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Published by: Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

HHR 2024 1 borito 11

Meaning of Diversity in the Middle Ages

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Julia Burkhardt and Paul Schweitzer-Martin
Concepts of Diversity in the Time of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368–1437): Introductory Remarks and Conceptual Approaches 153

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ARTICLES

Bernd Schneidmüller
Unitas and Diversitas: Sigismund’s Empire as a Model of Late Medieval Rulership 172

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Markus Christopher Müller
Alterity and Self-Understanding: Inclusion and Exclusion Strategies of Southern German  Estates in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 195

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Éloïse Adde
The League of Lords between Feudalism and the Modern State: Diversity of State Models,  Political Agency, and Opposition in Late-Medieval Bohemia (1394–1405) 213

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Klara Hübner
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” – The Impossible Term “Propaganda” and Its Popular and Anti-royal Uses in Luxembourg Bohemia (ca. 1390–1421) 235

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Christine Reinle
Diversity, Differences, and Divergence: Religion as a Criterion of Difference in the Empire in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century 261

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Iryna Klymenko
Religious Diversity: What or How? Towards a Praxeology of Early Modern Religious Ordering 287

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Nora Berend
Medieval Diversity: Contexts and Meanings 306

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BOOK REVIEWS

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Climate and Society in Europe: The Last Thousand Years. By Christian PfisterClimate and Society in Europe: The Last Thousand Years. By Christian Pfisterand Heinz Wanner. Reviewed András Vadas 320
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Christians or Jews? Early Transylvanian Sabbatarianism (1580–1621).Christians or Jews? Early Transylvanian Sabbatarianism (1580–1621).By Réka Tímea Újlaki-Nagy. Reviewed Graeme Murdock 323
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Párhuzamok és kapcsolódási pontok a spanyol és a magyar politikai emigrációPárhuzamok és kapcsolódási pontok a spanyol és a magyar politikai emigrációtörténetében 1849–1873 [Parallels and connections in the historiesof Spanish and Hungarian political emigration 1849–1873]. By Viktória Semsey.Reviewed Ádám Tibor Balogh 326
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Multicultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire 1880–1914. Imagined CommunitiesMulticultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire 1880–1914. Imagined Communitiesand Conflictual Encounters. By Catherine Horel. Reviewed Gábor Gyáni 330
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Notes on Contributors
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HHR 2024 1 borito 11

Relations

Contents

FORMS OF MEDIEVAL DIPLOMACY

Gergely Kiss
Staying in the Family? The Role of the Vienne Kinship in Reclaiming the Neapolitan Heritage under King
Charles I 3

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Ágnes Maléth 
“Pro arduis negociis destinandum” – Papal Delegates and the Neapolitan Succession (1328–1352) 18

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ARTICLES

Antoon De Baets
Historians Resisting Tyranny: A Preliminary Evaluation 39

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Shanshan Liu
The First Generation of Architectural Historians in Modern China: Their Studies and Struggles 59

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Thomas Bujnink
Smokescreens and Smear Campaigns: The Dutch Communist Party in Times of Crisis 80

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Josip Mihaljević
Jakša Kušan’s Forgotten Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Croatia 107

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BOOK REVIEWS

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The Culture of the Aristocracy in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1750–1820. Edited by Gábor Vaderna. Reviewed Ágoston Nagy 133
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East Central Europe between the Colonial and the Postcolonial in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Siegfried Huigen and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. 
Reviewed Barbora Buzássyová 139
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Agitátorok: Kommunista mozgósítás a pártállam kiépítésének mindennapjaiban (1948–1953) [Agitators: Communist mobilization in the everyday life of the construction of the party state, 1948–1953]. By Heléna Huhák. 
Reviewed Péter Csunderlik 144
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Notes on Contributors
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Volume 7 Issue 4

Medical Authority in East Central Europe

Special editors of the thematic bloc: Janka Kovács and Viola Lászlófi

Contents

ARTICLES

Barbora Rambousková–Darina Martykánová

Social Class in the Czech Physicians’ Quest for Professional Authority and Social Acknowledgement, 1830s–1930s 363

Abstract

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, physicians in the Czech lands could claim neither elite status as a professional group nor unquestioned authority in the medical field. Despite the legal protection granted by the Habsburg Monarchy, they did not have an efficient monopoly on medical authority and practice and had to face fierce competition from lay healers, male and female, and other medical professionals. This article examines how Czech-speaking physicians navigated social dynamics in nineteenth-century society in urban and rural areas and how they strove to strengthen their authority in the medical field both through appeals to their professional credentials and through class and gender discourses. We identify individual strategies of social ascension and collective efforts to boost the standing and authority of the whole professional group. Practices such as socializing in patriotic circles and authoring medical guidebooks for laymen proved as important as publications in the professional press and the work of professional associations in this complex effort, which was eventually crowned with success in interwar Czechoslovakia.
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Zsuzsa Bokor
“Separation is Required in Our Special Situation”: Minority Public Health Programs in Interwar Transylvania 395

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Abstract

This paper presents the distinctive manner in which the Hungarian public health system in Transylvania was built up, parallel to the state structures in the interwar period. In several policies and public health projects, the young medical generation of the 1930s formed the basis of the biologically based ethnic community of Hungarians in Transylvania. This process was presented by them as part of ethnic survival and made the presence of the doctor necessary. The paper discusses the foundation of minority health institutes and also the discourses around the formation of these.
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Šárka Caitlín Rábová
Between Public Health and Propaganda: Tuberculosis in Czechoslovakia in the First Decades of the Communist Regime 433

Abstract

Abstract

In early postwar Czechoslovakia, medical doctors identified the fight against tuberculosis as one of their fundamental tasks, since mortality and morbidity rates from this dreaded and hardly curable disease were still high. However, the country initially struggled with a lack of special institutions and trained staff. The situation became even more complicated in 1948, when the Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia and transformed the organization and practice of healthcare. Focusing on the first two decades of the postwar period, this article presents the strategies used by the socialist country against tuberculosis, stressing especially the importance placed, in the development of these strategies, on having a mass impact. The most significant shifts, which concerned not only tuberculosis but healthcare in general, involved changes to the legislation. The responsibility for the health of the population was transferred to the state, which declared that it would provide free treatment and care for all citizens, regardless of their social background. During this period, the first law to prevent and control the disease was passed, and mandatory vaccination and tuberculosis treatment were introduced. As was often the case, advances in medicine were used for political propaganda, and so, in the period after 1948, tuberculosis was labelled a “capitalist disease.” This label implied that the fault for the continued presence of the disease lay at the feet of the prewar capital system. Yet as I show in the discussion below, many of these basic pillars of the fight against tuberculosis had already been established in the interwar period, and it was first and foremost the growing availability of antibiotics that helped bring this disease under control in the 1960s.
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Annina Gagyiova
Every Child According to Its Pace: School Maturity between Expertise, State Policies, and Parental Eigensinn in Socialist Hungary 461

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Abstract

It is widely known that socialist states such as Hungary attempted to increase social mobility through a compulsory elementary school system. While the research on socialist education is vast, the relevance of school maturity to an egalitarian education system is still understudied. By the end of the 1950s, lack of preparedness for school among children had captured the attention of Hungarian experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy, who were hoping to ensure that first-year students would begin their schooling under roughly the same conditions. In response, in 1965, local initiatives started experimenting with corrective (remedial) classes. The aim of these initiatives was to overcome class differences by offering targeted support and helping children who were less prepared for institutional schooling catch up and transfer into the standard school system later. During the first half of the 1970s, the Hungarian Ministry of Education adopted this pedagogical experiment on a national level. In this article, I put two distinct methodological approaches into dialogue, the sociology of expertise on the one hand and Eigensinn on the other. By doing so, I shed light on the complex interplay of state policies, concepts of expertise, and parental agency. As I show, corrective classes reflected persisting social inequalities, thus children from the lower middle classes and the Roma minority were overrepresented in these classes. Ultimately, I explore how bottom-up initiatives had unintended consequences that were often disadvantageous for the children who were in principle the intended beneficiaries. These initiatives thus worked against rather than for the quest for social equality. In the discussion below, I show how pediatricians, psychologists, pedagogues, and parents shaped the school system, working within, taking advantage of, and thus limiting efforts for social transformation despite asymmetrical power relations.
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Judit Sándor–Viola Lászlófi
Women Facing the Committee: Decision-Making on Abortion in Postwar Hungary 493

Abstract

Abstract

In this article, we examine the medical, legal, social, and political context of abortion in Hungary after the Second World War, with special attention to the decision-making process of the so-called abortion committees. These committees collected data on the social and medical status of women to support their decision on whether to permit the operation or not. In the first half of the 1950s and after 1973, the committees were given a relatively free hand in making their decision on whether to allow an abortion. Women had to appear in front of these committees in person, and the process was a performance of demonstrating compliance with the law by stating a legally acceptable reason to terminate the pregnancy. In our article we analyze how the hierarchical-paternalistic structures of healthcare were reproduced and operated in the frequently changing abortion regimes within a state socialist legal and political framework. We also explore how these phenomena affected women’s requests and the options available to doctors at the micro level of decision-making on abortion. The study shows how women and doctors were forced to make efforts to comply with the changing normative framework and how different forms of paternalism (e.g., institutional, medical) shaped this process. The main purpose of the various laws was to regulate abortion and population policy by monitoring the measurable circumstances of pregnancy. In the early 1950s, the focus was on the health of the mother, whereas in the 1970s it was more on the living conditions necessary to raise a child. Despite the detailed regulations based on the paternalist structure of the healthcare system, it was left to doctors and other members of abortion committees to implement the norms at the local level. In some cases, doctors utilized this paternalist framework and patriarchal techniques characteristic of the healthcare system to circumvent the intentions of population policy. The article demonstrates these phenomena by analyzing the medical records of Pesterzsébeti Szülő- és Nőbeteg Otthon (Gynecological and Maternity Hospital of Pesterzsébet) and the documents of the abortion committee of Pécs.
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BOOK REVIEWS

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Buda oppugnata: Források Buda és Pest 1540–1542. évi ostromainak történetéhez [Buda oppugnata: Sources on the history of the sieges of Buda and Pest in 1540–1542]. Edited by Péter Kasza. Reviewed Emőke Rita Szilágyi 524
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Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time. By Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger. Translated by Robert Savage. Reviewed János Nagy 527
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The 1868 Croatian–Hungarian Settlement: Origin and Reality. Edited by Vlasta Švoger, Dénes Sokcsevits, András Cieger, and Branko Ostajmer. Reviewed Veronika Eszik 531
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Family, Taboo and Communism in Poland, 1956–1989. Polish Studies – Transdisciplinary Perspectives 36. By Barbara Klich-Kluczewska. Reviewed Fanni Svégel 534
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Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Edited by Paul Stubbs. Reviewed Milorad Lazic 539
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Notes on Contributors
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Volume 7 Issue 4

East Central European Émigré Communities in the Low Countries:
Agency, Transfers, Impact

Kim Christaens, Luke Dodds, and Tamás Scheibner Special Editors of the Thematic Issue

Contents

Kim Christiaens, Luke Dodds, Tamás Scheibner
Civil Engagement and Cultural Transfers between Central  and Eastern European Migrants and the Low Countries (from the 1930s to the Present): Introduction 547
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ARTICLES

Vera Hajtó
“The Past Must Be Given a Place”: Migration, Intergenerational Transfer, and Cultural Memory Practices in Belgian Families of Hungarian Descent 555

Abstract

Abstract

This article investigates the intergenerational effects of migration on the memories of Belgian families of Hungarian origin, focusing specifically on how these effects can prompt the second and third generations of migrant families to bring their private memories and identity constructions into the public sphere. Their social participation becomes a crucial element in their quest to uncover their families’ histories. While the memory of the migration experience was initially contained in the “archive” (the private sphere), it eventually transitions into the “canon” (the public sphere), becoming accessible to those outside the family circle. Using published biographies of second-generation members about their immigrant parents, photographic images, texts of a theatre play, group conversations on social media (Facebook), and interviews with members of the second and third generations, this article offers a varied source material to explore these questions. By pushing the boundaries of historical research and memory studies, it demonstrates that the memories of migration can have long-lasting effects that connect people and families with larger communities and the social sphere.
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Manuel Herrera Crespo
Challenging Systematization in Romania: Human Rights, Transnationalism, and Dissidents in Campaigns by Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR), 1989–1990 576

Abstract

Abstract

Accounts of popular opposition to the systematization project in Romania have predominantly focused on organizations concerned with cultural heritage preservation and the plight of Hungarian minorities in Transylvania. As a result, the Belgian-born initiative Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR) has been largely overlooked, despite growing into the largest transnational opposition movement against systematization by 1989. Unlike other organizations, OVR primarily denounced Ceauşescu’s totalitarian grip on society, with systematization being its most significant manifestation. This article investigates OVR’s philosophy, methods, and objectives during its formative period from 1988 to 1990. OVR’s challenge to systematization reveals how human rights were strategically implemented at chosen moments, the emergence of several transnational dimensions, and the unique roles played by exiles and dissidents. Through this case study, OVR’s approach uncovers the evolving notions of human rights and transnationalism in the 1980s and highlights how these differed from other well-known Western European challenges to the practices of State Socialist regimes.
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Michaela Šmidrkalová, Miroslav Michela 
Czech Anesthesiologists on Their Way to the Netherlands: Motives, Expectations, and (Dis)Engagement (1968–1970) 599

Abstract

Abstract

In 1970, the Third European Congress of Anaesthesiology was held in Prague. Paradoxically, many leading Czech and Slovak representatives of the field were absent, having emigrated to the West, predominantly to the Netherlands, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. This emigration, however, did not result in Czechoslovak anaesthesiologists being entirely disconnected from their former colleagues or losing touch with the domestic development of medicine. Despite the Cold War and the Iron Curtain, medical knowledge continued to be exchanged between the West and the East. The congress exemplified how Western anaesthesiologists could meet their Soviet bloc counterparts. Informal contacts, crucial for Czechoslovak (future) migrants, facilitated knowledge dissemination. These contacts with Dutch anaesthesiologists, who became a ‘window to the world,’ enabled them to join European or global medical-scientific networks. The study probes why a significant number of anaesthesiologists emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the Netherlands post-1968, their integration into Dutch society, and their recognition. It questions whether they engaged with the Czechoslovak expatriate community or primarily focused on their profession and relationships with Dutch colleagues. Using anaesthesiology as a lens, the study illustrates how these doctors, having emigrated during 1968–1970, established themselves professionally in Dutch society. They shared a strong professional identity, which assumed a transnational and partly denationalized form. Their medical vocation, along with the experience of living in socialist Czechoslovakia for twenty years, led to a reluctance to partake in exile activities for the ‘homeland cause,’ a sentiment not fully understood by some of the 1948 migrants.
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Luke Dodds
The Question of God in Émigré Ghent: Religious Heritage, Émigré Politics, and Dialogical Negotiation among Migrants and Hosts during the Cold War 626

Abstract

Abstract

This article explores the influence of various factors on the formation of identity among the community of World War II Polish veterans which formed in the Flemish city of Ghent after the rise of a socialist regime in their home country. Challenging popular perceptions of the term “émigré,” the article highlights the diverse ways in which the members of this community promoted their heritage within their host society. Particular attention is given to the role of religious and cultural heritage, the émigré community’s engagement with anti-communist politics, and the evolution of this political engagement over time. Interactions with the local Catholic Diocese of Ghent are examined through a framework of Polish Catholicism as a “lived religion” which facilitated the formation of a hybrid identity. In particular, the role of Carlos Bressers, a Belgian priest and chaplain on whose personal archive the research is based, is analyzed. Through his position and contacts, Bressers served as a mediating figure in the negotiation of hybrid identity and helped the community of Polish veterans carve out a place for itself in the city of Ghent.
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Wim Coudenys
Migration as Mission: Alojz-Alexis Strýček SJ in Belgium (1938–1945) 650

Abstract

Abstract

This article presents a case study of Alojz-Alexis Strýček SJ, a Slovak Jesuit in Belgium during World War II, to examine the complexities of migration, identity, and religious mission within turbulent historical contexts. Strýček’s experiences challenge conventional categorizations in migration studies, demonstrating how individual narratives can intersect with and transcend national and religious boundaries. The study employs social network analysis and philological-historical methods, offering insights into the dynamic roles migrants play in the circulation of knowledge and in shaping transnational connections. Strýček’s case highlights the importance of considering non-national factors, such as religious affiliations, in understanding migration patterns and migrant identities. This research contributes to the emerging field of “migrant knowledge,” which focuses on the role of migrants in global knowledge exchange and the redefinition of identities in times of crisis, thereby enriching our understanding of the multifaceted nature of migration.
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Adam Żaliński
The Evolution of Migrant Mobilization in One Polish Diaspora Community: A Case Study of the Polish Catholic Society Eindhoven 676

Abstract

Abstract

This research concerns the transformation of one migrant community. It is based on an analysis of selected documents presenting Polish migrant associations in the Netherlands from the beginning of 1950s until the 1990s. The study offers an analysis of the minority mobilization process, with a focus on migrant organizational agency. It is a case study devoted to the Polish community in Eindhoven and its association, which was a local branch of migrant organization operating at a national level. The main sources used in the study are archival records, including organizational statute, circulars, information leaflets, press releases, official and private correspondence, bulletins, protocols, organizational reports, official declarations, and minutes from meetings. In addition, interviews and biographical data are taken into account. Most of the written sources were obtained from the archive of Franciszek Łyskawa, a Polish migrant soldier who settled in Eindhoven shortly after World War II. Over the course of the following decades, he remained an active member of the diaspora while also integrating into the host society, and he became a Dutch citizen. The study shows the evolution of this Polish migrant community from the precarious situation of the early postwar years through the development of immigrants’ associations and institutions which emerged in parallel to efforts to integrate into the multicultural society in the 1960s and 1970s and eventually the gradual decline of activity among the members of this community as immigrants..
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Elżbieta Kuźma, Dorota Praszałowicz
Polish Immigrant Community Building in Brussels: The Role of the Polish Catholic Mission 700

Abstract

Abstract

This paper provides the first outline of the history of the Polish Catholic Mission (PCM) in Belgium, focusing on its role in the Polish immigrant community from 1926 to 2023. It examines the transformation of the PCM and its impact on the Polish diaspora, considering the broader context of secularization and social changes. The study utilizes primary sources, interviews, and participant observations to explore the PCM’s influence on community building, cultural preservation, and social capital formation within the Polish immigrant population in Belgium.
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BOOK REVIEWS

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Klasszikus és modern republikanizmusok: Eszmetörténeti tanulmányok [Classical and modern republicanisms: Studies in intellectual history]. By Ágoston Nagy and Milán Pap. Reviewed Henrik Hőnich 735
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Die Protokolle des Cisleithanischen Ministerrates 1867–1918. Vols. 1–3. Reviewed Ágnes Deák 740
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Nationalism and Populism: Expressions of Fear or Political Strategies. Edited by Carsten Schapkow and Frank Jacob. Reviewed Oto Luthar 745
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Experimental Cinemas in State Socialist Eastern Europe. Edited by Ksenya Gurshtein and Sonja Simonyi. Reviewed Dina Iordanova 751
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Notes on Contributors
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Volume 7 Issue 4

Economy, the Connecting Force in Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages

Contents

ARTICLES

Pavol Hudáček
“The King in the Saddle”: The Árpád Dynasty and Itinerant Kingship in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 505

Abstract

Abstract

The rulers of the Árpád dynasty spent a great deal of time on the road traveling from one royal castle, palace, mansion, monastery, or bishop’s seat to another. The ruler’s travel and personal presence were an important way of exercising power during this period. However, few sources have survived from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, making it difficult for historians to do much research on the travel of the Árpád kings. The Kingdom of Hungary was a large country and it is necessary to determine what was the main power center and where the periphery territories were located. For the most part, the Árpád kings stayed in the central region, where the most important royal settlements, the oldest monasteries, and the first bishoprics were located, and they visited the peripheral parts of the country only sporadically. The king met every year with his faithful magnates, bishops, abbots, and so on, and these important events was included various ceremonies, rituals, banquets, court proceedings, conferences with political elites, and gifts or donations.

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Péter Galambosi
The Town of Gölnicbánya in the Árpád Era 545

Abstract

Abstract

In this article, I describe the emergence and early development of Gölnicbánya (today Gelnica, Slovakia) from a settlement-historical and historical-geographical approach, mainly based on the diploma material of the Árpád and the early Angevin Eras concerning the settlement and its region. I examine the origin of the town in the context of the northern expansion of the royal forest-estate of Torna and the economical upgrading of Szepes, which dates to the beginning of the thirteenth century. I show how Gölnicbánya became the primary center of the county’s southern part in the second half of the thirteenth century thanks to mining and holding markets. I offer a detailed analysis of the provisions of the privilege charter from 1287, emphasizing that the border description covered a larger area far beyond the original extent of the settlement. I contend that although the charter refers the donations of two predecessor kings, the points set new provisions. Finally, I show how the economic importance of Gölnicbánya became apparent during the internal wars following the extinction of the Árpád dynasty and the consolidation that was underway in the early fourteenth century.

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Judit Gál 
Zadar, the Angevin Center of Kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia 570

Abstract

Abstract

When royal power started weakening in Hungary in the last third of the thirteenth century, the Hungarian royal authority in the Dalmatian towns also started to lose influence, and by the first third of the thirteenth century, most of the towns previously under Hungarian rule had become Venetian territories. The reoccupation of these towns and even more lands on the Eastern Adriatic coast could be connected to King Louis I of Hungary, who defeated Venice in 1358 in the war between Hungary and the Italian city state. This study focuses on the king’s exercise of power in Dalmatia, particularly the economic aspects of royal policy and the place of Zadar in this policy. My analysis also focuses on the formation of a Hungarian center in Dalmatia from the twelfth century and on how King Louis turned away from the policies of the previous kings of Hungary. My intention is to highlight the economic importance of Zadar, the process of the formation of an economic and trade center of Hungary, and also the formation of the Dalmatian elite, with a particular focus on the citizens of Zadar, who were in the closest circles of the Hungarian king. The focus will be also on the integration of the coastal territories into the mainland of Hungary under the reign of King Louis I.

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István Kádas
Administration and War Finance: Extraordinary Taxes in Hungary at the Beginning of the Reign of King Matthias (1458–1466) 591

Abstract

Abstract

In the first decade of the reign of King Matthias Corvinus, extraordinary taxes were imposed to provide revenues with which the state could recover the Holy Crown, fund the campaigns against “Czech” mercenaries who were causing upheavals in the northern parts of the kingdom, and make preparations for imminent conflicts in the south because of the continuous threat of Ottoman attacks. The extraordinary taxes were mostly used for military purposes, more specifically, to finance the wars and military campaigns against the Czech warbands and the Turks. However, the manner in which these taxes were administrated varied considerably, as did their scope. During the period in question, there were particular taxes for some counties or rather regions (especially for the northeastern) and countrywide levies. Furthermore, it was possible for the nobility to be granted an exemption from the obligation to serve in the military in person or provide soldiers for the military (the so-called militia portalis) by paying an extraordinary tax (and thus essentially purchasing this exemption). There was a close connection between the administration of the extraordinary tax and the process of recruitment. Members of the royal court who served as officers in the royal army often took part in the taxation as tax collectors, and they probably used these taxes directly to pay their mercenaries.

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Isabel Scheltens
Silver and Spices in the Runtinger Trade with Prague 622

Abstract

Abstract

In the late medieval period, a prominent trade route led from Prague through Regensburg to Venice. Silver mined in the Bohemian hinterland was traded for luxury items from the Near East. The Regensburg merchant house of Runtinger made vast profits by buying cloth and luxuries cheaply in Venice—in particular spices from India—and selling them in exchange for comparatively large quantities of silver in Prague. This study treats their ledger, Das Runtingerbuch (1383–1407), as a case study for an analysis of the Prague economy. The Runtingers sold the same types of spices and cloth in Regensburg and in Prague during the same span of years, which makes it possible to use their records as sources with which to compare the two markets. The Runtingers are shown to have market power in the Prague spice market but no market power in the Prague cloth market or the Regensburg markets. The reasons for these market differences are theorized in reference to the socioeconomic positions of the Regensburg and Bohemian elites. Luxury items were traded for silver or silver coins, constituting a continuous drain of silver from Bohemia towards Regensburg, which led to a degree of stagnation in the local economy in Bohemia.

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Andrea Fara
Tender Contracts, Speculation, and Monopoly: Venice and Hungarian Cattle Supply between the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 647

Abstract

Abstract

The livestock production and trade structures that connected the Italian peninsula and, in particular, the city of Venice with the vast Hungarian lands have been the subject of various inquiries in the secondary literature. Nevertheless, many questions remain. In this essay, I analyze the meat market in Venice (where the complex supply chain and slaughterhouse activities had considerable economic and social importance) in relation to the production and exchange structures of meat in the Hungarian lands (where the breeding of livestock and, in particular, cattle underwent considerable growth and specialization over the course of the centuries). I contend that Venice was an important end market for Hungarian beef exports. In other words, growing Venetian demand and the similarly growing Hungarian export of beef met and connected with mutual satisfaction, although not always in an entirely efficient way, giving rise to several cases of shortage and sometimes starvation and famine on the lagoon city markets. And this is a second point to investigate. If the individual and institutional Italian and Hungarian intermediaries that were interested in beef as an item of commerce can in a large part identified, many questions still surround the involvement of these economic operators in food crisis phenomena and economic practices aimed to give rise to famines in order to obtain greater profits (such as hoarding, raising prices, speculation, and export to more profitable markets). In this sense, I seek to clarify the link between the activities of operators and companies involved in the cattle trade from Hungarian territories and the famines (understood as “high price phenomena”) created in part by the lack of beef on the Venetian markets. I also examine the causes and functions of legislation and practices adopted in response to (and to prevent) starvation and/or famine and the roles of the attitudes of specific groups and economic actors involved in the meat market. Ultimately, I seek to further a more nuanced assessment of the connections between the Hungarian markets and the Italian markets between the late Middle Ages and early modern period.

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Notes on Contributors
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Volume 7 Issue 4

Modernity Bottom-Up: How Popular Perceptions and Practices Changed the Ideas of Modernity

Contents

ARTICLES

Special editor of the thematic bloc: Veronika Eszik

Ágoston Berecz
How to Study Early Popular Engagement with Nationalism: Sources, Strategies, Research Traditions 3

Abstract

Abstract

The article combines methodological considerations with an overview of the literature on early popular nationalism, in which studies on Central and Eastern Europe occupy pride of place. Within these thematic confines, my aim is to give a broad sense of the methodological challenges of writing history from below. After a brief sketch of the problem area, I pass to the question of demarcating and contextualizing modern nationalism and discuss a few conventionally used indicators of national allegiances (tax discipline, draft evasion, turnout at national festivals, abidance by linguistic standards). Subsequently, the major part of the paper is organized according to the source types that historians have utilized to explore the relationship of the lower classes to the national paradigm: archival sources, folklore and ethnographic material, various kinds of egodocuments, press reportage, readers’ columns, and non-narrative sources. I address the interpretive issues that each source type raises, citing abundant examples from the literature, including my own research.
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Veronika Eszik
Rural Reactions to Modernization: Anti-Modernist Features of the 1883 Anti-Hungarian Peasant Uprising in Croatia 37

Abstract

Abstract

In the post-Compromise Croatia–Slavonia (1868–1914) several peasant uprisings indicated a deep crisis in the rural world. Previous literature abundantly discussed the economic and social motives of these protests and interpreted the tensions as signs of the peasantry’s national awakening. In the present article, through a rereading of archival documents related to the 1883 protests, I draw attention to the perplexity of peasants when they should have identified national symbols. I argue, that the attitude of the peasants towards symbols turned against every kind of power symbol regardless of its link to a given nation. Adding a layer of nuance to the canonical explanations of peasant unrest allows us to draw attention to popular sensibilities to the ever-expanding state’s intrusion into rural areas and to the state’s modernizing interventions perceived as coercion. The ways in which the peasantry responded with hostility and violence to spaces, symbols, and figures associated with modernization make it very clear that modernization was seen by the peasantry as a potential danger (hence the anti-modernist epithet of the 1883 events). Thus, we should abandon the assumption that elite imaginations of modernity and modernization simply trickled down to the peasantry or that peasants accepted the teleology of modernization without criticism or anxiety. This article is also an attempt to read peasant rumors as historical sources independently of their truthfulness at the factual level, concentrating rather on what they tell us about the peasants’ fears and motivations and the strategies they used to cope with rapid changes in their lifeworld.
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Gábor Koloh
Time in Villages: Timekeeping and Modernization in Rural Communities in the Long Nineteenth Century in Hungary 66

Abstract

Abstract

The study explores the changing perception of time through the records of a multi-generational peasant family. By comparing several rural manuscripts from different times and places, the study traces the refinement of the way time is thought, its new meanings, and its emergence in farming and family life. The appearance of the clock plays an important role in the analysis. The clock, first as a prestige object in the household, gradually becomes a tool for the modern use of time. The replacement of calendars by newspapers in the first decades of the 20th century is also a decisive factor in the perception of time. The world expands and information about more and more distant lands is brought into peasant households. The study places important emphasis on the idea that rural households are the last base for the spread of globalization phenomena. What is already occurring at this level within each country is where the spread of the phenomenon has come to an end.
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Alexander Silkin
Stjepan Radić and Nikola Pašić as Heralds of Liberal Democracy in Croatia and Serbia: Historiographical Myths and Reality 87

Abstract

Abstract

Historians from the former Yugoslav republics traditionally participate in ongoing political discussions about the ways in which their homelands should progress. Referring to their knowledge of the past, scholars indicate certain historic phenomena and time periods that should serve as ideal models that should be “reproduced” by modern societies in the near future. With regard to the Serbian historiography, the late Belgrade professor Miroslav Jovanović detected several “restoration ideas,” the implementation of which, according to their adherents, would allow modern society to “revise the mistakes of history.” In today’s Serbia and Croatia, certain historical figures, with real and imaginary virtues, are presented as role models and heralds of everything progressive in the field of politics and state building. In particular, in the works of many authors, Nikola Pašić, the head of the Serbian People’s Radical Party (PRP), and Stjepan Radić, the chairman of the Croatian (Republican) Peasant Party (C(R)PP), appear as the “founding fathers” of liberal democratic traditions in the late nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth. The “golden era of Serbian parliamentarism” (1903–1914), which was characterized by the dominance of the PRP and the virtual “Croatian Neutral Peasant Republic,” a program that allowed the C(R)PP to consolidate the Croatian people in the 1920s, are worthy candidates of “restoration.” In this article, I consider whether there is any substantial historical truth to these images. I conclude that neither the PRP nor the C(R)PP (and neither Pašić nor Radić) espoused liberalist tendencies, which would have favored individualist ethics and respect for the rights of minorities. Both leaders and their parties adhered to the principle of majority dominance and were intolerant of anyone who did not belong to this majority, whether for ethnic, social, or other reasons. The PRP and C(R)PP could be described as the patterns of the same socio-political phenomenon, separated by several decades. They shared and made use of common ideological roots, social bases, organizational structures, self-perceptions among the leadership, slogans, and other strategies and tools of mass manipulation. These factors and also the influence of the nineteenth-century Russian narodnik movement on both parties during their formative periods make them typologically more related to the Russian Bolsheviks than they ever were to Western liberal trends.
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Róbert Balogh
Milk and Laboratories in Urban-Rural and State-Society Relations: The Case of Hungary from the Beginning of Wartime Shortages until the Great Depression 118

Abstract

Abstract

The paper analyses the roles of milk production and milk supply in the changes of the state-society relations and knowledge production in 20th early century Hungary. It places laboratories and the perception of milk as material in the center of analysis prompting a narrative that takes account of the hybrid nature of milk. Building on arguments that Bruno Latour and Timothy Mitchell formulated, this study reveals key aspects of government, economy and modernity by using the notion that there are no clear boundaries between culture and nature. Hybridity also refers to the impossibility of controlling all aspects of “nature.” The first part of the paper takes laboratories as junctures of legislation and urban-rural relations. The second part highlights the urban conditions as well as the local political contexts of milk consumption and milk shortage in World War I and the post-World War I period. Overall, the paper is a case for why food history is one of the ways to take research beyond methodological nationalism without having to ignore the realm of politics.
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BOOK REVIEWS

Markets and Staples in the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom. By Boglárka Weisz. Reviewed Mária Pakucs-Willcocks 147
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Sándor Kisfaludy. Hazafiúi Szózat a’ Magyar Nemességhez (1809) [Patriotic appeal to the Hungarian nobility]. Source publication, edited by Ágoston Nagy. Reviewed Kálmán Tóth 150
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Minta és felzárkózás [Role model and catching up]. By László Fazakas, Szilárd Ferenczi, János Fodor, and Zsófia Gál. Reviewed Ferenc Hörcher 155
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Hadifoglyok, dezertőrök – Magyar katonák az olasz hátországban (1915–1920) [Prisoners of war, deserters: Hungarian soldiers in the Italian hinterland]. By Balázs Juhász. Reviewed Róbert Károly Szabó 159
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Unmaking Détente: Yugoslavia, the United States, and the Global Cold War, 1968–1980. By Milorad Lazić. Reviewed Agustín Cosovschi 163
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Luxury and the Ruling Elite in Socialist Hungary: Villas, Hunts, and Soccer Games. By György Majtényi. Translated by Thomas Cooper. Studies in Hungarian History Series. Reviewed Karl Brown 166
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Notes on Contributors
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Volume 7 Issue 4

After Wars

Contents

ARTICLES

THEMATIC BLOC: World War I – Special editor of the thematic bloc: Béla Tomka 

Béla Tomka
World War I as a Historical Divide 675

Abstract

Abstract

While World War I certainly represents a historical rupture in Europe and many parts of the world, there are diverging views in scholarly literature and broader historical discourse regarding its character as a dividing line between historical periods. The essay identifies three main positions within the debate and elaborates on the broader consequences of these interpretations. Several scholars consider World War I as the end of an earlier, longer historical era. According to another periodization, the two World Wars and the two decades separating them make up an era together, which is distinct from the pre-1914 and post-1945 periods. Finally, a third major current interprets World War I as the overture to a new epoch. Each of the three approaches can be relevant to research on World War I and the twentieth century, but there are considerable divergences between the interpretations thus produced. If we regard World War I as the endpoint of the previous era, then great emphasis should be placed on the road leading up to the war. If we conceive of the two World Wars and the decades between them as a single unit, then we should focus on violence as a defining feature of the periodization, and short-term factors should be highlighted. Finally, if we understand the Great War as the beginning of a new period which lasted until the end of the twentieth century or beyond, World War I will be seen as the Urkatastrophe (primordial catastrophe) that set the stage for World War II and, indirectly, for the Cold War, while also generating seminal long-term processes in politics, society, and the economy.
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Zsombor Bódy
A World Lifted off Its Hinges: The Social Impact of World War I on Hungary 702

Abstract

Abstract

As was true virtually everywhere, World War I brought about significant social changes in Hungary. As a consequence of the wartime mobilization of the economy, the relationship between employers and workers in industry was transformed, as was the relationship between owners of different sizes of estates and farms and agricultural workers in rural areas. In both spheres, groups emerged which were much better organized than before. Some of them were capable of coordinated political action, and the balance of power between them changed rapidly over time. The wartime government tried to ensure continuous coordination and reconciliation of interests between the various ownership and labor groups in agriculture and industry, but it ultimately failed. Beyond the military defeat, this failure was the primary determining factor of the events of 1918–19 in Hungary. By analyzing the group dynamics of wartime society and the wartime economy in Hungary, this paper seeks to outline the social and historical background of the political struggles that came in the wake of the war. It ventures two core contentions. First, the emergence of various agricultural and industrial interest groups and their coordination with one another and with the government in the aftermath of the war constituted mechanisms of integration that had not existed before the war. As a result, the diverse socio-professional groups in Hungary became more integrated into one society within the framework of the state. The second finding contention is that the counterrevolutionary regime that took over in late 1919 was more successful than previous governments had been in establishing a balance between the different groups of owners and workers and learning from previous experience, and this was why it was able, ultimately, to consolidate its hold on power.
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Ferenc Erős
War and Revolutions: Trauma and Violence from a Socio-Psychological Approach 733

Abstract

Abstract

World War I, which broke out more than 100 years ago, placed not only a tremendous material and physical burden on the citizens of the participating countries, military and civilians alike, but also a psychological one. The study of the psychological consequences of the war has been pushed somewhat into the background in comparison to the historical and political analyses, though the uses of psychology—and broadly speaking, of the so-called “psy” disciplines, i.e., psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, social psychology, psychotechnics, criminology, pedagogy, etc.—were a crucial part of the history of this war. However, a history of the “psy” disciplines would not be complete without some discussion of the fact that World War I and World War II (and subsequent conflicts) played a fundamental role in the development of these sciences. Arguably, World War led to the emergence—as a kind of “experimental laboratory”—of practices and methods of the application of violence, trauma management, intimidation, terror, manipulation, and propaganda which draw on (and contribute to) insights from these disciplines, not to mention new approaches to the management of subjectivity and the manipulation of sentiments, which proved effective both in times of war and peace.
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József Takáts
Diverging Language Uses: Political Discourse in Hungary after World War I 764

Abstract

Abstract

Following some introductory notes on methodology, this study analyzes the process of the intensifying militarization, polarization, brutalization, sacralization, saturation with extreme appeals to emotions, and apocalyptic tone of Hungarian political texts after 1918. It also examines the ways in which the National Darwinist political vocabulary, which evolved originally in the last third of the nineteenth century, survived after the World War, and how it created the double languages of nationalist discourse: the historicizing one and the racist one.
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ARTICLES
Emese Gyimesi
The Urban Space Through the Eyes of Women: The 1849 Siege of Buda in Women’s Ego-documents 789

Abstract

Abstract

This study examines how female city dwellers experienced the siege of Buda Castle, a crucial event of the Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849, and the image of the city in their writings. The analysis focuses on three women’s ego-documents: the autobiography of Emília Kánya, the first female editor in the Habsburg Empire, the letters written by a young actress, Lilla Bulyovszky, to her husband and a letter by Anna Glasz, a resident of Buda Castle. I explore the kinds of mental map that emerge in the ego-documents in which the authors reflect on the urban experiences during the siege and the emotions that dominate their writings.
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Albert Doja
From the Austrian-Hungarian Point of View: An der schönen blauen Donau and the Accursed Black Mountain Wreath in the Balkans 824

Abstract

Abstract

In this paper, I contribute to the debate about hegemonic relations between the West European “core” and southeast European “margins” by showing the links between political institutions and knowledge production in the metropolitan Austrian-Hungarian areas on peripheral southeast European societies, including Albania. In particular, I address new aspects of a continuous resonance in the politically instrumentalized theories of the Illyrian origins of the Albanian language and the traditional tenets of Albanian history, culture, and society. In the course of discussion, I address their promotion in the works of key scholars from Leibniz to Thalloczy and Nopcsa serving the pervasive hegemonic and expansionist interests of Austrian-Hungarian imperial colonialism. Arguably, the effects of methodological imperialism are reproduced later to legitimate other, similar purposes of political, economic, and social control by means of cultural and political engineering in national-communist and post-communist Albania.
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Dénes Sokcsevits
The Story of Croatian Bosnia: Mythos, Empire-Building Aspirations, or a Failed Attempt at National Integration? 870

Abstract

Abstract

The nineteenth-century processes of “nation-building” and national integration took place in the western regions of southeastern Europe against a distinctive backdrop. The formation of national self-images, the creation of a national self-definition, and indeed the emergence of any clear consensus on who constituted or should constitute a given national community proved daunting tasks for the multi-ethnic and multi-religious populations of southeastern Europe in the provinces of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire.
The essential contention of this inquiry is that religious and national identities are not clearly interrelated in southeastern Europe (much, indeed, as they are not clearly interrelated elsewhere). I offer, as a clear illustration of the untenability of religious identity as an adequate foundation for nation building, an examination of the case of Bosnia and the development of a sense of identity and national belonging among Bosnian Croats and Muslims. Even the case of the emergence of the modern Serbian and Croatian nations, often cited as archetypes of national identities which developed along religious fault lines, is not as clear as it often seems to be in the public mind. It was not the only possibility, but rather was merely one alternative, an alternative that was shaped as much by internal circumstances as by the prevailing foreign political situation: the emergence, meaning, and “content” of the nation can be interpreted as a response to these factors.
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Gusztáv D. Kecskés
A Cold War Humanitarian Action: The Western Admission of 1956 Hungarian Refugees 913

Abstract

Abstract

The story of the refugees who fled Hungary following the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Revolution and the coordinated international humanitarian operation launched to receive them is an outstanding chapter in the history of emigration. These refugees received far more favorable treatment than earlier Hungarian expatriates or other European refugees had been given. With a total of 200,000 refugees, their successful transportation to host countries and their subsequent integration represented an exceptional success for international aid efforts. How can this efficiency be explained? Trends in humanitarian sentiment in world public opinion, influenced in part by the horrors of World War II, and the increasingly precise formulation of the rights of the refugees were just as important, as factors, as the supportive attitude of the populations of Western countries, who empathized with the suppressed revolution. The exceptionally favorable composition, from the perspective of the labor market, of the mass of people who fled in 1956 coincided with Western economic prosperity, producing economic “miracles.” However, even these favorable initial conditions would not have led to such a swift and successful settlement in the West of nearly 200,000 Hungarians had it not been for the Cold War rivalry between the Eastern and the Western blocs. As a consequence of the ideological and propaganda conflict with the Soviets, the NATO governments had the necessary political will to give effective support for a resolution to the Hungarian refugee problem, even after emotional support among the public opinion had waned.
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BOOK REVIEWS

Egy határfolyó környezettörténete: Háború és vízgazdálkodás a kora újkori Rába-völgyben [Environmental history of a boundary river: War and water management in the early modern Rába Valley]. By András Vadas.
Reviewed Márton Simonkay 936

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Aufklärung habsburgisch: Staatsbildung, Wissenskultur und Geschichtspolitik in Zentraleuropa 1750–1850. By Franz Leander Fillafer.
Reviewed Ágoston Nagy 940

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More Than Mere Spectacle: Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Edited by Klaas Van Gelder. Reviewed Benedek M. Varga 946

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“Nekünk nincsenek gyarmataink és hódítási szándékaink”: Magyar részvétel a Monarchia gyarmatosítási törekvéseiben a Balkánon, 1867–1914 [“We have neither colonies nor intentions of conquest”: Hungarian participation in the Monarchy’s colonial ambitions in the Balkans, 1867–1914]. By Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics. Reviewed Imre Tarafás 950

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Emotions and Everyday Nationalism in Modern European History. Edited by Andreas Stynen, Maarten Van Ginderachter, and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas. Reviewed Tuomas Tepora 954

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Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference (The Holocaust and its Contexts). Edited by Suzanne Bardgett, Christine Schmidt, and Dan Stone. Reviewed András Szécsényi 957

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Notes on Contributors
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More Articles ...

  1. Volume 11 Issue 2 2022
  2. Volume 11 Issue 1 2022
  3. Volume 10 Issue 2 2021
  4. Volume 10 Issue 1 2021
  5. Volume 10 Issue 4 2021
  6. Volume 10 Issue 3 2021
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