Abstract
The American Revolution has not always played a significant role in East-Central-European history, but at certain key points in the last two and a quarter centuries it has served as an important point of reference.1 Just like western Europeans, the inhabitants of East-Central-Europe have always interpreted the American Revolution according to their own beliefs and needs. On the one hand they have regarded the Revolution as not just an important chapter in the history of the United States of America, but also in the history of all mankind. Thus Hungarian historians of the eighteenth-century have examined how the American Revolution, as an integral part of world history, has indirectly affected Hungarian history. However, this is the standpoint of an outsider, and while it does not mean that historians from East-Central-Europe develop more objective or detached opinions of the American Revolution than do their American colleagues, these historians are less involved with or connected to the events and consequences of the Revolution than are scholars in the United States.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
According to Jen6 Szûcs, East-Central-Europe consists of the territories of the historical kingdoms of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland, and the German lands east of the river Elbe. East-Central-Europe integrates into a coherent unit some elements of the historical development of Eastern Europe (Russia and the Balkans) on the one hand, and Western Europe on the other. J. Szûcs, ‘The Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline’, in J. Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London: Verso, 1988) pp. 291–332.
For the best account of the relevance of the American Revolution in EastCentral-Europe see: B.K. Kirâly and G. Bârâny, eds, East-Central-European Perceptions of Early America (Dordrecht: The Peter De Ridder Press, 1977).
J.P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United 1607–1788, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), pp. 7–76.
I.K. Steele, ‘The Anointed, the Appointed, and the Elected: Governance of the British Empire, 1689–1784’, in P.J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 105–27.
C. Bonwick, The American Revolution (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1991), pp. 69–77
P. Lucas, American Odyssey, 1607–1789 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984), pp. 212–18.
For example the Navigation Acts of 1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, the Wool Act of 1699, the Trade Act of 1705, the Hat Act of 1732, the Molasses Act of 1733, and the Iron Act of 1750. On British mercantilist policy see J. Hughes, American Economic History (Boston, MA: HarperCollins, 1990), pp. 65–81.
L. Kontler, Millennium in Central Europe: A History of Hungary, (Budapest: Atlantisz, 1999), pp. 191–2, 197–201, 209–11.
B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967)
G.S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969)
G. Barany, ‘Hoping Against Hope: The Enlightened Age in Hungary’, American Historical Review, LXXVI (1971) 319–57.
Gy. Kôkay, A magyar hírlap és folyôirat irodalom kezdetei 1780–1795 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1970) pp. 68–177.
Jean Charles Zinnern to Benjamin Franklin, 26 October 1778, in Claude A. Lopez, ed., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 27, July through October 31, 1778 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988) pp. 646–48.
G. Zâvodszky, American Effects on Hungarian Imagination and Political Thought, 1559–1848 (Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications, Inc., 1995) pp. 19–25
K. Halâcsy, ‘Benjamin Franklin’s Image in Hungary’, The New Hungarian Quarterly, XVII (1976) 121–5.
K.A. Roider, ‘William Lee: Our First Envoy to Vienna’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXXX (1978) 163–8; P. S. Fichtner, ‘Viennese Perspectives on the American War of Independence’, in Kirâly and Bârâny, eds, East-Central-European Perceptions of Early America, pp. 19–29.
On the life and works of Berzeviczy see: É.H. Balâzs, Berzeviczy Gergely a reformpolitikus 1763–1795 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1967). The original title in German is Bemerkungen über Mauerey: see Balâzs, Berzevicy Gergely, pp.313–16.
The original title in Latin is Ratio proponendarum in comitiis Hungariae legum. On the life and works of Hajnóczy, see A. Csizmadia, Hajnóczy József közjogi -politikai munkâi, (Budapest: Akadémia, 1958), pp.5–25, 91–2; Kontler, Millennium, pp.213, 219–21.
Gy. Kókay, ‘Patrióta vagy emberbarât? Hajnóczy József és Conrad Dominik Bartsch, a Wiener Zeitung szerkesztoje’ and ‘Hajnóczy József, a Széchényi k6nyvtâr els6 k6nyvtârosa’, in Gy. Kókay, Könyv, sajtó és irodalom a felvilâgosodâs korâban, (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1983), pp. 82–97, 179–89.
Daniel Stone, ‘Poland and the Lessons of the American Revolution’, in B. K. Kirâly, ed., East-Central-European Society and War in the Era of Revolutions, 1775–1856 (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1984), pp. 3–10.
Sândor Bölöni Farkas, Journey in North America, 1831 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1978)
A. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (London: David Campbell, 1994)
G. Bârâny, Stephen Széchenyi and the Awakening of Hungarian Nationalism, 1791–1841 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp.85–6. Zâvodszky, American Effects, pp.74–8, 92–3, 96–8, 101–5.
I. Deâk, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians in 1848–1849 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)
A. Urbân, ‘A Lesson for the Old Continent: The Image of America in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49’, The New Hungarian Quarterly, XVII (1976) 85–96.
M.J. Fraenkel, ed., Az Amerikai Egyesült Stâtusoknak Függetlenségi Nyilatkozata és Alkotmânya (Eger: 1848)
Tocqueville Elek, A demokrâtia Amerikâban, (Buda: Magyar Kirâlyi Egyetem, 1841–1843).
Ibid., p.100. Tocqueville, who visited the United States during the era of the defeat of the Polish insurrection, also gave an account of a mass demonstration supporting the Poles, at which the speaker identified the cause of the Polish insurrection with the cause of the American Revolution. A. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (London: David Campbell, 1994) pp.302. On Kossuth’s visit to the United States, see S. B. Vârdy, ‘Hungarians in the New World. An Unorthodox History of Hungarian Americans’, in B. Vârdy, Magyarok az Újvilâgban, (Budapest: A Magyar Nyelv és Kultûra Nemzetközi Târsasâga, 2000), pp.44–55, 737.
Kontler, Millennium, pp.264–79. K. Vörös, ‘The Image of America in Hungarian Mass Culture in the Nineteenth Century’, Etudes Historiques Hongroises, Yearbook of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, (1985) 647–61.
J. Puskâs, ‘Emigrant Hungarians in the United States, 1880–1940’, in J. Puskâs, ed., Kivândorló magyarok az Egyesült Âllamokban 1880–1940, (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1982), pp. 629–639.
Kontler, Millennium, pp.325–44. On Wilson and Hungary, see T. Glant, Through the Prism of the Habsburg Monarchy: Hungary in American Diplomacy and Public Opinion during World War I (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1998), pp. 41–60.
Az Egyesült Államok története I-II, (Budapest: Gondolat, 1964); L. Solti, 1787: Az amerikai történetírâs évszâzados vitâjânak ûjabb âllomâsai, (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1985)
C.A. Beard, Az Egyesült Államok alkotmânyânak gazdasâgi értelmezése, (Budapest: Európa, 1988).
E. Szuhay-Havas, Tizenhârom csillag: Az amerikai forradalom rövid története, (Budapest: Kossuth, 1976)
A. Urbân, ed., Dokumentumok az Egyesült Államok történetéhez 1774–1918, (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1981).
A. Hamilton, J. Madison, and J. Jay, A föderalista: Értekezések az amerikai alkotmânyrôl, (Budapest: Európa, 1998)
C. Lévai, ed., Új rend egy ûj vilâgban: Dokumentumok az amerikai politikai gondolkodâs korai történetéhez, (Debrecen: Debrecen University Press, 1997)
D.J. Boorstin, Az amerikaiak: A gyarmatosítâs kora, (Budapest: Gondolat, 1991)
C.N. Degler, Az élômûlt. Milyen erok formâltâk Amerika mai képét, (Budapest: Európa, 1993)
C. Sellers, H. May and N.R. McMillen, Az Egyesült Államok története, (Budapest: Maecenas, 1995)
A. Urbân, Köztârsasâg az Újvilâgban: Az Egyesült Államok születése, (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1984)
P. Hahner, Thomas Jefferson és a francia forradalom, (Budapest: Osiris, 1998)
C. Lévai, A republikanizmus-vita: Vita az amerikai forradalom eszmetörténeti hâtterérql, (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2003).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2006 Csaba Lévai
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lévai, C. (2006). The Relevance of the American Revolution in Hungarian History from an East-Central-European Perspective. In: Newman, S.P. (eds) Europe’s American Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288454_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288454_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54240-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28845-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)