The Monumental Nation : Magyar Nationalism and Symbolic Politics in Fin-De-Siècle Hungary

B Varga
Berghahn Books
 9781785333132
1-78533-313-5

From the 1860s onward, Habsburg Hungary attempted a massive project of cultural assimilation to impose a unified national identity on its diverse populations. In one of the more quixotic episodes in this.

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"Magyarization," large monuments were erected near small towns commemorating the medieval conquest of the Carpathian Basin--supposedly, the moment when the Hungarian nation was born. This exactingly researched study recounts the troubled history of this plan, which--far from cultivating national pride--provoked resistance and even hostility among provincial Hungarians. Author Blint Varga thus reframes the narrative of nineteenth-century nationalism, demonstrating the complex relationship between local and national memories.