The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was a major uprising against Austrian rule in Hungary as part of the wider revolutions of 1848 that occurred in over a dozen European countries at that time. The revolution occurred following three centuries of Austrian rule in Hungary, though its causes were both particular to the Austrian Empire and a product of broader European economic and social issues. It led to a radical liberal and nationalist government being established in Budapest in the spring of 1848. Austrian efforts to crush the revolt floundered at first, though eventually with Russian aid and a large military intervention the revolution was suppressed and Habsburg rule was reimposed in the course of 1849. As the revolution came to an end several thousand Hungarians left their native land and moved abroad. Many of these were leading revolutionaries who feared persecution if they remained at home. The Hungarian ‘48ers, as they are known, established the Hungarian American community in the United States, where Hungarian settlement had been virtually non-existent prior to the late 1840s. Hence the origins of the Hungarian American community today, which by some estimates is as much as four million strong, has its roots in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.[1]
Hungarian Revolution chronology of events
In late medieval times the Kingdom of Hungary was one of the most significant states in Central Europe and the Jagiellon Dynasty also ruled the Kingdom of Bohemia, which covered most of modern-day Czechia, as well as much of Croatia. Its independence came to an abrupt end though on the 29th of August 1526 when King Louis II of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia was killed fighting the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Mohács. Large parts of Hungary were conquered by the Turks as part of this, but the title of King of Hungary passed to Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria and one of the leading scions of the House of Habsburg. The Habsburgs would rule over Hungary for the next four centuries, eventually pushing the Turks out of the country in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.[2]
Over the centuries Austrian rule became more oppressive in Hungary and Bohemia as the staunchly Roman Catholic Habsburgs attempted to impose their values on largely Protestant lands and other elements of their culture and society. This, combined with the general rise of liberal nationalism across Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, led to the emergence of a vibrant Hungarian nationalist movement, particularly so in the 1840s. The timing of this was propitious, as in early 1848 a series of revolutions broke out all across Europe. The ‘Springtime of the Peoples’, as it would become known in some parts of Europe, was caused both by the growing liberal and nationalist sentiment in countries like Hungary, but also economic and social crises continent-wide, much of it fuelled by the failure of the potato crop following the arrival of the blight which caused it from the Americas on the first steamships, something which caused famine and unrest in many countries.[3]
The revolution began in Hungary in March 1848 and led to the establishment of a democratic parliament here in April. Sweeping reforms and changes to Hungarian society were introduced in the months that followed, ones that mirrored the French Revolution sixty years earlier in weeding out the old aristocratic and feudal order. At first the revolutionaries sought to negotiate with the Habsburg imperial government in Vienna. However, when the Austrians sought to quell the unrest through military intervention it radicalized the Hungarian leadership and war followed. It is an indication of how popular the revolution was that the new Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph I, eventually had to call on the aid of Russia to intervene in Hungary and suppress the revolt, which was finally achieved in the autumn of 1849.[4] Oppressive legislation known as the April Laws were enforced thereafter to crackdown on Hungarian independent sentiment, though in the long-run Hungarian nationalist were able to extract major concessions from Vienna two decades later following the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, leading the Empire of Austria to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867.[5]
Extent of migration following the Hungarian Revolution
The migration which followed in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution was notable, although admittedly it is dwarfed by some of the other mass-migrations from Europe in the nineteenth century, such as the Irish and Italian diasporas, each of which involved millions of people. By way of contrast, only a few thousand Hungarians left Hungary in 1849 and into the early 1850s. Still, while this may have been a small movement, it was important in laying down the roots of the Hungarian diaspora in the United States, a country where little more than a few dozen Hungarians lived by the middle of the nineteenth century. Some of those who arrived here in 1849 and the years that followed are well-known figures, like Alexander Asboth who became a prominent Union general during the American Civil War and later served as US ambassador to both Argentina and Uruguay, and Lázár Mészáros who had been the Minister of War in the revolutionary government in Budapest.[6] A few dozen other Hungarians ended up in different countries, notably the leader of the Revolution, Lajos Kossuth, who eventually settled in London after an extensive speaking tour of the United States in the early 1850s.[7]
Demographic impact of the Hungarian Revolution
The demographic impact of the Hungarian Revolution, it must be said, was relatively miniscule in the short-term, although there will be some Hungarian Americans who can trace an ancestor back to a Hungarian who arrived to the United States in the late 1840s or early 1850s. The greater impact in the long run was in establishing the very concept of Hungarians leaving Central Europe and heading across the Atlantic to the US. This was a revolutionary concept in and of itself in the middle of the nineteenth century and prior to 1849 there were virtually no Hungarians in America. By 1860 there were over 2,700. By 1920 the Reformed Church of Hungary had 46 congregations in America to serve hundreds of thousands of Hungarians in the country. Today roughly four million Americans are understood to have Hungarian ancestry of one kind or another.[8]
See also
Explore more about the Hungarian Revolution
- Hungary, Baptisms, 1734-1895 record collection on MyHeritage
- Hungary Reformed Church Christenings, 1624-1895 record collection on MyHeritage
- Hungary Catholic Church Records, 1636-1895 record collection on MyHeritage
- Hungary, Jewish Census, 1848 from JewishGen record collection on MyHeritage
- New York Castle Garden Immigrants record collection on MyHeritage
- A primer on Austro-Hungarian geography at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ Istvan Deak, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848–1849 (New York, 1979).
- ↑ https://the-past.com/feature/the-end-of-everything-the-battle-of-mohacs-29-august-1526/
- ↑ Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (London, 1962).
- ↑ Istvan Deak, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848–1849 (New York, 1979).
- ↑ R. W. Seton-Watson, ‘The Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich of 1867’, in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 19, No. 53/54, The Slavonic Year-Book (1939–1940), pp. 123–140.
- ↑ http://vasvary.sk-szeged.hu/newsletter/07dec/asboth.html
- ↑ https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/culture_society/lajos_kossuth_in_america_1851/
- ↑ https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/hungarian-americans-and-their-communities-of-cleveland/chapter/the-great-immigration-1870-1920/