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István Széchenyi, the casino movement, and Hungarian nationalism, 1827–1848

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Alexander Maxwell
Affiliation:
History Programme, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
Alexander Campbell
Affiliation:
History Programme, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

The establishment of the Nemzeti Casino (National Casino) in Pest helped establish civil society in nineteenth-century Hungary. Count István Széchenyi, hoping to modernize Hungary on the English model, established the casino in 1827 as a public forum for the Hungarian nobility. By transcending caste divisions between nobles and bourgeois elites, Széchenyi's casino served as an unofficial parliament and stock exchange, and generally helped cultivate Hungarian patriotism. The Pest Casino inspired a nation-wide trend for casinos, which in turn formed a civil society in opposition to Habsburg absolutism. Yet when the casino movement spread to Hungary's minority nationalities, Jews, Slovaks, Romanians, and particularly Croats, the casino also contributed to national divisions in Hungary's ethnically diverse population that affected the course of the 1848 Revolution.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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