No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
The national movement to foster the social, political, and economic rejuvenation of Hungary began in earnest some twenty years before the Revolution of 1848. There was a direct line of development from the first reform diet of 1825, which demanded the redress of national grievances but no economic or social reform, to the last diet of feudal Hungary in 1847–1848, which demanded and obtained national sovereignty, the emancipation of the peasants, and the codification of basic human rights. During these years Hungary's political climate definitely changed, and every political group, even the court circles in Vienna, moved in what can be called a generally progressive or leftist direction. The court, the Hungarian chancellery in Vienna, the royal administration in Budapest, the conservative, liberal, and radical parties in the diet, and the extra-parliamentary opposition in the streets and the cafés—all assiduously planned, advocated, and introduced reform programs.
All articles in this section except the present one and the one by Deak on “Istvan Széchenyi, Miklós Wesselényi, Lajos Kossuth and the Problem of Romanian Nationalism” were presented at a panel discussion on “National Interests and Cosmopolitan Goals in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848” at the eighty-seventh annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 28–30, 1972. The present article was read at a special session on “Destruction, Revolution, or Reform” at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in New York City on April 18–21,1973. Deak's article on “István Széchenyi, Miklós Wesselényi, Lajos Kossuth and the Problem of Romanian Nationalism” was presented at the first Romanian-American Historical Conference at Suceava in August, 1974. The comments published in this section, of course, were not made at the above meetings.
2 There are innumerable works on Hungary's Reform Age between 1825 and 1848. The best studies in English are Macartney, Carlyle A., The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), pp. 199–321Google Scholar; and Barany, George, Stephen Széchenyi and the Awakening of Hungarian Nationalism, 1791–1841 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. In Hungarian, see especially Hóman, Bálint and Szekfű, Gyula, Magyar történet [Hungarian History] (5 vols. Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1936), Vol. V, pp. 194–413Google Scholar; and Kosáry, Domokos, Kossuth Lajos a Reformkorban [Lajos Kossuth in the Age of Reform] (Budapest: Antiqua, 1946)Google Scholar.
3 As quoted in Deák, Imre (ed.), A szabadságharc története levelekben [History of the War of Independence as told in Letters] (Budapest: Sirály, n. d.), p. 18Google Scholar; and also in Asztalos, Miklós and Pethő, Sándor, A magyar nemzet története [History of the Hungarian Nation] (Budapest: Lantos, 1933), p. 366.Google Scholar
4 Macartney, , The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918, p. 206.Google Scholar
5 See Barta, István (ed.), Kossuth Lajos az utolsó rendi országgyűlésen 1847/48 [Lajos Kossuth at the Last Estates Parliament, 1847–1848] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1951), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar