Scholars as Agents: The Influence of Hungarian Explorers, Felix Kanitz, 
Adolf Strausz, and Lajos Thallóczy on Austria–Hungary’s Policy
Towards the Balkan Peninsula (1870–1904)

Gábor Demeter

ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 348-388 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.348

Drawing on unpublished Austrian (Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv) and Hungarian archival sources and also a comparative analysis of the diaries and published scholarly works of travelers, this paper examines how Austro-Hungarian scholars exploring the Balkans contributed to diplomatic intelligence activities between the 1870s and 1900s.

Fundamentally, it considers the extent to which the scholars were able to influence diplomatic actions and foreign policy of the Dual Monarchy. Focusing, as case studies, on Felix Kanitz, Adolf Strausz, and Lajos Thallóczy, it places special emphasis on the ways in which national and imperial directives provoked rivalries (or cooperation) between the two major political entities of Austria–Hungary. Additionally, the paper examines whether these scholars acted as intermediaries for Balkan countries while serving their home government.

Keywords: scholars, agents, travels, Austria–Hungary, Balkan Peninsula, economic penetration, intelligence services

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From the Hungarian Plains to the Balkans: János Asztalos’s Revolutionary 
Exile and  the Idea of a Danubian Confederation (1869–1870)

Penka Peykovska

Institute for Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 326-347 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.326

The article examines the revolutionary activities of János Asztalos, leader of the 1868 Hungarian peasant movement, during his exile in the Balkans and his efforts to pro­mote a Danubian Confederation. Drawing on archival documents, including Austro-Hungarian consular reports and contemporary press accounts, it reconstructs Asztalos’s initiatives in Vidin, Bucharest, and Constantinople, including the founding of his “Hungarian–Bulgarian Secret Committee” and his attempts to unite Hungarian émigrés, South Slavs, and Romanians in a common struggle against Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian domination. The study situates Asztalos within broader nineteenth-century transnational revolutionary networks, highlighting the circulation of the ideas of Lajos Kossuth and Asztalos’s interaction with émigré movements and local nationalist initiatives. While the committee’s activities were brief and primarily Hungarian in character, they reveal an ambitious attempt to coordinate anti-imperial efforts in the Balkans. Asztalos’s political work, though limited in direct impact, provides valuable insight into the strategies, connections, and ideological exchanges of revolutionary émigrés in Central and Southeastern Europe.

Keywords: Danubian Confederation, agent network, Hungarian revoutionaries in exile, Bulgarian national awakening, Vidin, 19th century

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Surveilling the Danube: The Austrian Consulate in Vidin (1848–1878)* 

Simeon A. Simeonov

American University in Bulgaria

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ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5358-2804

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 307-325 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.307 

This article examines the establishment and expansion of the Austrian consular network in the Lower Danube region with a focus on the town of Vidin in the period between the Hungarian and Wallachian Revolutions and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. In the 1830s, the Habsburg Empire established a firm consular presence on the left bank of the Lower Danube in the Danubian Principalities, but over the course of the next decades and particularly in the 1850s, it also progressively expanded into the northernmost part of the Ottoman Empire south of the river. The article seeks to illuminate the significance of one hitherto insufficiently examined node in this nascent Austrian consular network, the vice-consulate/consulate in Vidin, the second most populous Ottoman settlement on the Lower Danube (after the rapidly advancing Ruse farther downstream). This Austrian extraterritorial office, the article argues, served as a crucial information, commercial, political, and diplomatic agency in a region characterized by economic growth and marred by episodes of international warfare in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Keywords: consuls, Balkans, Vidin, Hungarian Revolution, Danube, Ottoman Empire

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The Transformation of the Government Intelligence Service in the 
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after the Compromise of 1867 (1867–1875)

Imre Ress

ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 248-306 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.248 

After the Compromise in 1867, law enforcement and policing duties formerly exercised by the unified imperial state police were assumed by the respective Cisleithanian and Hungarian ministries of the two new national governments. This meant that the Hungarian part of the empire was also allowed to carry out state security and intelligence tasks and to establish the necessary organizational framework. In terms of its functions, this network extended beyond the state border, as Joint Foreign Minister Beust—considering the East subordinated in his foreign policy—did not obstruct the organization of the Hungarian Empire’s agent network in the Balkans (which was partly anti-Russian). That move was also advocated by Andrássy, then serving as Hungarian prime minister, and realized through his associates, Benjámin Kállay, who was appointed to Belgrade as diplomat of the joint ministry of foreign affairs, and Gedeon Ráday who headed the Hungarian police. As a result, with Andrássy’s subsequent appointment as joint foreign minister, the Balkan policy not only obtained primacy among the affairs, but essentially came under Hungarian control for a period, backed by a semi-professional but experienced apparatus in the first years, including an agent network recruited from former revolutionary exiles (with Hungarian, Polish, and Italian experience), double agents. The network was financed from a secret extraordinary fund, and efforts were made to minimize written reporting requirements, rendering reconstruction for posterity difficult. This study examines the organizational processes and operational characteristics during the intelligence service’s early years by exploring the activities of about a dozen agents.

Keywords: intelligence service, Hungarian foreign policy, discretionary fund, Benjamin Kállay, Gedeon Ráday, Gyula Andrássy, revolutionary agents

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The Establishment of the Eastern Agency in Istanbul as a Center for Polish Exile  Missions in the 1830s–1840s Ottoman Balkans

Aleksandar Zlatanov

Institute for Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences / Department of History, Vytautas Magnus University

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  Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 221-247 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.221 

This article analyses the ideological development and political evolution of the Balkan policy pursued by Adam Jerzy Czartoryski’s Hôtel Lambert, one of the exiled political camps of the Polish Great Emigration associated with conservative-liberal and monarchist ideas. It argues that the geopolitical transformations in Eurasia of the late 1830s onwards and especially the growing strategic importance of the Ottoman Empire within the framework of the Eastern Question prompted Czartoryski and his circle in Paris to revise their earlier political assumptions and formulate a more active and systematic policy toward the Ottoman Balkans. The clearest expression of this new strategy was the establishment of the permanent Eastern Agency in Istanbul under the direction of the agent Michał Czajkowski. The article examines the circumstances of the agency’s creation, the ideological premises of its activity, and its role in implementing Hôtel Lambert’s wider political designs in the Ottoman Balkans. It further demonstrates that the agency functioned not just as an informal diplomatic outpost, but as a key center for coordinating Polish émigré missions, gathering intelligence and maintaining contacts with the primary strategic European policymakers and local political actors. At the same time, it attempted to adapt the Polish national cause to the realities of international diplomacy and revolutionary movements. The study thus situates Hôtel Lambert’s Eastern Agency existence within the broader framework of transnational exile politics and the imperial rivalry among the Great Powers in the Ottoman Balkans. It also highlights the extent to which Polish political exiles were drawn into wider diplomatic and strategic calculations, particularly in the context of anti-Russian activity and the shifting balance of power after the Second Ottoman–Egyptian Crisis.

Keywords: Hôtel Lambert, Eastern Agency, Balkan policy, Ottoman Balkans, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Michał Czajkowski, Polish emigration, exile diplomacy

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The Influence of Adam Czartoryski’s Foreign Policy Thinking and 
Agent Network on National Movements in Serbia and Bulgaria

Katalin Schrek

University of Debrecen

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 188-220 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.188

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (1770–1861), a leading Polish political emigrant and scion of one of Poland’s foremost aristocratic families (who even held the hereditary title of prince), recognized early in the nineteenth century that the survival of Central and South­eastern Europe’s small states depended on regional cooperation, especially considering the geopolitical pressures of the Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman Empires. His view of politics was strongly influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution, his time in Russian service, and the lessons of the Polish uprising of 1830–1831. He established the Hôtel Lambert in Paris as the political and organizational center of his activity, and over the course of the 1830s and 1840s, Czartoryski built up an extensive international network, which was also very active in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Peninsula.

The network, which consisted of political émigrés, intellectuals, former military officers, and experienced diplomats, provided support to the Balkan national movements fighting for independence. It operated mainly from Constantinople and Belgrade and sought to promote political cooperation in the Balkans. The aim was to strengthen national ideologies and weaken the influence of regional powers, most importantly the Habsburg Empire and the Russian Empire. The purpose of the efforts of Czartoryski’s network in Serbia was to stabilize and strengthen the internal political system. In Bulgaria, the network focused primarily on supporting the movement for the establishment of an independent Orthodox Church and the Uniate Church. The discussion below examines the changes in Czartoryski’s thinking about international relations and the regionally differing mechanisms of his network of agents in the Balkan Peninsula, as well as the long-term effects of the efforts of this network on Balkan national movements.

Keywords: Czartoryski agents, diplomacy, Balkan Peninsula, nineteenth century, geo­political strategy, Balkan national movements

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