Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
General
Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
American essays; English essays
which form the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, we find that that composite
dominion is just as much opposed as the dominion of the Turk is to
those ideas of nationality towards which Western Europe has been long
feeling its way. We have seen by the example of Switzerland that it is
possible to make an artificial nation out of fragments which have split
off from three several nations. But the Austro-Hungarian monarchy is
not a nation, not even an artificial nation of this kind. Its elements
are not bound together in the same way as the three elements of the
Swiss Confederation. It does indeed contain one whole nation in the
form of the Magyars; we might say that it contains two, if we reckon
the Czechs for a distinct nation. Of its other elements, we may for
the moment set aside those parts of Germany which are so strangely
united with the crowns of Hungary and Dalmatia. In those parts of the
monarchy which come within the more strictly Eastern lands--the _Roman_
and the _Rouman_--we may so distinguish the Romance-speaking
inhabitants of Dalmatia and the Romance-speaking inhabitants of
Transsilvania. The Slave of the north and of the south, the Magyar
conqueror, the Saxon immigrant, all abide as distinct races. That the
Ottoman is not to be added to our list in Hungary, while he is to be
added in lands farther south, is simply because he has been driven out
of Hungary, while he is allowed to abide in lands farther south. No
point is more important to insist on now than the fact that the Ottoman
once held the greater part of Hungary by exactly the same right, the
right of the strongest, as that by which he still holds Macedonia and
Epeiros. It is simply the result of a century of warfare, from
Sobieski to Joseph II, which fixed the boundary which only yesterday
seemed eternal to diplomatists, but which now seems to have vanished.
The boundary has advanced and gone back over and over again. As Buda
once was Turkish, Belgrade has more than once been Austrian. The whole
of the southeastern lands, Austrian, Turkish, and independent, from the
Carpathian Mountains southward, present the same characteristic of
permanence and distinctness among the several races which occupy them.
The several races may lie, here in large continuous masses, there in
small detached settlements; but there they all are in their
distinctness. There is among them plenty of living and active national
feeling; but while in the West political arrangements for the most part
follow the great lines of national feeling, in the East the only way in
which national feeling can show itself is by protesting, whether in
arms or otherwise, against existing political arrangements. Save the
Magyars alone, the ruling race in the Hungarian kingdom, there is no
case in those lands in which the whole continuous territory inhabited
by speakers of the same tongue is placed under a separate national
government of its own. And, even in this case, the identity between
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account