10 - The national question in Hungary

Summary

‘It is true that most Slavic peoples and indeed Germanic and Romance peoples had conflicts with some of their neighbours some of the time; the Magyars had trouble with all of them most of the time.’ Robert A. Kann is right in making this statement. But he did not take into consideration the fact that Slovaks and Croatians or the Romanians and Croatians lived rather far from each other and for this reason had not many points of conflict. The Hungarians lived in the centre of the country, and thus indeed had contact and therefore conflict with all of them.

MEDIEVAL HUNGARY

From its beginnings medieval Hungary was a multiethnic state. The conquering Hungarian tribes, themselves of various ethnic origins, found Slavonic tribes here. During the course of the Middle Ages different Western settlers, mostly Germans, arrived; peasants and townspeople, and from the East, Turkish ethnic elements, reached these parts. They were given territorial privileges. Vlachs, the presentday Romanians, appeared in the eastern part of the country in Transylvania. At the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, King Ladislas I and King Coloman conquered Croatia, which became a ‘Regnum Socium’ endowed with a wide-ranging autonomy.

From the late Middle Ages onwards large numbers of Southern Slavs appeared seeking refuge from the Ottoman conquest.