Within this framework of near-absolutism in the Austrian' lands, and an undoubted political space in Hungary, the most prominent feature of the political landscape in this period was the spread of national consciousness and an increasing conflict of national interests. The implications for specific parts of the Monarchy are worth examining.
In the Bohemian crownlands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, but especially in Bohemia itself, the relationship between Germans and Czechs was becoming tense by the 1840s. This was despite a lingering sense on the part of some aristocrats, public figures and intellectuals that there was something to be said for a Bohemian identity which accepted the coexistence of both ethnic groups but still saw value in a shared Landespatriotismus or provincial patriotism. As one noble of German descent put it as late as 1845, 'I am neither a Czech nor a German, but only a Bohemian.'5 While most Germans assumed that Bohemia was essentially a German land because of the supposed superiority of German culture, which was bound to assimilate the culturally 'weaker' Czechs, a minority dissented. Some, like the Catholic professor of religious philosophy Bernard Bolzano, argued that Germans and Czechs would ultimately merge into a new, common identity, but in the meantime urged each people to learn the other's language.6 There was a clear tension between definitions of 'nation' based on historic territory, and those rooted in ethnic culture; equally unresolved was the tension between these and the Monarchy's own centralising tendency, the aspiration towards some sort of supranational, imperial identity.7
Given the prevailing German disdain for the mere idea of the Czechs as a people of culture, however, it was hardly surprising that by the early nineteenth century a new generation of Czechs had emerged, committed to a more aggressive assertion of nationality. Typical of this new hard line was Josef Jungmann, who argued that, because of the language division, it was unrealistic to hope for a merger of the two peoples. Jungmann practised what he preached: as a secondary school teacher he was the first to offer instruction in the Czech language at this level, teaching several generations to appreciate their language more and to see the language of the peasant as the truly national language. In addition to writing the first History of Czech Literature (1825) and compiling a Czech—German dictionary, Jungmann translated many foreign authors into Czech, thereby demonstrating its flexibility of expression. For this new generation of Czech 'awakeners' the old Landespatriotismus was clearly inadequate, especially since it failed to address the question of which nation, Czech or German, should predominate.
The historian Frantisek Palacky was, after Jungmann, the most influential of the Czech nationalists. Appointed the official historian of the Bohemian Diet in 1829, Palacky edited the first Czech-language version of the journal of the National Museum. With the enthusiastic assistance of fellow awakeners, including a handful of nationalist-minded aristocrats, Palacky turned the scholarly activity of the National Museum into a vehicle for promoting the Czech language, publishing an increasing number of works in Czech and
Waging a sort of genteel culture war against what he saw as the undue hegemony of German.8 The cultural organisation Matice ceskd, founded in 1831, existed expressly to publish works by Czechs, in Czech.9 Palacky's History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia may have been originally published in German, in 1836—42, as a simple History of Bohemia, but there was no denying the combative nature of its message that the Czech people were every bit as historical, if not more so, than the German.
In Galicia, the greatest national awareness before 1848 was demonstrated by Polish nobles, but towards the end of this period a rival Ruthene, or Ukrainian, nationalism appeared. Polish nationalism was still largely gentry-based, nor could it contemplate the admission that Galicia was anything other than a 'Polish' land. In fact, of a population estimated in 1817 at 3.5 million, 47.5 per cent were Poles, 45.5 per cent Ruthenes, with 6 per cent Jews and 1 per cent Germans; Poles predominated in the western part of the province, Ruthenes in the eastern part.10
The relationship between Polish nobles and their serfs, whether Poles or Ruthenes, was complicated by annexation to the Monarchy. Josephinian taxation fell most heavily on the peasants and arguably worsened their condition. Yet implementation of new legislation in the countryside, especially taxation, had necessarily to be entrusted to the noble landowners, so the result of Joseph's reforms was to sharpen the hatred felt by peasants for the nobles rather than for the imperial government.
The Habsburg authorities regarded the Polish gentry, with some justice, as inherently subversive. The real centre of Polish nationalist ferment in this period, however, was the formally independent Republic of Krakow, a postage-stamp territory of 1,164 square kilometres with a population, by 1827, of 127,000. Although Krakow was under the 'protection' of the partitioning powers and thus subject to occasional intervention, it nevertheless became a beacon for Polish nationalists, not least because the modest prosperity it enjoyed, and even more the existence of its ancient university, which drew students from all three Partitions, maintained a sizeable urban middle class of merchants, professionals and intellectuals.
Galicia and Krakow were thoroughly unsettled by the revolt of 1830—1 in Russian Poland. With the revolt crushed, large numbers of refugees settled in Galicia and the Republic of Krakow. The latter, together with the even greater Polish diaspora in Paris, became one of the centres of conspiratorial activity aimed at winning Polish independence. All Polish nationalist factions, however, still drew most of their support from the same narrow, noble social base, a factor which was to have terrible consequences in 1846.
In the meantime another complication had arisen with the development of a Ruthene national consciousness.11 The Ruthenes of Galicia were an excellent example of the revolutionary impact achieved by the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, and of how difficult it was to undo such changes. For the first time, Ruthenian children were being educated in their own language, albeit to begin with the liturgical book language derived from Old Church Slavonic and known as 'Slaveno-Rusyn'. The result was that by the 1820s the first generation of Ruthenian intellectuals was becoming active, even if, as is characteristic of this sort of development, much of their work initially was in recognised literary languages like Latin, German or Polish.
An increasing number of educated Ruthenes, however, was sufficiently moved by their contacts with fellow Slavs to interest themselves in their own language. The so-called 'Ruthenian Triad' of young seminarists led by the poet Markiian Shashkevych deliberately rejected the Latin alphabet as a written medium for Ukrainian, preferring a Cyrillic alphabet; more importantly, they also used the Galician-Ruthenian vernacular, rather than Slaveno-Rusyn, for their works. Shashkevych and his friends published in 1837 Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Nymph of the Dniester), an almanac of folk songs and original poems; this was the first work ever published in modern Ukrainian. The reaction of the imperial authorities in Galicia to the book was revealing: 'We already have enough trouble with one nationality [the Poles], and these madmen want to resurrect the dead-and-buried Ruthenian nationality!'12 The reaction of Polish Galician patriots was no less dismissive. Clearly there was a growing sense, on both sides, of opposing interests.
Polish noble nationalism received its death blow with the failure of the Galician revolt of 1846, which exposed the abyss between nobles and peasants. The decision was taken in Paris to stage yet another uprising in all three Partitions; it was hoped to avoid the disaster of 1830—1 by calling on the peasants for support, promising them emancipation. The peasantry of West Galicia, however, saw their landlords only as oppressors; they were certainly not susceptible to the blandishments of nationalism. Scheduled to start in February 1846, the conspiracy was betrayed to the Prussian authorities and the ringleaders in the Prussian and Russian Partitions promptly rounded up. Only in Krakow and Galicia was an insurrection proclaimed and an appeal issued to the countryside for support. The response horrified everyone. Encouraged by the Habsburg authorities to defend the existing order, the Polish peasants of West Galicia turned on their noble landowners, massacring some 2,000. The memory of peasant carts heaped with noble corpses being dragged into the nearest town was the main reason the Poles remained relatively quiet during the revolutions of 1848. And in the meantime, by general great power agreement, the Habsburgs annexed Krakow in 1846.
Finally, nationality problems were becoming undeniable in the Kingdom of Hungary. Here the focus was initially on the demands of the Hungarian nobility for a regularisation of the kingdom's relationship with the crown. From 1825 a succession of Diets provided a forum for Hungary's fledgling liberal reform movement. The Diets also saw the articulation of a growing sense of Hungarian nationalist purpose, which in turn elicited a response from the non-Magyar minorities of the kingdom. In so far as there can be said to be a 'first generation' of Hungarian reformers after 1825, Szechenyi was its undoubted leader. Yet Szechenyi's audience was almost invariably his fellow magnates. Though typical of his peers in his essential conservatism and loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty, Szechenyi was, however, thoroughly atypical in the breadth and genius of his vision for levering Hungary out of its humiliating backwardness. The essence of this vision was that Hungary must achieve economic modernisation fast by opening the country to foreign capital and investment; only after this might political liberalisation be conceivable. Szechenyi insisted that this influx of capital would be possible only if the nobility accepted taxation. He was not an overt nationalist and because of his conservatism this high-minded thinker was thus increasingly outflanked and sidelined by a younger generation of reformers, for whom political liberalisation but also the nation were all-important.
This new generation was becoming more vocal by the early 1830s, and one of the keys to understanding it is to grasp that most of the younger opposition came from the ranks of the gentry rather than the magnates. The gentry saw themselves as the defenders of Hungary's ancient constitution and laws. They were opponents of arbitrary government, were influenced by the new liberal ideas of the age and were more obviously nationalist than the titled aristocracy. Precisely because some of them regarded the Hungarian nation as threatened with extinction in a sea of hostile nationalities, a few could even envisage the extension, with time, of political rights to the whole nation in an ethnic sense. Unlike western liberals, however, Hungarian gentry liberals were less interested in laissez-faire economics and freedom from an interfering state. On the contrary, they 'wanted to strengthen rather than weaken the state', provided it was under their control, because only through state action, they reasoned, could economic development be generated and the interests of the Hungarian nation — by which they understood primarily themselves — be safeguarded.13 Hungarian liberal nationalists, like their emerging leader, Lajos Kossuth, saw the Habsburg Monarchy as both politically oppressive and economically exploitative.
The 'Long Diet' of 1832—6 saw an increased number of the new breed of reformers. Among the new deputies was Kossuth, who hit upon a novel way of communicating his own ideas to a larger public, by publishing handwritten accounts of the parliamentary debates, the first in the country's history. These journals became an eloquent vehicle for the liberal nationalist agenda. The issue that was uppermost in liberal reformers' minds, and which contributed powerfully to the poisoning of relations with Hungary's national minorities, was the language question. The leaders of the reform generation of 1832 were obsessed with the idea that the Hungarian nation could be swamped by a sea of Slavs and Romanians. They saw language as the integrator of the state and objected to the use of Latin in the Diet and the administration as incompatible with a modern society. The Diet of 1830 had succeeded in passing a law which required applicants for positions in public service or the legal profession to speak Magyar, and which confirmed the counties' right to communicate with the Hungarian Chancellery and the courts in Magyar and to be answered in that language. The 'Long Diet' saw calls for this principle to be extended, and before it rose in 1836 Magyar had been made the legally binding text of all
Laws and the language of parish registers, where it was also the language of the sermon.
Kossuth, given the priceless platform of editor of the newspaper Pesti htrlap (Pest Newssheet), from 1841 to 1844, continued to exert a tremendous influence, constantly inveighing against the tyranny of Vienna, the timidity of the magnates and the dangers threatening the Hungarian nation from its increasingly dissident national minorities. His liberalism, his protectionism and his nationalism found a ready echo among his fellow Magyars, some of it distinctly illiberal. The central nationalist obsessions were the reunification of Transylvania with Hungary and the language question. As Kossuth put it in an editorial of 1842, 'Magyar must become the language of public administration, whether civil or ecclesiastic, of the legislative and the executive, of the government, of justice, of public security, of the police, of direct and indirect taxation and of the economy.'14 Only a single admonitory voice was raised. Szechenyi, to his credit, warned of the danger the new agenda posed for relations not only with the Monarchy but also with Hungary's own minorities. While he supported making Magyar the official language, Szechenyi insisted that the real priority must still be modernisation and that any attempt at forcible Magyarisation would alienate non-Magyars at precisely the moment their support was most needed.
Szechenyi's intervention made him popular with non-Magyars but lost him support among his fellow Hungarians. In the end the nationalists achieved their desire in the Diet of 1843—4, when a law was passed in 1844 making Magyar the official language of government and of the Diet in Inner Hungary, excluding Croatia and Transylvania. Croatia, because of its special status within Hungary, was free to use Latin for its own internal administration, and Croatian deputies to the Hungarian Diet could continue to address it in Latin for another six years, but all communication between the Croatian and Hungarian authorities was henceforth to be in Magyar.
For the non-Magyars in Hungary the rise of Hungarian nationalism was increasingly worrying, and nowhere more so than in Croatia. Formally a subordinate kingdom within Hungary, Croatia had its own Diet, the Sabor, which also sent representatives to the Hungarian Diet. This was precisely why the language issue was of such concern and had been since the 1790s: Latin (or German) was the only effective means of communication between Hungarians and Croats, given that Croatian nobles were reluctant to learn Magyar, and Hungarian nobles disdained learning Croatian. The Croatian nobility, however, had not done much to oppose Hungarian language legislation. Active protest came from only a few nobles, such as Count Janko Draskovic, who in 1832 proposed that the South Slavs should be joined in a single unit within the Monarchy.
A more coordinated opposition came from Croatia's fledgling middle-class intellectuals, notably the journalist Ljudevit Gaj, who had done much to establish a Croatian literary language and was influenced by other Slav thinkers' belief that all Slavs were in reality a single nationality. Gaj was an advocate of a common 'Illyrian' identity shared by the Croats with Slovenes, Serbs and Bulgarians. The 'Illyrian movement' thus founded was arguably the beginning of modern Croatian nationalism. It was virulently anti-Hungarian and rapidly assumed political dimensions as the Illyrian Party, founded by Count DraskoviC in 1841. Renamed the National Party, it continued to denounce Hungarian language legislation and, especially after the passage of the law of 1844, relations worsened. Some sort of clash was therefore likely even before revolution overtook both countries.
The Serbs of Hungary were divided between the Military Border, which stretched across the southern frontiers of Croatia—Slavonia and Hungary proper, and the region Serbs referred to as the Vojvodina or duchy. Serb demands for some form of autonomy within Hungary went back to the reign of Joseph II, but fell foul of both Hungarian intransigence and the exaggerated nature of the claim, since Serbs were not a majority in any of these regions except perhaps the area around Sremski Karlovci. The Serbs' minority status, however, was no hindrance to a lively sense of identity.
Political leadership traditionally came from the Serbian Orthodox clergy. The Church's leadership, however, was increasingly challenged by a younger, more secular generation, the product of the Josephinian educational system. By the 1840s, however, even the Church was becoming more adventurous. The synod of 1842 also called for a Serb 'National Assembly', and the Serb Patriarch himself was an advocate of making common cause with the Croats against the Hungarians.
The Romanians of Hungary were divided physically between the Grand Principality of Transylvania, the counties of Inner Hungary bordering the principality and the Military Border. The Romanians were also divided confessionally between the Uniate majority, predominant in Transylvania, and the Romanian Orthodox, more numerous in Inner Hungary. The vast majority of Romanians were peasants; in the towns Romanians were still outnumbered by Hungarians and German-speaking Saxons.
Transylvania was administered separately from Vienna and had its own Diet. Romanians of either confession were politically unrepresented in Transylvania, since they did not constitute one of the three 'historic' nations: the Hungarians, the Szeklers and the Saxons. Their sole voice in the Diet was the Uniate bishop of Transylvania, who as a landowner held a seat. The Uniate Church was nevertheless tolerated because of its allegiance to Rome; it qualified for state support. The Orthodox Church, by contrast, received no support at all.
As with the Serbs, political and cultural leadership until the early nineteenth century was almost entirely in the hands of the Uniate Church. By the 1830s, however, a lay, middle-class intelligentsia was beginning to take the lead, articulating a new sense of Romanian nationality which consciously sought to bridge the Uniate—Orthodox divide. The publication of histories and literature in the Romanian language gradually increased. Probably the greatest single factor in disseminating the idea of the nation was the Gazeta de Transilvania, the principality's first political newspaper in Romanian, which began publication in 1838 under the editorship of Gheorghe Barit;iu. This not only gave a platform to Romanian intellectuals but also, despite the censorship, introduced its readership to western ideas and literature, created links between Transylvania and the Danubian principalities and raised consciousness generally.
Finally, a national consciousness had clearly emerged among the Slovaks by 1848 and very much in reaction to Hungarian nationalism. It was only towards the end of the eighteenth century that individual scholars like Bernolak identified Slovak as a distinct language, and for some decades both Czechs and Slovaks were capable of arguing that Slovaks were merely a subordinate element in a single, 'Czechoslovak' nationality. By the 1830s, however, there was a small elite of nationalist intellectuals, even if the peasant mass of the population remained indifferent.
The succeeding generation, galled by the language law of 1840 and the active discrimination against Slovak cultural activities, was even more vocal. L'udovit Stur, a teacher at the Slovak secondary school at Pressburg, led a circle of nationalist zealots who celebrated the Slovaks' ties to other Slavs but also increasingly stressed the individuality of Slovak language and identity. In 1842 Stur and 200 other Slovak pastors addressed a petition to the Emperor Ferdinand, complaining about the new law and requesting a chair for the study of Slovak at Pressburg. The mere fact that the Slovaks had taken their case to Vienna, however, enraged the Hungarian nationalists. Kossuth denounced the petitioners, deriding the very idea of a Slovak nation: 'Wherever we look in Hungary, nowhere do we see the substance of any Slovak [ tdt nationality.'15 Stur was forced out of his teaching post in 1844 as a dangerous 'Pan-Slavist', but he discovered an alternative vocation as the editor of one of the first Slovak-language newspapers. He also produced a grammar in 1846 which did much to popularise the central Slovakian dialect and hence bridge the gap between Protestant and Catholic Slovaks.
The elections to the Diet of 1847 took place in an atmosphere of tremendous excitement. The Hungarian liberal opposition, Kossuth to the fore, was convinced that the time had come for radical reform: constitutional government, a bill of rights, the reunion of Transylvania with Hungary and much else. Looming over everyone was the grim lesson of the Galician revolt: something must be done to defuse the social time-bomb ticking in the countryside. Yet there was one gap in the agenda: 'Only the nationality question was left unmentioned and this for the simple reason that, in the eyes of the liberals, the nationality question did not exist.'16 They were soon to be undeceived.
World History
