in the east. After 1867 the empire was divided into two: a Magyar-dominated Hungary, ruled from Budapest, and a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multilingual other half, ruled from Vienna."

In all fairness the Magyar-dominated Hungary could be attributed the same attributes, it was multi-ethnic and multilingual, especially in the suburban areas of the kingdom.

Ethnic map from 1910 [1] shows it pretty well (Croatia and Slavonia were left out from the picture).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File...

1 comments

The major difference was that the Hungarians implemented a politics of Magyarization which was one of the main reasons for what happened for them at Trianon. From the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in...):

> The policies of Magyarization aimed to have a Hungarian language surname as a requirement for access to basic government services such as local administration, education, and justice. (...) Between 1850 and 1910 the ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% and Slovaks 10.7%.[38]

This is an oversimplification. Trianon set the borders with neither the interest on ethnicity, nor the wishes of their inhabitants. Cities were cut in half (e.g Komarom and Komarno), families became separated, there are people who had 5 different citizenship without leaving their villages. After the WW1, there were only two census (Balassagyarmat and Sopron, both had to fight for this right, with weapons), both voted to stay in Hungary.

For the diversity of the key positions, you can check the list of barons and counts:

https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3... https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1do... List of Jewish nobles: http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm

One of the most powerful family was the (possibily Croatian) Grassalkovich which once had the duke title as well.

I don't deny there was an ethnic tension which hadn't been resolved. But this was a 100 years after the Ottomans were defeated after 300 years of permanent war that drastically changed the ethnic demographic. Check the Balkans and see how big the issue was.

There was also an underlying religious divide that was barely solved in the last decades before their downfall: Orthodox, especially Romanians, were almost completely excluded from political life. You list actually serves as a counter argument to your own point from this regard since I could barely find any Romanian names on that list (no "escu" as in Popescu or Ionescu for example).

And that was for 3 million out of 20 million in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Trianon was a simple solution to a complex issue but the fact that the borders have been kept despite more wars kind of points to the fact that they were a decent compromise (and also kind of emphasizes the amplitude of the harm done by the previous "historical" borders).

True, there was not much Wallachian (Romanian, that time) names, but Wallachian was one of the many ethnicities. The old word oláh (“vlach”) was used not just for Wallachians, but Cumans as well. In the wikimedia list you might find “Radó” (Radu in Romanian), which was one of the oldest noble family in the Hungarian Transylvania.

You are right, the religion, common values and culture mattered more than ethnicity. This is quite a standard among the nations, Wallachia and Moldavia was no exception. There were not much tatar, cuman, bolgar or pecheneg among the boiars.

You're moving the goal posts.

There were 3 million Wallachians in Hungary (15-20% of the total population) at the time and barely a handful of Wallachian nobles in Hungary. Meanwhile in Wallachia and Moldova Tatars, Bulgarians were just a handful, most likely less than 1%. Cumans and Pechenegs were long assimilated in 1800-1900.

My point is that the previous poster was right: magyarization was the downfall of the multiethnic Hungarian state. Hungarian nationalism couldn't accept that >50% of the population in the Kingdom of Hungary wasn't actually Hungarian, they tried to forcefully assimilate groups which had no problems with Hungarian rule as long as they were left alone. The assimilation attempt backfired.

Trianon was a political action with a solid social backing.

The Hungarian nationalism did accept the multi-ethnic Hungary. You possibly know in the 1848 uprising against the Habsburgs was led by 13 generals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13_Martyrs_of_Arad) you can barely see Hungarian names. The poet's, who wrote and read the proclamation and started the uprising had the family name Petrovich (Petőfi in Hungarian). One of the general was called Josef Bem, Polish. The finance minister was Ferenc Duschek (sounds a Czech to me) and justice minister Sava Vuković (sounds Serbian) in the new government. Yes, there was no Romanian, but neither Cumans, Jassic, Rusins, Saxon, Schwab or Armenian either. In the uprising, prime minister Lajos Batthyány was initiated a negotiation about reforms with Brătianu (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VtKypkRfLtUC&pg=PA102&lp...). In fact, Hungarians in the state capital (Budapest) was in minority that time.

I do understand your emotions and as I stated, the matter of ethnic discontent was not handled properly. But try to put this into the context with the rest of the world politics. In such context, the 19th century Hungary seems pretty open-minded to me. Just read the text of the proclamation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_points_of_the_Hungarian_Rev... . It claims equal rights regardless the religion, end of serfdom and general taxation. Too bad the revolution has fallen.