Kingdom of Hungary
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The Kingdom of Hungary (short form: Hungary) was a state in Central Europe that existed from 1001 to 1918, then from 1919 to 1946 interrupted several times by periods of anarchy or changes in form of government.
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[edit] Names
In the late middle age, the Latin terms "Natio Hungarica" and "Hungarus" referred to all noblemen of the Kingdom. A Hungarus-consciousness (loyalty and patriotism above ethnic origins) existed among all inhabitants of this state. However, according to István Werbőczy's Tripartitum, the "Natio Hungarica" were only the privileged noblemen, subjects of the Holy Crown of Hungary regardless of ethnicity.
The Latin name Regnum Hungariae/Vngarie (Regnum meaning kingdom); Regnum Marianum (The Kingdom or Reign of St. Mary); or simply Hungaria was the form used in official documents from the beginning of the kingdom to the 1840s, the German name (Königreich Ungarn) from 1849 to the 1860s and the Hungarian name (Magyar Királyság) in the 1840s and from the 1860's to 1918. The names in other languages of the kingdom were: (Hungarian: Magyar Királyság, Polish: Królestwo Węgier, Romanian: Regatul Ungariei, Serbo-Croatian: Kraljevina Ugarska/Краљевина Угарска, Slovene: Kraljevina Ogrska, Czech: Uherské království, Slovak: Uhorské kráľovstvo.
[edit] History of the Kingdom of Hungary
Medieval Hungary controlled more territory than medieval France (with only the Holy Roman Empire being larger than Hungary), and the population was the third largest of any country in Europe. The Kingdom of Hungary arose in present-day western Hungary and present-day western Slovakia, and subsequently spread to remaining present-day Hungary, to Transylvania (in present-day Romania), present-day eastern Slovakia, Carpatho-Ruthenia, Vojvodina (in present-day Serbia) and other smaller nearby territories. It existed in personal union with the Kingdom of Croatia from 1102 until 1918 under the name Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen.
The first kings of the Kingdom were from the Árpád dynasty. In the early 14th century, this dynasty was replaced by the Angevins, and later the Jagiellonians as well as several non-dynastic rulers, notably Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor and Matthias Corvinus.
At the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Hungarian army was defeated by the forces of the Ottoman Empire, and Louis II of Hungary ran away and drowned in the Csele Creek. Under the Ottoman attacks the central authority collapsed and a struggle for power broke out. The majority of Hungary's ruling elite elected John Zápolya (10 November 1526). A small minority of aristocrats sided with Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor who was Archduke of Austria and was related to Louis's family by marriage, as King of Hungary; there had been previous agreements that the Habsburgs would take the Hungarian throne if Louis died without heirs, as he did. Ferdinand was elected king by a rump diet in December 1526. On 29 February 1528, King John I of Hungary received the support of the Ottoman Sultan.
A three-sided conflict ensued as Ferdinand moved to assert his rule over as much of the Hungarian kingdom as he could. By 1529 the kingdom had been split into two parts: Habsburg Hungary and "eastern-Kingdom of Hungary". At this time there were no Ottomans on Hungarian territories, except Srem's important castles. By 1541, the fall of Buda marked a further division of Hungary, in three parts and remained so until the end of the 17th century. Although the borders were changing very frequently during this period, the three parts can be identified more or less as follows:
- Present-day Slovakia, north-western Transdanubia, Burgenland, western Croatia, and adjacent territories were under Habsburg rule. This area was referred to as Royal Hungary, and though it nominally remained a separate state, it was administered more or less as part of the Habsburgs' Austrian holdings, to which it was immediately adjacent. This was the continuation of the Kingdom of Hungary.
- The Great Alföld (i.e. most of present-day Hungary, incl. south-eastern Transdanubia and the Banat), partly without north-eastern present-day Hungary, became part of the Ottoman Empire (see Ottoman Hungary).
- The remaining territory became the newly independent principality of Transylvania, under Zápolya's family. Transylvania was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire.
After a failed Ottoman invasion of Austria in 1683, the Habsburgs went on the offensive against the Turks; by the end of the 17th century, they had managed to conquer the remainder of the historical Kingdom of Hungary and the principality of Transylvania. At this point, the Royal Hungary terminology was dropped, and the area was once again referred to as the Kingdom of Hungary, although it was still administered as a part of the Habsburg realm. In the 18th century, the Kingdom of Hungary had its own Diet (parliament) and constitution, but the members of the Governor's Council (Helytartótanács, the office of the palatine) were appointed by the Habsburg monarch, and the superior economic institution, the Hungarian Chamber, was directly subordinated to the Court Chamber in Vienna. The official language of the Kingdom of Hungary remained Latin until 1844; it was Hungarian between 1844 and 1849 then from 1867.
[edit] Austria-Hungary
Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Habsburg Empire became the "dual monarchy" of Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian economy changed dramatically during the existence of the Dual Monarchy. Technological change accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The capitalist way of production spread throughout the Empire during its fifty-year existence. The obsolete medieval institutions continued to disappear. By the early 20th century most of the Empire had started to experience rapid economic growth. The GNP per capita grew roughly 1.45% per year from 1870 to 1913. That level of growth compared very favorably to that of other European nations such as Britain (1.00%), France (1.06%), and Germany (1.51%). The historic lands of the Hungarian Crown (the Kingdom of Hungary proper, to which Transylvania was soon incorporated, and Croatia-Slavonia, which maintained a distinct identity and a certain internal autonomy) was granted equal status with the rest of the Habsburg monarchy; the two states comprising Austria-Hungary each had considerable independence, with certain institutions and matters (notably the reigning house, defence, foreign affairs, and finances for common expenditures) remaining joint. This arrangement was to last until 1918, when 72% of the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary was divided between neighbouring states of Austria/Romania and newly formed states of Czechoslovakia/Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as the Central Powers went down in defeat in World War I. The new borders were set in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon leaving more than 3,5 million ethnic Hungarians outside the new borders that were originally meant to accord ethnic borders.
[edit] Kingdom of Hungary between 1920-1944
After the pullout of occupation forces of Romania in 1920 from its war against the Communist regime of Béla Kun, the country went into civil conflict, with Hungarian anti-communists and monarchists purging the nation of communists, leftists and others they felt threatened by. Later in 1920, a coalition of right-wing political forces united and returned Hungary to being a constitutional monarchy. Selection of the new King was delayed due to civil infighting, and a regent was appointed to represent the monarchy. Former Austro-Hungarian navy admiral Miklós Horthy became that regent.
The Kingdom of Hungary existing from 1920 to 1944 was a de facto regency state under Regent Miklós Horthy officially representing the abdicated Hungarian monarchy. Attempts by Charles IV King of Hungary to return to the throne were prevented by threats of war from neighbouring countries, and by lack of support from Horthy (see Charles IV of Hungary's conflict with Miklós Horthy). The first ten years of the reinstated kingdom saw increased repression of Hungarian minorities. Limits on the number of Jews permitted to go to university were placed, corporal punishment was legalized. Under the leadership of Prime Minister István Bethlen, democracy dissipated as Bethlen manipulated elections in rural areas which allowed his political party, the Party of Unity to win repeated elections. Bethlen pushed for the revision of the Treaty of Trianon. After the collapse of the Hungarian economy from 1929 to 1931, national turmoil pushed Bethlen to resign. This state was conceived of as a "kingdom without a king," since there was no consensus on either who should take the throne of Hungary, or what form of government should replace the monarchy. The Kingdom of Hungary was one of the Axis powers during World War II until its defection in 1944, in which the state was occupied and dissolved by Nazi Germany and replaced by a briefly-existing puppet state.
[edit] Historical perceptions
In today's Hungary, the Kingdom of Hungary is regarded as one long stage in the development of the same state. This sense of continuity is reflected in the republic's national symbols, holidays, official language and the capital city of the country. The short form of the name is the same in Hungarian (Magyarország). The millennium of the Hungarian statehood was commemorated in 2000 and codified by the Millennium Act of 2000.[1]
In contrast, scholars outside Hungary observe that the Kingdom of Hungary, being a multiethnic and later multinational state, "bore little resemblance, in territory or population, to today’s Hungary".[2] This observation is reflected also by the fact that the Croatian, Serbian, Slovak and Slovenian languages (groups formerly within Hungary) have different names for the Kingdom of Hungary and modern Hungary.
[edit] References
- ^ Text of the Millennium Act (Hungarian)
- ^ Brubaker, Rogers; Margit Feischmidt (2002). "1848 in 1998: The Politics of Commemoration in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia". Comparative Studies in Society and History 44: 700-744. Retrieved on 2008-01-20.
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[edit] See also
- List of Hungarian rulers
- Nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary
- Administrative divisions of the Kingdom of Hungary
- Demographics of the Kingdom of Hungary
- Comitatus (Kingdom of Hungary)
- History of Hungary
- Croatia in the union with Hungary
- History of Slovakia
- Transylvania
- Vojvodina
- Transcarpathia
- Prekmurje
[edit] External links
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| ← Principality of Hungary (896-1000) |
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Habsburg Hungary → (1526-1571) Eastern Hungarian Kingdom → (1526-1571)
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| Kingdom of Hungary | ||
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