Lecture content:

The Kingdom of Hungary has variously been described as a “multi-ethnic nation” and a “multinational state.” This talk discusses the terminology patriots in the Kingdom of Hungaryused   to   discuss   nationality/ethnicity.

Magyar   (ethnic   Hungarian)   patriots   variously contrasted the “nation” withits component parts, variously described as “nationalities,” “peoples,” “races” and so forth. By contrast, Slovak patriots, examined as a case study in non-Magyar nationalistterminology, contrasted the “nations” of Hungary with animplicitly de-national state, variously described as a “homeland,” “political organism” or “state.” 

Different patriotsthus employed different terminologies so as to reserve forthemselves the right to define the “nation,” which all citizensof Hungary treated as the most prestigious community,  granting  it  the  ability  to  bestow  legitimacy. Scholarsshould avoid “initial definitions” of such terms, but rather treatimplicit definitions as an object of study.

Lecturer:

Alexander Maxwell studied in Davis, Göttingen, Brno, Bloomington, and Budapest before completing a Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He heldshort-term positions in Erfurt, Swansea, Reno, and Bucharestbefore settling in New Zealand. He is now associate professorof history at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of Choosing Slovakia, Patriots Against Fashion, and Everyday Nationalism in Hungary. He has guest editedthemed issues of Nationalities Papers, Nationalism and EthnicPolitics, German Studies Review, the New Zealand Slavonic Journal, and the Journal of Nationalism, Memory, and Language Politics. He is currently researching HabsburgPanslavism and the language/dialect dichotomy.