Search
Search Results
-
De tuinman, de geldschieter, de koelie-werver en de mandoer: Vier portretten van László Székely en de Delische Kunstkring
101-117Views:167The Hungarian planter László Székely was active as a painter on Sumatra during the first decennia of the 20th century. In 1923 he painted four portraits of people from the planters’ community: The Mandoer, The Moneylender, The Toekang-kebon and The Koelie recruiter, which appeared in the weekly paper De Zweep. In this article I will give an overview of the cultural life in Deli and place Székely’s work in this context. Furthermore, I will explain the uniqueness of Székely’s portraits, using the theory of the English cultural historian Peter Burke.
-
Onze man in Nagasaki: De gefantaseerde diplomatieke dienst van András Jelky in Japan
49-82Views:192The history of András Jelky was published in German in 1779 in Vienna and in Prague. Jelky was employed by the VOC and had sailed to the Dutch East Indies, had had adventures there and built a career. According to the book from 1779, he also worked as an emissary in Japan. In this article I will discuss the topic of the Dutch-Japanese relations in the 16th to 19th century and the potential role of Jelky.
-
1956 at Ten and Beethoven’s Tenth: Edward Alexander and Hungary, 1965-66
185-199Views:118This article looks at Edward Alexander, an American diplomat who served in Hungary between 1965 and 1969, and his various writings. An Armenian-American man of letters, Alexander served in psychological warfare in World War II, then joined cold war radios and later the Foreign Service. Our focus is on the years 1965-67, when he served as Press and Cultural Affairs Officer at the Budapest Legation. Available sources include his official diplomatic reports, his rather large Hungarian state security file, a lifetime interview conducted under the aegis of the State Department in the late 1980s, a book on Armenian history, and a semi-autobiographical intelligence thriller he penned in 2000. These sources allow for a complex evaluation of his performance in Hungary and of his writing skills on account of his attempt to fictionalize his own exploits.
-
A Historian in the Service of the Foreign Office: C. A. Macartney (1895-1978) and his writings on Hungary
163-184Views:141This study is focusing on the life of C.A. Macartney as a diplomat and a historian especially on his writings on Hungary and the Hungarian history. The importance of this point goes back to the fact that he published a good number of books and articles on Hungary between the period of 1926 and 1978. It has been proved that this very rich publication activity of him basically influenced the attitudes of the English-speaking intellectual world towards Hungary and the Hungarians. In the life of Macartney the career as a diplomat and his so-called graphomaniac historian activity were closely connected. Although he was an expert of modern Hungarian history and worked for the British Foreign Office as a member of the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD) during WWII years, he also had a very well-grounded knowledge on the history of Austria and the Habsburg Empire. With his diplomatic activity and historical skill Macartney inspired generations of English-speaking historians, intellectuals and decision-makers in the subject of Hungary and the Hungarians. This fact well indicates the long-term importance and influence of C. A. Macartney as a pro-Hungarian historian and diplomat.
-
Nicholas Roosevelt in A Front Row Seat: Hungary in the 1930s As Reflected in the Memoirs of an American Diplomat
149-162Views:325As Nicholas Roosevelt put it in the foreword of his memoirs a “combination of circumstances gave [him] the front row seat at numerous important […] events in Europe during the interwar period,” which made it possible for him to “study history in the making” both as a journalist working for acknowledged dailies of the time, such as The New York Times and The New York Herald Tribune, and as a diplomat who served at various European posts in Europe including Hungary between 1930 and 1933. Due to both of these positions Hungarians considered Roosevelt a highly influential person, who could possibly air and expose Hungary’s situation in the international community after World War I, and help further the revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Drawing on his memoirs, diplomatic exchanges, as well as a selection of his newspaper and magazine articles, the essay proposes to reflect on how Roosevelt viewed Hungary, and whether his various forms of written narratives could have any effect and exert any influence in this regard.
-
“Netherlandicas” – Calvinist Relics from the 17th Century Holland
121-150Views:45In my paper I analysed what kind of images of Holland might have occurred in the heads of the Hungarian Calvinist visitors in 17th century. I established seven types of visitors to demonstrate the choices of Hungarian Calvinists as for what objects i.e. relics they brought home or what objects they recalled in their memoirs when they called back their experiences in Holland. It contains 8 types of “netherlandicas”, 8 several images of Holland which can also be demonstrated the image the Hungarian travellers had of Holland when they started out. In their memoirs also figured an experience of Holland, and these objects (i. e. a statue, a book) recalled how Holland had been seen by these Hungarian Students, Pastors and Diplomats. At the beginning of the examined period the Hungarian students usually stayed one or two weeks or months in Holland in the course of their journey through Europe. Later on they spent some terms there and in the second third of the century some students spent long years in Holland. And in that period many evidences were left behind (travel diaries, album amicorum, editions, possessor-entries, letters, memoirs on the life and sights in Holland).
-
Jenő Bánó: Travels of an Immigrant and his Path to Diplomacy
109-130Views:115This paper introduces a case study of Hungarian emigration to the Americas, which illustrates some of the general trends in migration at the turn of the century as well as a unique career path of a Hungarian immigrant in Mexico. By discussing and analyzing the life, diplomatic career, and publications of Jenő Bánó, the paper touches upon issues including the significance of travel writing in influencing migration, the use of migration propaganda, and relations between Hungary and the Americas.
-
László Teleki, the diplomat of the Hungarian war of independence
83-107Views:191This paper gives an overview of the political career of László Teleki, the leading diplomat of the Hungarian war of independence. Based on the topics discussed in this volume, his efforts as a writer of literature will also be mentioned here, though his theatrical pieces met just modest popular acclaim. Teleki joined politics, and became a well-known and successful politician in support of reformists. Later, before the war with Austria, he was appointed to act as the ambassador of the independent Hungarian government to Paris. He had a key role in shaping Hungarian foreign policy, wanted to secure the independence of the country both during the war of independence and in emigration. This paper focuses on this latter period, when his correspondence clearly reflected his political commitment and approach, as well as changes in his personal relations.
-
Reviewing the difficulties of Hungarian higher education in the first quarter of the 20th century and the role of university youth after the ‘Great War’: A newsreel supported pragmatic survey
79-100Views:82The basic idea of this paper was generated by some motion pictures shot on October events of 1918. This, at that time fundamentally novel media of mass communication can be considered as a visual interpretation of the moral behavior and the role attributed to the contemporary university youth in the series of revolutions after the ‘Great War’. Young people, many of them from universities, collected shocking experiences in the war that generated their moral and behavioral transition. At the time of the turn of the century there were development processes initiated in the Hungarian higher education, however, the war caused a break in these processes and, there were also certain structural changes introduced during and immediately after the end of the war which resulted in chaotic circumstances that kept on deepening the stress of students. Both the traditional press together with other printed documents and the contemporary newsreel have provided us with the sources being necessary and enough for making an attempt to answer, in what here follows, the questions: how the drastically changed, consequently chaotic situation within the Hungarian higher education along with the declined activity of student associations influenced the students, as well as how the most highlighted phenomena, such as the impact of war on everyday life and economy, the emergence and spread of violence, the reactions to the increased admission of female and Jewish students at universities affected the entire society and within this the university circumstances immediately after the armistice, and why the violence, radicalization, and “brutalization” of the so-called “war generation” became featuring at demonstrations.
-
A Humanist Diplomat in Early 16th Century Hungary: Hieronymus Balbus
11-48Views:168The article investigates new sources, Western European, mainly English diplomatic reports – several being so far unknown for Hungarian scholarship, or, if known, not examined in this regard – e.g. held at the British Library Manuscript Collection to shed light on Hungarian-Ottoman relations at the eve of the fall of the “shield of Christendom”, Belgrade in 1521. The article follows the mission of Hieronymus Balbus, an Italian at the diplomatic personnel of Jagiellonian Hungary, in 1521 to the Habsburg, Tudor and Valois courts. Balbus’s diplomatic workings – through the embassy to the Emperor (Charles V in Worms and Brussels), a peace conference at Calais and Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII, King of England – has not been adequately seen in Hungarian historiography, and some of his letters and political activity ranging from Bruges, Worms, Calais, London and Cologne has not so far been mapped, yet new insights can be given for the understanding of Louis II’s diplomatic efforts during the stress of the siege and loss of Belgrade in 1521. The investigation is largely based on Balbus’s dispatches – which has not survived in Hungarian archival material but were preserved in the reports of English envoys of his activity, to the maker of Tudor policy, Chancellor Wolsey. The correspondence of Balbus provides valuable information on the administration of Louis II, about its relationship with the Turks and the Emperor. The leaders of Hungarian diplomacy did not lack astuteness and “had a clear picture” about the international power relations. The government experimented with alternatives, provided they did not receive any aid from the Habsburgs: they were willing to go as far as making an alliance with not only the English, but even with the Emperor’s enemies, the Valois. In 1521, despite the powerful Habsburg dominance, Hungarian foreign politics did have some room to manoeuvre.