Lost Prestige. Hungary’s Changing Image In Britain 1894–1918
Géza Jeszenszky
Helena History Press, 2020
422 pages
ISBN 978-1-943596-17-1
This book is the English version of Géza Jeszenszky’s 1994 Az elveszett presztízs, published in Hungarian by Magyar Szemle Alapítvány, with many useful additions, including a fresher bibliography and list of sources, an elegant cover and an English-language text arranged in a most reader-friendly manner for global readers that make the book not only a fine material for researchers of the topic and for students of history of British–Hungarian relations but also an interesting read for anyone interested in the history of Central-Europe and the history of Europe in general. The author examines the way the positive reputation of Hungarians and Hungary, mostly formed by the favourable reception of the 1848-49 revolution and war of independence from Habsburg absolutism and the country’s efforts to have a liberal constitution, turned into negative at the beginning of the 20th century.
Jeszenszky identifies the most important reason of the damage done to Hungary: the political crisis of 1904–1906 that went against the image of the country as a liberal agent in the Habsburg Monarchy, in line with the activities of the major representatives of the pro-Slavic and anti-Hungarian groups, alongside the propagandistic work of Robert William Seton-Watson and Henry Wickham Steed. The reports submitted to London Times by its correspondent, H. W. Steed shed light on the anti-democratic and narrow-minded social and electoral policies of the Hungarian political elite. Also, Seton-Watson did not fail to emphasize that unfair treatment of non-Hungarian national minorities. Jeszenszky show and analyses the bias and exaggeration of these pieces of political writing written during the rise of progressive social and political reforms in Britain in the view of which Hungarian political developments seemed ‘sluggish’ and ‘backward.’ The book’s author explores the interdependence between foreign policy and the national image in a chronological order and surveys the manner in which the negative metamorphosis of Hungary’s image was formed in Britain. Lost Prestige. Hungary’s Changing Image In Britain 1894–1918 also investigates the presumed parallels between the English and the Hungarian society of the time and its subsequent values, all in a historical perspective. The last chapter even looks at how later generations of various Hungarians politicians reflected on Hungary’s ‘lost prestige’ and its impact on the national tragedy, the Treaty of Trianon.
According to Jeszenszky, even though the British had firm sympathies towards Hungary before the Great War, the alliance systems formed before the war put Hungary among the enemies of Great Britain and in alliance with Germany, a strategy which was regarded as a threat to the British Empire and its pursued naval superiority. British foreign policy saw Hungary’s role with respect to its effect on the European power-balance and judged Hungary favourably as long as it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but, as Hungarian separatist ambitions grew stronger, the country was treated as a possible threat. This is evident by how members of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference saw the way to maintain the above-mentioned power balance: many British thought that a long-term peace was possible only by strengthening the new, winner nation states, whose tasks were to hinder further German expansion towards the Balkans, and Bolshevism towards Europe. Moreover, David Lloyd George, who was head of the British Cabinet, held the opinion that only the extension of the Wilsonian Principles on the loser states could bring enduring peace in Europe. The Entente proclaimed independence for the nationalities and a just settlement, but at the same time, they tried to comply with the secret covenants concluded during the war. These secret agreements did not take nationalist interests into consideration at all, and they meant specifically unjust arrangement to Hungary.
Unlike Lloyd George, Edward Grey’s attitude—during his office tenure until the end of 1916— can be considered anti-German. He advocated all the proposals of the later formed alliance of the Little Entente, because he saw Hungary’s weakening as one of the guaranties of preventing German expansion. His intention coincided with Robert Seton-Watson and Wickham Steed’s views, who agitated for the Slavic nationalities’ ambitions of independence and so, for the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. The objective of their articles in The Times, The Spectator and later in The New Europe was to convince British people of the legitimacy of these ambitions. They also made reports and suggestions on Hungarian cases for the Foreign Office, according to which officials could form their own standpoint.
In Lost Prestige. Hungary’s Changing Image In Britain 1894–1918, Jeszenszky argues for the idea that the Trianon Treaty was not only the result of the political instability in Hungary and in the Carpathian Basin in general, alongside the validation of the Great Powers’ political interests on the continent, which proposed to impede German expansion and Russian Bolshevism, but also the result of the indubitably effective propaganda activity of the anti-Hungarian group of British political activists and their international network led by Wickham Steed and Seton-Watson. An engaging book with insightful ideas that certainly deserves the attention of both academic and non-academic readers and challenges its readers to learn from the mistakes of the past.
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