Hungarian irredentism or Greater Hungary ( ) are irredentist political ideas concerning redemption of territories of the historical Kingdom of Hungary. The objective is to at least regain control over Hungarian-populated areas in Hungary's neighbouring countries. Hungarian historiography uses the term "Historic Hungary" (). "Whole Hungary" () is also commonly used by supporters of this ideology.
The Treaty of Trianon defined the current borders of Hungary and, compared against the claims of the pre-war Kingdom, post-Trianon Hungary had approximately 72% less land and about two-thirds fewer inhabitants, almost 5 million of these being of Hungarian ethnicity. However, only 54% of the inhabitants of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary were Hungarians before World War I.A magyar szent korona országainak 1910. évi népszámlálása. Első rész. A népesség főbb adatai. (in Hungarian). Budapest: Magyar Kir. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal (KSH). 1912.Anstalt G. Freytag & Berndt (1911). Geographischer Atlas zur Vaterlandskunde an der österreichischen Mittelschulen. Vienna: K. u. k. Hof-Kartographische. "Census December 31st 1910" Following the treaty's instatement, Hungarian leaders became inclined towards revoking some of its terms. This political aim gained greater attention and was a serious national concern up through the Second World War.
After World War I, despite the "self-determination of peoples" idea of the Allied Powers, only one plebiscite was permitted (later known as the Sopron plebiscite) to settle disputed borders on the former territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, settling a smaller territorial dispute between the First Austrian Republic and the Kingdom of Hungary, because some months earlier, the Rongyos Gárda launched a series of attacks to oust the Austrian forces that entered the area. During the plebiscite in late 1921, the polling stations were supervised by British, French, and Italian army officers of the Allied Powers.
Irredentism in the 1930s led Hungary to form an alliance with Hitler's Nazi Germany. Eva S. Balogh states: "Hungary's participation in World War II resulted from a desire to revise the Treaty of Trianon so as to recover territories lost after World War I. This was the basis for Hungary's interwar foreign policy."Eva S. Balogh, "Peaceful Revision: The Diplomatic Road to War." Hungarian Studies Review 10.1 (1983): 43–51. online
Hungary, supported by the Axis powers, was successful temporarily in gaining some regions of the former Kingdom by the First Vienna Award in 1938 (southern Czechoslovakia with mainly Hungarians) and the Second Vienna Award in 1940 (Northern Transylvania with an ethnically mixed population), and through military campaign gained regions of Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939 and (ethnically mixed) Bačka, Baranja, Međimurje, and Prekmurje in 1941 (Hungarian occupation of Yugoslav territories). Following the close of World War II, the borders of Hungary as defined by the Treaty of Trianon were restored, except for three Hungarian villages that were transferred to Czechoslovakia. These villages are today administratively a part of Bratislava.
History
Background The independent Kingdom of Hungary was established in 1000 AD, and remained a regional power in Central Europe until Ottoman Empire conquered its central part in 1526 following the Battle of Mohács. In 1541 the territory of the former Kingdom of Hungary was divided into three portions: in the west and north, Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary retained its existence under Habsburg rule; the Ottomans controlled the south-central parts of former Kingdom of Hungary; while in the east, the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom (later the Principality of Transylvania) was formed as a semi-independent entity under Ottoman suzerainty. After the Ottoman conquest in the Kingdom of Hungary, the ethnic structure of the kingdom started to become more multi-ethnic because of immigration to the sparsely populated areas. Between 1683 and 1717, the Habsburg monarchy conquered all the Ottoman territories that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before 1526, and incorporated some of these areas into the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary.
After a suppressed uprising in 1848–1849, the Kingdom of Hungary and its diet were dissolved, and territory of the Kingdom of Hungary was divided into 5 districts, which were Pest & Ofen, Ödenburg, Preßburg, Kaschau and Großwardein, directly controlled from Vienna while Croatia, Slavonia, and the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar were separated from the Kingdom of Hungary between 1849 and 1860. This new centralized rule, however, failed to provide stability, and in the wake of military defeats the Austrian Empire was transformed into Austria-Hungary with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by which the Kingdom of Hungary became one of two constituent entities of the new dual monarchy with self-rule in its internal affairs.
A considerable number of the figures who are today considered important in Hungarian culture were born in what are today parts of Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and Austria (see List of Hungarians who were born outside present-day Hungary). Names of Hungarian dishes, common surnames, proverbs, sayings, folk songs etc. also refer to these rich cultural ties. After 1867, the non-Hungarian ethnic groups were subject to assimilation and Magyarization.
Before World War I, only three European countries declared ethnic minority rights, and enacted minority-protecting laws: the first was Hungary (1849 and 1868), the second was Austria (1867), and the third was Belgium (1898). In contrast, the legal systems of other pre-WW1 era European countries did not allow the use of European minority languages in primary schools, in cultural institutions, in offices of public administration and at the legal courts.Józsa Hévizi (2004): Autonomies in Hungary and Europe, A COMPARATIVE STUDY, The Regional and Ecclesiastic Autonomy of the Minorities and Nationality Groups>
Among the most notable policies was the promotion of the Hungarian language as the country's official language (replacing Latin and German); however, this was often at the expense of West Slavic languages and the Romanian language. The new government of autonomous Kingdom of Hungary took the stance that Kingdom of Hungary should be a Hungarian nation state, and that all other peoples living in the Kingdom of Hungary—Germans, Jews, Romanians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes and other ethnicities—should be assimilated. (The Croats were to some extent an exception to this, as they had a fair degree of self-government within Croatia-Slavonia, a dependent kingdom within the Kingdom of Hungary.)
World War I
The peace treaties signed after the First World War redefined the national borders of Europe. The dissolution of Austria-Hungary, after its defeat in the First World War, gave an opportunity for the subject nationalities of the old Monarchy to all form their own nation states (however, most of the resulting states nevertheless became multi-ethnic states comprising several nationalities). The Treaty of Trianon of 1920 defined borders for the new Hungarian state: in the north, the Slovak and Ruthene areas, including Hungarian majority areas became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia. Transylvania and most of the Banat became part of Romania, while Croatia-Slavonia and the other southern areas became part of the new state of Yugoslavia.
The arguments of Hungarian irredentists for their goal were: the presence of Hungarian majority areas in the neighboring countries, perceived historical traditions of the Kingdom of Hungary, or the perceived geographical unity and economic symbiosis of the region within the Carpathian Basin, although some Hungarian irredentists preferred to regain only ethnically Hungarian majority areas surrounding Hungary.
Post-Trianon Hungary had about half of the population of the former Kingdom. The population of the territories of the Kingdom of Hungary that were not assigned to the post-Trianon Hungary had, in total, non-Hungarian majority, although they included a sizable proportion of ethnic Hungarians and Hungarian majority areas. According to Károly Kocsis and Eszter Kocsis-Hodosi, the ethnic composition (by their native language) in 1910 (note: three-quarters of the Jewish population stated Hungarian as their mother tongue, and the rest, German, in the absence of Yiddish as an optionHungary before 1918 Silber, Michael K. 2010. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe):
Region Hungarians Germans Romanians Serbs Croats Ruthenians Slovaks NoteTransylvania 31.7% 10.5% 54.0% 0.9% 0.6% Hungarians are concentrated in Székely Land (Hungarian majority), while as well significant in the border areas.Vojvodina 28.1% 21.4% 5.0% 33.8% 6.0% 0.9% 3.7% Transcarpathia 30.6% 10.6% 1.9% 54.5% 1.0% 1.0% Slovaks and CzechsSlovakia 30.2% 6.8% 3.5% 57.9% with Hungarians concentrated in the south, which has a Hungarian majority today.Burgenland 9.0% 74.4% 15% Croatia-SlavoniaSeton-Watson, Hugh (1945). Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918–1941 (3rd ed.). CUP Archive. p. 434. . 4.1% 5.1% 24.6% 62.5%
Trianon thus defined Hungary's new borders in a way that made ethnic Hungarians the overwhelmingly absolute majority in the country. Almost 3 million ethnic Hungarians remained outside the borders of post-Trianon Hungary. A considerable number of non-Hungarian nationalities remained within the new borders of Hungary, the largest of which were Germans (Schwabs) with 550,062 people (6.9%). Also, the number of Hungarian Jews remained within the new borders was 473,310 (5.9% of the total population), compared with 911,227 (5.0%), in 1910.
Aftermath After the Treaty of Trianon, a political concept known as Hungarian Irredentism became popular in Hungary. The Treaty of Trianon was an injury for the Hungarian people and Hungarian nationalists have created an ideology with the political goal of the restoration of borders of historical pre-Trianon Kingdom of Hungary.
The justification for this aim usually followed the fact that two-thirds of the country's area was taken by the neighboring countries with approximately 3 million Hungarians living in these territories. Several municipalities that had purely ethnic Hungarian population were excluded from post-Trianon Hungary, which had borders designed to cut most economic regions (Szeged, Pécs, Debrecen etc.) in half, and keep railways on the other side. Moreover, five of the pre-war kingdom's ten largest cities were drawn into other countries.
All interwar governments of Hungary were obsessed with recovering at least the Magyar-populated territories outside Hungary. In 1934, Gyula Gömbös, on the request of Benito Mussolini, presented the territories which he wished to reannex peacefully.
World War II Hungary's government allied itself with Nazi Germany during World War II in exchange for assurances that Greater Hungary's borders would be restored. This goal was partially achieved when Hungary reannexed territories from Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia at the outset of the war. These annexations were affirmed under the Munich Agreement (1938), two Vienna Awards (1938 and 1940), and aggression against Yugoslavia (1941), the latter achieved one week after the German army had already invaded Yugoslavia.
The percentage of Hungarian speakers was 84% in southern Czechoslovakia and 15% in the Sub-Carpathian Rus.
In Northern Transylvania, the Romanian census from 1930 counted 38% Hungarians and 49% Romanians, while the Hungarian census from 1941 counted 53.5% Hungarians and 39.1% Romanians.Károly Kocsis, Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi, Ethnic Geography of the Hungarian Minorities in the Carpathian Basin, Simon Publications LLC, 1998, p. 116-153