Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 11:385–414, 2005 C Taylor & Francis Inc. Copyright
ISSN: 1353-7113 print DOI: 10.1080/13537110500255619 MULTIPLE NATIONALISM: NATIONAL CONCEPTS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY HUNGARY AND BENEDICT ANDERSON’S “IMAGINED COMMUNITIES” ALEXANDER MAXWELL University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA Nineteenth-century Slovaks expressed loyalty to both a Hungarian “political nation” and a Slavic “cultural” or “linguistic” nation, and invoked multiple linguistic nations, variously imagined as Pan-Slavic, Czechoslovak or Slovak. Comparing the Slovak and Croat experience in nineteenth-century Hungary shows that “nation” status bestowed concrete political benefits. Since historical actors invoke the “nation” for multiple communities, the desire for statehood should not be a defining criterion of nationalism. Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationalism, however, can accommodate multiple nationalism. This article examines a series of political actors who expressed allegiance to more than one nation at the same time. It takes Hungary’s nineteenth-century Slovak minority as a case study, but the phenomenon of multiple nationalism exists elsewhere in the world, and I will situate Slovak ideas in the context of national ideas elsewhere in the Habsburg Empire. This phenomenon underscores the political potency of “the nation” as a rhetorical device, but also calls into question the frequent assumption that nationalism is a quest for statehood. Any theoretical argument about nationalism requires a brief discussion of the “notoriously difficult to define”1 terms “nation” and “nationality.” I start from the empirical observation that the term “nation” is a popular polemical tool: historical actors frequently use this word while making political arguments. Historians rely on political polemic to uncover the intellectual history of nationalism, so the word “nation” can be initially approached as a rhetorical phenomenon. Before devising a definition of the word “nation” that appeals to contemporary scholars, we should ask what the term meant to those who used it, and the political Address correspondence to Alexander Maxwell, University of Nevada-Reno, Department of Political Science/302, Reno, NV 89557-0060. E-mail: amaxwell@zworg.com 385 386 A. Maxwell work the term was expected to perform. We may remain agnostic about what, if any, referent the term describes: as Rogers Brubaker put it, One does not have to take a category inherent in the practice of nationalism—the realist, reifying conception of nations as real communities—and make this category central to the theory of nationalism.2 Brubaker asks how the concept of “nation” functions “as a practical category, as classificatory scheme, as cognitive frame.”3 I adopt a similar approach, asking how the concept of “nation” functioned as a rhetorical strategy in a specific place and period in Central European history. Slovaks making political claims repeatedly referred to a nation (národ) in order to legitimize political demands. Their arguments borrowed from discussions in other languages of the Habsburg Empire; words such as nemzet, Volk, and Nation also played a role in the discussion. What work did the term “nation” (or similarlyinvoked terms “Volk,” “nemzet,” “nationality,” “race”) perform in such texts? Why were they so important to political rhetoric, and so hotly contested? The answers to these questions lie in the political history of the period. During the nineteenth century, the territory of the modern Slovak Republic was part of the Kingdom of Hungary and had been so for almost a millennium. The Hungarian nobility, which dominated Hungarian politics, was hostile to Slovak national aspirations, and Slovak nationalism arose primarily to resist Magyarization, i.e. state-sponsored policies of linguistic and cultural assimilation to the culture of ethnic Hungarians (Magyars).4 Slovaks who showed too much sympathy for the Hungarians risked being called “Magyarones,” a derisive term connoting lickspittle collaboration and national cowardice. Twentieth-century Slovak– Hungarian relations have been characterized by shrill if mostly bloodless confrontation. Because of these conflicts, the historiography on East-Central European nationalism assumes that Slovak nationalism was in inherent contradiction with Hungarian nationalism.5 During the nineteenth century, however, Slovak nationalists typically accepted the legality and legitimacy of the Hungarian Kingdom, even while defending a Slavic linguistic community, variously imagined as Pan-Slavic, Slovak, or Czechoslovak. During the nineteenth century, Slovaks did not seek statehood for National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 387 this linguistic community: Slovaks struggled for a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic Hungary, not a Pan-Slavic, Czechoslovak or Slovak state.6 The word “nation” was prominent both when Slovaks affirmed their Hungarian political loyalties and when they defended their Slavic cultural loyalties. The word “nation” was a complex term in nineteenth-century Hungary, and telling its history is a complex task. In the eighteenth century, the dominant “nation” concept in Hungary was the so-called natio hungarica, which characteristically referred to Hungary’s multi-ethnic nobility in Latin, an important lingua franca of the period.7 During the period of the French Revolution, some Hungarian national thinkers began to extend the “nation” down the social hierarchy, resulting in a multi-ethnic, sociallyinclusive vision of Hungarian nationalism: the so-called Hungarus idea. Historians of Hungary generally treat the Hungarus concept as transient and insignificant: The Hungarus idea was based on emancipation and modernization. . . . [Its supporters] wanted neither to defend one-sidedly the old Hungarian class privileges of the “natio hungarica” nor to engage solely in upholding the national language and culture. . . . The Hungarus idea did not, however, stand up to the popular efforts of the [Magyar] language reformers. . . . The Hungari and their few followers were suspected of being “apatriotic” and “anational,” even of being “Austrians,” or at least of working for Vienna. This sounded the death knell for the Hungarus concept as far as public opinion was concerned. It was discarded as a possible variant of Hungarian national concepts. With hindsight, it hardly stood a realistic chance of realization anyway.8 Though I do not entirely share Haselsteiner’s counterfactual pessimism, the ultimate failure of the Hungari is beyond dispute. The dominant theme in Hungary’s reform-minded liberal nobility shared with the Hungari the belief that the “nation” must be expanded down the social scale to include the educated middle classes. Most Hungarian nobles, however, added an ethnic dimension. National education had to take place in Hungarian, otherwise what would separate Hungarians from their Austrian oppressors? During the 1830s and 1840s, as increasing numbers of Hungarians accepted that the nation must extend down the social hierarchy, the Hungarian national concept lost its multi-ethnic quality. 388 A. Maxwell The key concept of Hungarian liberal nationalism was the Magyar politikai nemzet, the “Hungarian political nation,” which János Varga summarized as “a nation concept whereby, by definition, the Hungarian (Magyar) nation was the only nation in Hungary, and every person living in the country was a member of this nation.”9 In 1843, Gustáv Szontágh, whom Varga credits with inventing the concept, defined “the nation” in opposition to a mere “people”: A nation is the community of people living together in a common sovereign state and homeland; an independent civil society, it has a history of living its own political life as a morally responsible entity. “Nation” is the totality of a country’s citizens; “people” are its component parts, grouped according to their common race and language. Consequently, while a country can have only one nation, it can have a variety of peoples.10 So far, this is compatible with the Hungarus concept, but Szontágh distinguished himself from the Hungari by granting a special primacy to the Magyars: The founders of a nation are the people who occupy a nation and found a state. With this act they transform a people to a nation. . . . likewise with this act, a people stamps its name, its character and its language on the land it settles, the society it establishes, and the political life it lives. It follows from this that in Hungary an aspect of political life is national only if it is Hungarian.11 This argument is logically inconsistent: the Magyars are both a “nation,” and a distinct “people” in that nation.12 Nevertheless, Szontágh made a simple political claim: though the Hungarian state contains many different ethnic groups, ethnic Hungarians should be dominant. Varga’s analysis of “Hungarian” national ideas, however, treated the history of ethnic-Hungarian (Magyar) national ideas as the history of national concepts in the Hungarian state.13 Though variations of the Hungarus concept—multi-ethnic, class-inclusive visions of the Hungarian nation—proved a minor theme in Magyar nationalism, they proved much more attractive among those inhabitants of Hungary most likely to benefit from them: speakers of languages other than Hungarian. As a measure of how widespread Hungarian loyalties were among the cream of the Slovak nationalist intelligentsia, consider the only Slovak patriots who rose up in arms against Hungarian rule during the nineteenth century: The Slovak National National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 389 Council. In 1848, the Slovak National Council organized a small volunteer army to oppose Lajos Kossuth’s revolutionary government, the Slovak Volunteers.14 Two of the Council’s three leaders, M.M. Hodža and Jozef Hurban, will be discussed below. The third, L’udovı́t Štúr, language reformer, journalist and political leader, is widely acknowledged as the most important figure of nineteenth-century Slovak history. Described by Ludwig Gogolák as “the true founder of the new Slovak nation,”15 Štúr’s face graces the Slovak Republic’s 500 Crown banknote. No modern scholar could possibly call him a Magyarone.16 Despite these impressive Slovak-nationalist credentials, Štúr articulated a passionate loyalty toward Hungary in an 1843 polemic against Magyarization: We Slavs. . . . are devoted to our country, and have made service to our fatherland from the earliest times up until today. . . . We always fulfilled our obligations to the fatherland as Slavs, even because of this, we must possess full and equal rights with others, for obligations without rights is bondage.17 Štúr also justified his famous language reform in Hungarian terms: “From the point of view of our written language we are domesticated in our homeland. . . . We are already, and wish to remain, at home; but we will see that our neighbors, and particularly our Magyars, will welcome us home.”18 Equally passionate declarations of Hungarian loyalty dominate the literary newspaper Štúr edited, Orol Tatranský [Eagle of the Tatras].19 One contributor proclaimed his willingness to die for multi-ethnic Hungary: Hungarian land! Sweetly pleasing is this name! How much blood has flown to the glory of this name! But that blood belonged not to one nation alone:. . . . Mad’ar and Slav, German and Vlach have as one sacrificed their lives for her. Oh my dear homeland, Hungarian land, my heart beats for you with an ardent love.20 Bohuš Nosák wrote that “in these times our Hungarian homeland requires nothing more urgently than reciprocal confidence between all the classes and nations in Hungary.”21 Slovak fiction often contained similar themes: the hero of Janko Kalinčjak’s short story “Milkov hrob” [“Milk’s Grave”] at one point exclaims, “My dear Mária! My love for you is great, but even greater is my love for the Hungarian homeland!”22 Slovak patriots expressed these Hungarian loyalties right to the end of the Monarchy. Consider Andrej Hlinka, a Catholic 390 A. Maxwell priest, who led the Slovak autonomy movement in interwar Czechoslovakia and graces Slovak’s 1000 Crown banknote. During his trial over his role in the so-called “Černová massacre,” in which police shot Slovaks protesting the Magyarization of a Church, Hlinka affirmed his loyalty to Hungary: The prosecutor says that several years ago I left out from the prayer “the lady patron of Hungary,” but I assure you that I have prayed to the lady patron of Hungary more often than the prosecutor.23 Hlinka also expressed hope “that the day has come when all nationalities of Hungary may freely work for freedom, equality and brotherhood.” Owen Johnson has argued that Slovaks became disillusioned with Hungarian rule in the decade before the First World War. This timing, however, implies that Slovaks continued to seek accommodation with the Magyars after the successive disillusionments of the 1848 Revolution, the 1867 Ausgleich between Hungary and Austria, the 1875 election of arch-Magyarizer Kálmán Tisza, and the 1906 Černová massacre.24 In short, Hungaro-Slavism25 was the norm among nineteenthcentury Slovak patriots, and might have continued into the twentieth had the First World War not intervened. This loyalty may have derived partly from the inability to imagine any realistic alternative: the private correspondence of Slovak leaders suggests that loyalty to Hungary had a strained quality after the Ausgleich. Ján Mallý, for example, wrote with resignation that “we [Slovaks] cannot be against the unity of the country, even if we wanted to.”26 Slovaks were also quick to abandon their Hungarian loyalties when the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy offered them a viable alternative. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century, repeated declarations of loyalty and affection for the Hungarian homeland should be treated as genuine. Slovak patriots borrowed many of their “national” concepts from the Hungarians; specifically from the Hungarus tradition. Slovak thinkers worked in a Hungarian political context, claimed to be patriotic Hungarians, and often sought to address a Hungarian audience: it is not surprising that they sought to further Slovak goals using Hungarian terminology. Their ultimate goal was not a Slavic nation-state, but “poly-ethnic rights,” which Will Kymlicka defined as measures “intended to promote integration into the larger society, not self-government.”27 Their struggle against Magyarization National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 391 and the Magyars was not a battle against Hungary, but a battle for Hungary, specifically for a Hungary that protected and promoted Slavic language and culture. The path-breaking Slovak theorist of Hungaro-Slavic nationalism was a Protestant pastor named Samuel Hojč. He wrote two books arguing that Slavic language and culture had a legitimate place in Hungary, and that the Magyars must accept the Slavs as fellow Hungarians. Both books were published abroad, both were anonymous, and both were written in German, the primary language of inter-ethnic communication. Hojč’s second work, Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus [Apology of Hungarian Slavism], appeared in 1843, at the peak of the so-called “Language War” over linguistic rights in Slovak northern Hungary.28 Its theoretical discussion of nationality defined key terms in several languages; the following translation gives Hojč’s original German, Slavic, Hungarian and Latin words in brackets. The analysis, however, focuses on Slavic terminology, since the main theme of this research is the development of Slovak nationalist thought. Hojč began by describing the natio hungarica as Hungary’s “diplomatic” nation: who is then the nation in Hungary?. . . Well, we know it very well that the nation in Hungary, in the diplomatic sense, is composed of four estates: the clergy, the magnates, the nobility and royal free cities.29 Hojč cited this diplomatic nation solely to emphasize its multiethnic character. “Which peoples . . . belong in these estates? I believe, all of the peoples which live in Hungary. . . . One would find, next to the Magyars, also heaps of Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, and Germans.”30 Much like Szontágh, Hojč then defined “a people” [G: Volk; H: nép, faj; L: gens, S: národ] in terms of language: “a quantity of human beings who are bound to each other by the bonds of language, style of thought, customs and habits.”31 Hojč granted each “people” a characteristic “peopleness” [G: Volksthümlichkeit; “in Hungarian no term is in common use, maybe one could say nèpiesség ”; S: nàrodnost 32 ]. He then contrasted the “people” with the “nation” [G: Nation, Staatsbürger ; H: nemzet; L: populus, civis; S: Národ], and its accompanying “nationality.” 392 A. Maxwell While nation refers to the totality of citizens, to the totality of a country’s inhabitants who are bound by common laws, government and common well-being, so nationality is nothing more than observing the law, respecting the government, and eagerly striving to promote the well-being of the fatherland.33 Notice that in Hojč’s Slavic terminology only a capital letter distinguishes the linguistic/Slavic národ from the political/Hungarian Národ. Hojč finished by defining the “Fatherland” [G: Vaterland; H: haza; L: patria; S: wlast] as the place which served our fathers as a place to live, where we and our ancestors were born, nourished, raised, and educated; where we find the love of our parents, friendship, the protection of laws, an inherited or self-made fame and privilege, a welcome profession, perhaps also a peaceful house and home, also the resting place of the grave. How many sweet and dear things this word contains!34 “The Sons of the Fatherland” [G: Vaterlandssöhne, Staatsburger, Nation; H: hazafiak, “the collective name nemzet”; L: cives, populus; S: kragané, obcané (sic)] include “everyone who resides in the fatherland, considers it to be his own, lives as well under the same laws, is subordinated to the same ruler, has a common goal to strive for.”35 This formula could just as well describe a Slavic ethnoterritory or the Hungarian kingdom, but Hojč’s reference to “the same ruler” suggests the Habsburg Empire as a whole. In addition to dual Hungaro-Slavic nationalism, Hojč left space for Habsburg loyalism—arguably for an österreichische Nation. In summary, Hojč invoked several nations. The Slavs in the north of Hungary belonged to the Hungarian Národ and therefore had Hungarian nationality, yet were also part of the Slavic národ since they had Slavic peopleness, and additionally were the sons of a presumably Habsburg fatherland. These complex definitions, however, made a straightforward political argument: Slovaks are good Hungarian citizens even if they remain attached to their own language and culture. In Hojč’s words, “yes, without damaging our Hungarian-national sympathies, we wish to hold tight to the unity which binds us with [other Slavs], so that in the wide north, as in the far south, we have brothers, in whose veins related blood flows.”36 Hojč invoked “national” rhetoric for at least two very different imagined communities: Slovaks were part of the Slavic nation, encompassing Poles, Russians and Czechs, but also National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 393 part of the Hungarian nation, including Magyars, Romanians and Germans. Hojč did not grant either priority over the other: his whole argument was that both loyalties were important and coexisted unproblematically. Hojč may have drawn his three-fold division of Slovak loyalties from Alexander Pusztay’s 1843 Die Ungarn in ihrem Staats- und Nationalwesen von 889 bis 1842 [The Hungarians in their State and National Existence]. Pusztay distinguished three different “names of nations,”37 though he actually used the German word Volk, which could also be glossed as “a people.” Specifically, Pusztay distinguished geographic, genetic and political Völker: in the geographic sense, Pannonians, Huns, Avars, Magyars and Slavs are one nation [Ein Volk], just as the English, Scots, Cornish, and Gauls are one nation, because they have lived and partly still live in a single country: the former in Hungary, the latter in Great Britain. In the genetic or historical sense, individuals only make a nation when they have one origin. . . . Since nations have no genealogical charts, only linguistic similarity reveals this common origin. . . . Finally, in the political sense, one calls all of a group of individuals a nation if they are bound to a single state or under a single ruler. So in Hungary, the Slav, the German, the Croat—all call themselves Hungarians, even when none of them speak Hungarian.38 Pusztay apparently viewed language merely as a visible surrogate for common descent, lacking any significance in its own right. Pusztay also used Szontágh’s bait-and-switch technique, conflating Slavic willingness to accept political Hungarian loyalties and a willingness for cultural assimilation. Both Pusztay and Hojč developed complex and confusing terminology to make straightforward political arguments, but Pusztay supported Magyarization, while Hojč opposed it. M.M. Hodža, a linguistic scholar and a leader of the Slovak Volunteers, also rejected Magyarization: Is it true that in our homeland, that is to say, Hungary, we cannot be any other nationality [národnost’i] than Hungarian [uhorská], that is to say, Magyar [mad’arská]?. . . . We do not want to Magyarize, we want to stand by our own language, by our own nationality [národnost’i], in our own homeland.39 While Hojč’s defense of Slovak linguistic rights became mired in a bog of confusing terminology, Hodža’s train of thought sank completely into conceptual quicksand. He started by claiming that 394 A. Maxwell Slovaks form a nation [národ], and that every nation has the right to nationality [národnost]. And what is this nationality? This is about the same as if we would say of a good man that he was a man of the people [l’udskı́ človek]. Though every man is indeed a man, not every man is a man of the people, and so not every nation is a national nation [je ňje každı́ národ národnı́ národ].40 Hodža then distinguished a “national nation” from a mere “nation” as follows: If a nation does not have nationality, we call it nationality-ness [narod’enstvom] (with a short a); if it has nationality, we call it nátionality-ness [národ’nenstvom] (with a long á). This is an important difference. Perhaps only for nátionality-ness have I and the people struggled; it elevates no nation when, as frequently happens, nationality-ness stupidly hates itself. Then the nation is for other national nations merely an ape. It would rather know every foreign language before its own, it works well, but it works on the publications of other nations, but not for its own movement.41 I assure the reader that Hodža’s original text is as incomprehensible as my translation: even a modern Slovak version of Hodža’s Štúrovčina text baffled native-speaker informants. Needless to say, the proposed distinction between narod’enstvom and n árod’nenstvom did not take root. But why did Hodža insist on using a variant of the word národ to discuss so many different things? The answer to this question lies with his political aims. Both Hodža and Hojč, despite their terminological difficulties, saw themselves as Slavic Hungarians: both wanted Magyars to end the policy of Magyarization and recognize Slavs as good citizens of Hungary. Both described saw the “slavic” half of HungaroSlavism as truly Slavic, not Slovak particularist. Hodža claimed that Hungary was a mostly Slavic country: “the Slavic nation (by which we understand the Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Rusyns), . . . is the greatest in Hungary.”42 Finally, both Hodža and Hojč insisted on using the word “nation” (národ), or some variant thereof, to describe both Hungarian political loyalties and Slavic linguistic affiliation, presumably because they thought this word lent the most legitimacy to their arguments. Neither Hodža nor Hojč had much influence on Magyar public opinion. During the Language War, Hungarians generally refused to acknowledge any national groups inside the Hungarian nation. Károly Nagy, for example, felt that “only one nation can inhabit a country at any one time, but there can be a number National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 395 of languages.”43 Kossuth explicitly denied non-Magyars both the status of “nation” and “nationality”: “I shall never ever recognize any other nation and nationality [nemzetet és nemzetiséget] under the holy Hungarian crown than the Hungarian. I know there are people and races [emberek és népfajok] who speak other languages, but there is only one nation here.”44 Meeting in Mikuláš after the Revolution of 1848, the Slovak leadership issued the 10 May “Declaration of the Slovak Nation”; one Hungarian historian has described the demands as “conciliatory,”45 but Kossuth nevertheless responded with arrest warrants for Slovak leaders. Only then did Štúr, Hurban and Hodža flee Hungary, eventually forming Slovak National Council and raising an army of Slovak Volunteers in Vienna. Kossuth’s revolution failed, however, and during the 1850s, the Habsburg Empire, in A.J.P. Taylor’s words, “became, for the first and last time, a fully unitary state.”46 During this so-called “Bach Regime,” named after interior minister Alexander Bach, discussions of nationality throughout the Habsburg lands were interrupted. Discussion of national questions, however, resumed after the Habsburg monarch issued the February Patent in 1861. In June 1861, Slovak leaders met in Martin to formulate Slovak demands; the result was the “Memorandum of the Slovak Nation,” which insisted that “we Slovaks are also a nation [národ], just like the Magyars or any other nation of this homeland [vlast].”47 In the meantime, however, Hungarian terminology had shifted. The Magyar politikai nemzet remained the essential concept, but the leading Hungarian leaders from the 1860s, determined to avoid Kossuth’s mistakes, expressed a new willingness to accommodate what they described as the “justified demands” of non-Magyar collectives, who gained the status of “nationality [nemzetiség ].” Ferenc Deák, echoing Hojč, advised the Hungarian liberal movement: “If we wish to win over the nationalities we must not seek at all costs to Magyarize them.”48 József Eötvös, in his A nemzetiségi kérdés [The Nationality Question], also wanted to win over the minorities, though he also felt that “the demands of the linguistically diverse nationalities can only be satisfied if the unity of the Kingdom and its existence as a state are guaranteed.”49 In the 1860s, the distance separating Hungarian and Slovak conceptions of “Hungarian” nationality shrank to its lowest point. 396 A. Maxwell In 1867, Franz-Joseph made his famous Ausgleich [compromise] with the Hungarian leadership, which gained as a result the right to regulate the internal politics of the Hungarian kingdom. In 1868, the Hungarian parliament passed the infamous Nationalities Law, Law XLIV. Historians are divided as to the merits of this legislation: Arthur May described it as “one of the most enlightened measures of its kind ever adapted,”50 though Kontler observes that the law’s lack of guarantees allowed subsequent Hungarian leaders to ignore those provisions that protected minority rights.51 It obligated all municipal governments to keep records in Hungarian, though such records could also be kept in minority languages if a fifth of the municipality’s members desired it (paragraph 2). Minority languages could also be used in courts (paragraph 7) and church administration (paragraph 24). Though universities would teach in the Hungarian language, departments in minority literatures were permitted (paragraph 19). Paragraph 23 assured that “every state citizen may use his own language in petitions to the municipal government, church administration, county administration, or organs of the central government.” Eötvös, the main figure behind the law, had wanted to grant even more rights to Hungary’s non-Magyars: His draft law of 26 June 1867, for example, had allowed county assemblies to select their language of administration by simple majority vote.52 For our purposes, however, note that Law 44 included a legal definition of the Magyar politikai nemzet: It distinguished the Hungarian nation, the “nation in the political sense,” from its constituent “nationalities.” According to the fundamental principles of the constitution all the inhabitants of the Kingdom form one nation in the political sense, the indivisible Hungarian nation, of which each citizen, regardless of nationality, is an equal member, and enjoys the same rights as every other citizen.53 This formula denied any collective legal status to “nationalities.” In 1875, with the election of Kálmán Tisza, Hungarian policy became sharply more hostile to non-Magyar aspirations. Tisza moved against Slovak cultural institutions, most notably the Matica slovenská. He justified these steps by denying Slovaks the status of “nation” status: “there can be only one viable nation within the frontiers of Hungary: that political nation is the Hungarian one.”54 When a Serb deputy asked Tisza to return the Matica’s funds to the original donors, Tisza observed that the Matica’s statutes declared National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 397 its assets the property of the Slovak nation, and claimed that he knew “no such nation.” Oscar Jászi described Tisza’s policy as “in flagrant antagonism both with the spirit and the positive statement of the nationality law,”55 but the interesting aspect of the story is that Tisza invoked the rights of the “political nation” to shut down a cultural institution. Andrew Janos blamed Tisza for transforming the magyar nemzet “from a political into a cultural concept.”56 Nineteenth-century Hungarian politicians never granted Slovaks the status of a “nation.” Indeed, in 1878, during the Tisza era, at least one Hungarian nationalist went so far as to deny Slovaks the status of “nationality”: Béla Grünwald’s A Felvidék [The Highlands, i.e. the mountainous part of Hungary that is now the Slovak republic], claimed that “in Hungary there are households speaking the Slovak language, but there is no Slovak nationality [tót nemzetiség ].”57 When Ferdiš Juriga addressed the Hungarian parliament in Slovak on 19 October 1918, the only time Slovak was ever spoken in the Hungarian parliament, his reference to the Slovak nation was immediately interrupted by the shout “where is this Slovak nation? In which province?”58 Slovak leaders always insisted on “nation” status. Consider how Jozef Hurban, whom nineteenth-century German and Hungarian observers saw as the main figure in the Slovak National Council,59 rejected the distinction between “nation” and “nationality”: We are to say nationality [národnost’ ] and not nation [národ] . . . The nation has nationality, but nationality is not there, where there is no nation. Slovaks are a nation by reason of their thoughts, language, life, poetry, literature, common life, virtues, piety, wisdom, glory; nationality, that is shame.60 This outrage is somewhat ironic, given that Hurban, in an earlier work on Slovak language reform, had happily described the Slovaks as a tribe: “We are a tribe [kmen] in Slavdom, but we are also a tribe of the Hungarian state.”61 However, this previous work was directed at a Slavic audience: when asserting linguistic rights vis-à-vis Magyarizing Hungarians, Slovak leaders described their language and culture as a “nation.” Slovak lawyer Viliam Pauliny-Tóth also rejected the status of “nationality.” In 1870, he proposed a new law to replace the Nationality Law 44, which was published in the Národnie noviny [National Newspaper ]. Pauliny-Tóth accepted the Hungarian concept of the “political nation,” but borrowed Pusztay’s concept of a “genetic” 398 A. Maxwell nation to refer to the Slovaks. (Note the decline of All-Slavism: the Slovaks form a genetic nation by themselves, distinct from Serbs and Rusyns.) 1. In Hungary there is only one political nation, the Hungarian [uhorský] nation, composed of the following genetic nations: Magyars [Mad’arov], Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Rusyns, and Germans. 2. All of these genetic nations, forming the political nation, are completely equal. 3. In Hungary, there are two administrative languages: The state and municipal. 4. The state language is exclusively Magyar. Municipal languages are: Magyar, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Rusyn and German.62 Further points ascribe elementary schools, and local administration to municipal languages, and give the parliament, ministries, the highest court, and universities to Magyar. The details of Pauliny-Tóth’s draft law are not all that different from that of Law XLIV. Both divide Hungary’s public sphere into Hungarian and non-Hungarian parts, both assigned universities and parliament to the Hungarian-language sphere, and both allocated elementary schools and local administration to minority languages. The most striking difference is terminological: Pauliny-Tóth, like Hurban, claimed the status of “nation” for both his Hungarian citizenship and his linguistic group, instead of distinguishing the “Hungarian nation” from “nationalities.” Why was “nation” status so important to Slovak leaders? One might expect Slovak leaders to concentrate on concrete demands, yet Hojč, Hodža, Hurban, and Pauliny-Tóth expended much of their energy on terminology. The status as a “nation,” however, contained important symbolism, accompanied by significant political benefits. These benefits are particularly obvious when one compares the Slovak experience under Hungarian rule with that of the Croats in the same period. After the Ausgleich, the Hungarian parliament had made its own miniature Ausgleich with Croatia, the Nagdoba, which created an autonomous region with borders similar to those of the modern Croatian republic. This was known as the Triune kingdom, since it claimed jurisdiction over three historic provinces: Dalmatia, Slavonia and Croatia proper (the region around Zagreb).63 The Triune kingdom boasted a distinct parliament, an autonomous National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 399 education system up to university level, and the right to use the Croatian language in local administration. Hungarian willingness to grant autonomy to the Croats, like Franz-Joseph’s willingness to compromise with the Hungarians, may reflect military prowess during the Revolution of 1848, but even before 1848, Hungarian authors had drawn a distinction between Croats and other Hungarian minorities on the basis of medieval legal precedent. The medieval Croatian kingdom had enjoyed a distinct legal status within the kingdom of Hungary, and since Hungarian reformers legitimated their demands against Vienna with reference to Hungary’s ancient constitution, they had long expressed the willingness to grant the Croats a special status.64 However one explains the Nagdoba, the important point here is that the Croats received the status of “a separate nation from a political point of view.”65 Indeed, during this period Croat “nation” concepts more closely resembled those of the Magyars, since Croatian leaders attempted to impose Croatian “political nationality” on non-Croat inhabitants of the Triune kingdom. Just as Hungarian liberals wanted Hungary’s minorities to become “political Hungarians,” August Harabašić called on Serbs to “simply declare that you are Croatian citizens, that your homeland is Croatia, and that you are in that regard political Croats.”66 Josip Strossmayer and Franjo Rac̆ki, perhaps borrowing Pusztay’s terminology, similarly contrasted a Croat “political people” with Serbian and Slovene “genetic peoples.” Obsessive arguments about how to define the term “nation” came to dominate Serb–Croat relations as well as Slovak–Magyar relations. In Nicholas Miller’s words, “Serbs feared the loss of their identity in the Croatian political nation, whereas Croats would not welcome Serbs unless Serbs accepted that they were part of the Croatian political nation.”67 Serbian historian Vasilije Krestić even drew an explicit analogy between the Hungarian and Croatian case: “On the model of the Hungarian feudal policy initiated at the end of the eighteenth century, which was expressed in the slogan that on Hungary’s soil there was only one nation—the Hungarian nation— the majority of Croat politicians believed that in the territory of Croatia there was only one “diplomatic” nation, and that was the Croatian nation.”68 The contrast between the Croatian and Slovak experience under the Ausgleich illustrates that the status of “nation” was a powerful political asset. Hungarian willingness to grant the Croats 400 A. Maxwell “nation” status symbolized Hungarian willingness to accept Croatian autonomy, complete with a Croatian parliament and school system: It is unsurprising that Slovaks insisted on claiming the status of “nation,” and that they contested Magyar terminology with such vigor. While observing Slovak insistence that Slavs were a nation, one must not lose sight of the fact that Slovak theorists proclaimed that their Hungarian loyalties were also “national.” Slovaks proclaimed two national loyalties simultaneously. Indeed, some Slovak thinkers appear to have simultaneously proclaimed themselves members of as many as three nations. We have seen that nineteenth-century Slovaks imagined their “political” nation in Hungarian terms. Slovaks juxtaposed this “political” nation with a Slavic nation, variously described as “cultural,” “spiritual,” or “genetic,” but as ultimately derived from linguistic loyalties. However, nineteenth-century Slovaks also expressed diverse linguistic concepts, variously describing their speech as a dialect of a Slavic language,69 a variety of Czech,70 or a distinct language.71 This in turn meant that some Slovak leaders, such as Hojč, imagined the non-Hungarian half of Slovak nationality as Pan-Slavic, while others, such as Pauliny-Tóth, thought in more familiar Slovak-particularist terms. Some Slovaks took an even more complex position, however, and invoked multiple linguistic nations. The above-mentioned M.M. Hodža, for example, claimed both Slovak and Pan-Slavic “nationality”: “we Slovaks, in our Slovak nationality [slovenskej národnost’i], also have a Slavonic nationality [slavjanskú národnost’ ], which is a world nationality.”72 Daniel Lichard’s 1861 pamphlet Rozhowor o Memorandum národa slowenského [Conversation about the Memorandum of the Slovak Nation] similarly described both Slavdom and Slovakia with the word “nation”: Slowan or Slawian signifies all who belong to the great Slavonic nation [národu slawianskeho], which nation, all counted together, counts more than 80 million souls. . . . we understand with this term Russians, Poles, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks; but when we say Slovak, we understand that is a son of our Slovak nation, which lives in Hungary.73 Lichard also described both “our Slovak nation” and “the great Slavonic nation” as compatible with Hungarian political loyalties.74 These multiple Slavic nations, then, should be seen as compatible with membership in the Hungarian political nation. National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 401 This is the proper context for understanding Slovak Czechoslovakism in the nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, there was a modest movement to promote Czechoslovak unity and to downplay the linguistic quarrels between Czechs and Slovaks. In 1881, for example, Hurban proclaimed that “the nation is one from the Tatras to the Elbe. The philological quarrels are melting away.”75 In 1896, Czech and Slovak intellectuals living in Prague founded a society called Československá jednota [Czechoslovak unity],76 and in 1898 began publishing a journal called Hlas [Voice].77 The opening editorial in the first edition of Hlas mostly spoke of a “Slovak nation”; one revealing passage proclaims: “we, the Slovak intelligentsia, are the nation.”78 However, the essay also contains the following description of a “Czechoslovak nation” as a “cultural” nation. In the Czechoslovak Question, finally, we stand by the position of our awakeners and contemporaries, who in every serious moment emphatically stressed the cultural unity of the Czechoslovak nation. On the ruins of all cultural centers in Slovakia we must doubly proclaim the inevitability of this unity, we must cultivate it with all our strength, sustain ourselves with the fruits of this our common culture [emphasis in original].79 The Czechoslovak “cultural nation,” therefore, was a qualified and limited nationality, restricted to a non-political sphere. I have not been able to find any Slovak author who explicitly juxtaposed a Czechoslovak cultural nation with the Hungarian political nation, presumably because Czechoslovakism was a minor theme in nineteenth-century Slovak thought. Nevertheless, Slovak contributors to Hlas also proclaimed their loyalty to the Hungarian state while denouncing Magyarization,80 and Hlasist Czechoslovakism was a variant of Hungaro-Slavism. One might add that a similarly complex understanding of linguistic nationality existed in Croatia, where several thinkers juxtaposed the political nation with Jugoslavenstvo [Yugoslavism, south-Slavism], which Franjo Rac̆ki defined as the striving “to become one nation in the spiritual sense.”81 South-Slavic “spiritual” nationality, like “genetic” or “cultural” nationality, was linguistic in practice; and found expression primarily in the theory of a single Serbo-Croat language. Linguistic Yugoslavism had practical consequences: Strossmayer, for example, supported “myriad publications, schools, exhibits and edifices from Slovenia to Bulgaria,” including the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and 402 A. Maxwell the Croatian University in Zagreb.82 Both Croats and Slovaks, therefore, felt special ties to Slavs in other political units, and described that tie with the word “nation,” though both qualified this use of the word “nation” with non-political adjectives. The correlation between these diverse non-political nations and disagreement about linguistic status suggests that “cultural” and “genetic” nationality refer primarily to language. This suspicion is strengthened by Karl Zmertych’s 1872 pamphlet Rhapsodien über die Nationalität [Rhapsodies on Nationality], a HungaroSlavic theory that explicitly juxtaposed “political” and “linguistic” nations. Before we however begin a rational critique. . . . of the nationality question, we must give a popular definition of the concepts of a country, fatherland and nation as science has taught us . . . we absolutely must draw the extremely important—yea, essential, if we wish to solve the nationality question with justice—distinction between a political and linguistic nation.83 Zmertych, a Slovak politician, defined a linguistic nation as the “totality of people who have a common origin, speak the same language, and consider themselves a family;—in this sense, the Slovaks, the Serbs, the Romanians and so on are each a nation.”84 He probably borrowed these terms from the Austrian half of the Monarchy: Hannelore Burger’s study of linguistic rights in Cisleithenia observed that “the concept of a linguistic nation emerged to compete with the idea of a state nation (which was super-ethnic, centralistic, and stamped German).”85 Slovak declarations of multiple nationality expressed straightforward political claims, though rhetorical complexity sometimes obscures the simplicity of the argument. Slovaks wanted the Hungarian government to grant them group rights, mostly linguistic rights. Membership in the “Hungarian nation” enabled them to pose legitimate demands of the Hungarian government, while a linguistic, cultural, or genetic nation, whether Slovak particularist, Czechoslovak or Pan-Slavic, justified attachment to linguistic rights and opposition to Magyarization. Furthermore, simultaneous Slovak and Czechoslovak (Pan-Slav) “nations” justified both cultural distinctiveness vis-à-vis the Czechs (other Slavs) and cultural action in conjunction with them. The phenomenon of group nationality demonstrates the extraordinary rhetorical importance of the word “nation.” The contrast between Slovak and Czech experiences after the Ausgleich National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 403 suggests that a “nationality” did not, apparently, enjoy the same political rights as a “nation.” Action undertaken in the name of a “nation,” however imagined, carries political legitimacy. The extraordinary political potency of the word “nation” has consequences for the use of the word “nation” as a term of political analysis. Clear terms for articulating one’s research interests are desirable, but any definition must be rejected if it impedes understanding of historical actors. Any definition of nationalism, however concise and elegant, that oversimplifies the complexity of nationalist thought and action must be rejected: as John Deutsch so memorably put it, “no terminology should try to be more accurate than life.”86 The phenomenon of multiple nationalism suggests that it is a mistake to make the desire for political independence a defining characteristic of nationalism, even if struggles for political independence remain a frequent and important feature in many national movements, because empirical evidence shows that political leaders invoke the term “nation” without demanding statehood or independence. This stance will encounter resistance from what might be called the “high political” school of nationalism. Several scholars insist on the importance of political sovereignty or the desire to achieve it. Dominique Schnapper defined the nation as “a particular form of political unit,” defined in part “by its sovereignty,”87 Hans Kohn wrote that “nationalism is inconceivable without the ideas of popular sovereignty,”88 and John Breuilly defined national movements in terms of the claim that “the nation must be as independent as possible.”89 Breuilly cheerfully concedes that scholars “have achieved a great deal in the way of identifying and describing certain sorts of national consciousness,” yet insists “this should not be confused with nationalism.”90 Historical entrepreneurs who desire or wield state power are, of course, a coherent and complex object of study; it is understandable that scholars interested highpolitical varieties of nationalism would define the term “nationalism” to be congruent with their research agenda. This approach, however, places scholarly terminology in insurmountable contradiction with that of historical actors, who frequently, as Brian Porter observed, “repudiate political contestation while still placing something called ‘the nation’ at the center of their rhetoric.”91 Observation must be the final judge: historical actors invoked the “nation” in apolitical contexts. If one defines 404 A. Maxwell “the nation” in terms of a desire for statehood, then one is forced to the unpalatable conclusion that the nineteenth-century Slovak intelligentsia, which fought so tirelessly for Slovak rights, consisted of Hungarian nationalists: did they not explicitly and repeatedly disavow any claims to Slavic statehood, and proclaim their attachment to the Hungarian state? This approach might, in fact, yield some interesting results: the notion that the Slovak Volunteers, for example, fought in a Hungarian civil war would seem to explain their proclamations of Hungarian loyalty better than the traditional interpretation that the Volunteers were an independence movement. Nevertheless, Štúr, Hurban, Hodža and the Slovak Volunteers obviously cannot be seen in exclusively Hungarian terms. Defenders of the high-political school often interpret historical figures who talk about a nation without claiming statehood as forerunners of a state-seeking national movement. Inspired by Miroslav Hroch’s famous A-B-C theory of nationalism,92 historians of Central and Eastern Europe have been particularly enamored of stage theories.93 At first glance, the stage theory approach would seem applicable to Slovakia: Slovak nationalism indeed evolved through several phases before an independent Slovak state was founded. Hroch himself took Slovakia as one of his case studies. But how can Hroch, or a revised version of Hroch’s stage theory, account for Slovak expressions of Hungarian nationality, or even more importantly for expressions of Czechoslovak and PanSlavic nationality? The stage theory, however, by its nature assumes that a national movement, sooner or later, will become politicized and seek statehood,94 and thus forces one to disregard any national concepts that do not ultimately develop into a state-seeking national movement. Such theories shed little light on a national movement that does not develop in the foreordained manner, or on the internal dynamics of political movements. Multiple national loyalties do not fit into a stage theory. Stage theories also have trouble accounting for individuals who invoked multiple nations, since such individuals obviously cannot support multiple independent states. My insistence that the word “nation” should not be defined in terms of statehood may strike some readers as heavy-handed, particularly those with expertise in non-state national movements, variously theorized “minority nationalism” or ‘separatist nationalism,” to cite the titles of two recent edited volumes. However, the National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 405 contributors to these volumes examine an almost canonical list of usual suspects: both volumes, for example, contain chapters on Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Quebec and Basqueland.95 Scholars interested in these cases often show a certain reluctance to describe state loyalties as “national.” Stephen Velychenko’s comparative study of Scotland and Ukraine, for example, contrasted nationalism with non-national “Empire loyalism.” I am not an expert in either Scotland or Ukraine, but would be very surprised if Scottish and Ukrainian loyalist rhetoric avoided the word “nation” as scrupulously as Velychenko did in his description and analysis.96 If “Great Russian” loyalty to the Romanov dynasty can be “nationalism,” should not that of “Little Russians” also be “national”? The reciprocal unwillingness to consider more than one “nation” at a time prevents a common scholarly terminology. Louis Vos, for example, claimed “the Belgian nation had to make room gradually for the birth of a Walloon and a Flemish ethnic identity,”97 while Joseph Rudolph described Belgium as “a multinational state” with “separatist tendencies.”98 This disagreement is more than hair-splitting, because, as Dominique Schnapper so eloquently put it, “a definition of the nation is in itself already a theory of the nation.”99 The term “nation” carries such tremendous political potency that the decision to grant “nation” status to Belgium, or to Walloonia and Flanders, grants legitimacy to one collective while denying it to the other. Scholars should therefore grant “nation” status to any group that claims it, and should not attempt to “translate” their statements into a personal terminology, however clear. Not all scholars, however, share this willingness to describe several different ideas using the word “nation.” Some have sought to distinguish nations from other sorts of social collectives: the “nation” has, for example, been contrasted with the “tribe”100 or the ethnie.101 Usually such distinctions are clear in context but are difficult to generalize, and lead to unnecessary terminological squabbles. We saw above how vigorously Slovaks resisted the status of “nationality”; what Walloon or Welshman would accept the status of “tribe” or “ethnie”? The consensus that nationalism implies a claim to statehood encourages scholars to overstate conflict. Graham Spry’s 1971 work on Quebec described “two ideas of nation in confrontation,”102 but opinion polls from the 1970s suggest that coexistence was an equally prominent theme: though Lawrence LeDuc found that Quebecois had less loyalty to Canada than other Canadians, they 406 A. Maxwell were nevertheless attached to both Canada and Quebec with almost equal passion.103 Had LeDuc given respondents the option of expressing loyalty to both Canada and Quebec simultaneously, this third option might have been most popular: a similar study of Swiss Army recruits found that while 11% expressed primary loyalty to Switzerland, and 17% to their linguistic group, 73% chose both together.104 When discussing nationalism, vigilance is needed to prevent normative preconceptions affecting our analytic vocabulary. Several scholars of nationalism, attempting to tame the daunting diversity of the topic, have divided nationalism into types: indeed, Anthony Smith has classified 39 different “types” of nationalism.105 Several scholarly taxonomies, particularly binary oppositions, conflate analytical distinctions with moral judgments. Kohn’s dichotomy between “Eastern” and “Western” nationalism was particularly Manichean,106 but Michael Ignatieff’s division between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism also contains a normative element.107 Philip Spencer and Howard Wilson, who have identified no fewer than 13 such binary oppositions, accurately summarize the dichotomies as “Good and Bad Nationalisms.”108 Scholars need a vocabulary to discuss both state and nonstate loyalties without taking sides between them. Indeed, scholarly vocabulary should not assume that such loyalties are in conflict, nor assume that non-state loyalties will someday develop into stateforming national movements. Fortunately, Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationalism requires only minor tweaking to accommodate these ambitions. The “imagined community” has become such a ubiquitous cliché of nationalism scholarship that Anderson’s actual definition rarely receives much attention. It bears repeating that Anderson defined the nation not merely as an imagined community, but as a community “imagined both as inherently limited and sovereign.”109 The great virtue of Anderson’s first criterion (“inherently limited”) is that the mechanism of limitation need not be specified: a nationalist may imagine a political unit such as the Hungarian “political nation,” or a genetic, cultural, linguistic or spiritual entity, such as Pauliny-Tóth’s Slovak “genetic nation,” the Hlasist Czechoslovak “cultural nation,” and so forth. The criterion accepts Pusztay’s “political,” “genetic,” and “geographical” nations simultaneously; it accounts for both Croat Yugoslavism and the National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 407 Croat political nation. It can accommodate multiple and simultaneous national concepts. Anderson described his second criterion, sovereignty, in highpolitical terms: “nations dream of being free . . . the badge and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.”110 This is not compatible with multiple nationalism. Nevertheless, the link between “nation” status and political legitimacy suggests that a “nation” is indeed a special kind of inherently limited community. A “nation” has privileges and rights that other communities do not; successfully invoking a “nation” bestows legitimacy on political demands. One could probably save Anderson’s definition by redefining sovereignty as “legitimate political agency,” but since the term “sovereignty” is so closely associated with state-formation, the best approach is probably to replace Anderson’s second criterion with something only slightly different. I suggest a revised Andersonian definition of the nation: “an inherently-limited imagined community possessing the power to legitimate action.” If the action being legitimated is the policy of a sovereign state, or efforts to create one, this definition is equivalent to Anderson’s. This revised definition, however, also accounts for national work in spheres other than high-politics, and does not lead to contradictions when individuals invoke many communities at the same time. Notes 1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, second edition (London: Verso, 1991), p. 3. 2. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond Identity,” Theory and Society, Vol. 29 (2000), pp. 1–47, especially p. 5. 3. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 16. 4. See e.g. Tibor Pichler, “The Idea of Slovak Language-Based Nationalism,” in Tibor Pichler and Jana Gašparı́ková (eds), Language, Values and the Slovak Nation (Washington, DC: Paideia, 1994), p. 37; Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States, p. 169. 5. See Vladimir Matula. “The Conception and the Development of Slovak National Culture in the Period of National Revival.” Studia historica slovaca, Vol. 42 (1990); Jozef Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia (New York: Praeger, 1955), p. 42. 6. On Slovak loyalties to Hungary, see Theodore Locher. Die Nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen in ihrem Geschichtlichen 408 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. A. Maxwell Verlauf bis 1848. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk & Zoon, 1931; Alexander Maxwell, “Hungaro-Slavism: Territorial and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Slovakia,” East Central Europe/l’Europe du Centre-Est (ECE/ECE), Vol. 29/pt. 1 (2002), pp. 45–58. Despite the inroads of French and German, Latin remained Hungary’s administrative language until the nineteenth century. On Latin in Hungary, see István Tóth. “Latin as a Spoken Language in Hungary during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” CEU History Department Yearbook, 1997– 1998 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp. 93–111. On Latin’s decline as an administrative language, see R.W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Czechs and Slovaks. Hamden, CN: Archon books, 1965 [1943], p. 260; Gyula Szekfü, Iratok a magyar államnyelv kérdésének történetéhey 1790–1848, Budapest, 1926. This passage discussed Gergely Berzeviczy, a Magyar from Zips (in modern Slovakia). Horst Haselsteiner, “Comment” on Peter Sugar’s article “The More it Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same,” Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 31 (2001), p. 158. János Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis: Political Trends and Theories of the Early 1840s, translated by Éva Pálmai (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1993), p. 39. I cite this passage from an English translation and am thus unable to give the original Hungarian. Quoted in Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis, p. 42. Varga cites Gusztáv Szontágh. Propylaemok a társasági philosophiához, tekintettel hazánk viszonyaira (Buda: Egytemi, 1843). Quoted from Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis, p. 42. This inconsistency rests on conflating two meanings of the Hungarian word Magyar : “inhabitant of the kingdom of Hungary,” and “ethnic Hungarian.” See Alexander Maxwell, “Magyarization, Language Planning, and Whorf— The Word “Uhor” as a Case Study in Linguistic Relativism,” Multilingua, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2004), pp. 319–37. For a discussion of multi-ethnic Hungarian national ideas from Hungarian historians, see Moritz Csáky. “ ‘Hungarus’ oder ‘Magyar,’ Zwei Varianten des ungarischen Nationalbewußtseins zu Beginn des 19 Jahrhunderts,” Annales: Sectio Historica, 22 (1982), pp. 71–84. István Käfer has also discussed the “hungarus patriotizmus” of literary figures that “belong to Hungarian, but also to Slovak literature”: “O niektorkých kritériach analyzy mad’arsko-slovenských literárnych vzt’ahov,” in Tradı́cie a literárne vzt’ahy, Hagyományok és irodalmi kapcsolatok (Bratislava: SAV, 1972), p. 53. The Slovak volunteers were not a mass movement: larger numbers of Slovaks proved willing to join the Hungarian Honvéd militia. Elena Mannová and Roman Holec (eds), A Concise History of Slovakia (Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2000), p. 196. Ludwig v. Gogolák, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Slowakischen Volkes III, Zwischen zwei Revolutionen (1848–1919) (Munich: Verlag R. Oldenbourg, 1972), p. 23. In the 1930s, however, Czechoslovak-minded historian Karel Chotek condemned Štúr’s “loyalty to the Magyar [k mad’arom].” Karel Chotek, “Politické snahy slovenské v rokoch 1848–49,” Carpatica (Prague: Orbis, 1936), p. 115. Štúr even wrote this work under the pen-name ein ungarischer Slawe [“a Hungarian Slav”]. L’udovı́t Štúr, Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 409 über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren (Leipzig: Robert Binder, 1843), p. 35. L’udovı́t Štúr, “Panslavism a naša krajina,” Slovenskje národňje novini (3–14 Sept. 1847); reprinted in Jozef Ambruš (ed.), Slovo na čase, Vol. 2 (Martin: Kompas, 1941), p. 239. See e.g. Bohuš Nosák, Janko Kalinčjak and anonymous, Orol Tatrásnky, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 85; Vol. 1, No. 8, p. 60; Vol. 1, No. 14, p. 109. Orol Tatrásnky, Vol. 1, No. 14, p. 109. Bohuš Nosák. “Listi k ňeznámej zeme. . . . ” Orol Tatrásnky, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 85. The hero later declares his loyalty to King Matyás. Janko Kalinc̆jak. “Milkov hrob.” Orol Tatrásnky, Vol. 1, No. 8, p. 60. American Slovak Association of Journalists, A Political Criminal Trial in Hungary in the Year of Our Lord 1906 (New York: Slovak Press, no date), p. 45. Owen Johnson “Losing Faith: The Slovak-Hungarian Constitutional Struggle, 1906–1914,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies: Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe, Vol. 22, ed. by Zvi Gitelman, Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998. Slovaks do not fit the pattern of “Austro-Slavism”: Slovaks expressed loyalty to the Kingdom of Hungary, not the monarchy as a whole. On AustroSlavism, see Václav Žác̆ek, “Die Rolle des Austroslavismus in der Politik der österreichischen Slaven,” L’udovı́t Štúr und die Slawische Wechselseitigkeit, Gesamte Referate und die integrale Diskussion der Wissenschaftlichen Tagung in Smolenice 27–29 Juni, 1966, ed. by L’udovı́t Holotı́k. Bratislava: SAV, 1969. Letter to Ján Francisci, December, 1869. Reproduced in František Bokes. Dokumenty k slovenskému národnému hnutiu v rokoch 1848–1914, Vol. II. Bratislava: Vydavatel’stvo Slovenskej Akadémie Vied, 1962, document 218 (c), p. 231, 32. Will Kymlicka. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 30–31. The phrase was coined by Johann Thomášek [Thomas Világosváry], Der Sprachkampf in Ungarn (Zagreb: Illyrian National Typographie von Dr. Ljudevit Gaj, 1841). In a letter of 26 February 1842, Thun also used this term as a description of recent events: Leo Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843), p. 1. Samuel Hojč, Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus (Leipzig: Friedrich Vlockmar, 1843), p. 27. Hojč, Apologie, p. 27. Ibid., p. 12. The eccentric diacritics on nèpiesség and nàrodnost are in the original text. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 15–16. Ibid., p. 101. 410 A. Maxwell 37. Alexander Pusztay, Die Ungarn in ihrem Staats- und Nationalwesen von 889 bis 1842, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Mayer, 1843), p. 12. 38. Ibid., p. 12–13. 39. M.M. Hodža. Dobruo slovo Slovákom (Bratislava: Tatran, 1970 [Levoc̆a: nákladom tatrı́na, 1847]), p. 30. 40. Emphasis in original. Ibid., p. 27. 41. The parenthetical remarks about the long and short A are in the original text. Ibid., p. 28. 42. Ibid., p. 30. 43. Quoted from Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis, p. 39. 44. Quoted from György Spira, The Nationality Issue in the Hungary of 1848–49 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1992). The Hungarian translation can be found in István Pelyach, “Honpolgárok egyteme” (Sept. 2002), http://www.inaplo.hu/na/200209/13.html. 45. István Deák, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848– 49 (New York: Colombia University Press, 1979), p. 123. Alice Freifeld comments: “Slovak demands were modest, but as the weakest they were also the ones the Magyars were least inclined to appease.” Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848–1914 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000), p. 67. 46. A.J.P. Taylor. The Habsburg Empire, 1809–1918 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 [1948]), p. 85. 47. Beňko, Dokumenty, p. 338. 48. Quoted from Arthur May, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 83. 49. József Eötvös, A Nemzetiségi Kérdés (Budapest: Révai testvérek, 1903 [1865]), pp. 34, 41. 50. May, The Habsburg Monarchy, p. 83. 51. Kontler, Millenium, p. 283. 52. This provision was abandoned because “Eötvös’ original proposal enjoyed no support at all in leading Hungarian circles.” Paul Bödy. Jozef Eötvös and the Modernization of Hungary: 1840–1870: A Study of Ideas of Individuality and Slocial Pluralism in Modern Politics (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1985), p. 113. 53. Gábor Kemény, Iratok a nemyetiségi kérdés történetéhez Magyarországon a dualizmus koráan, Vol. 1 (Budapest: 1952), pp. 49–52. For a Slovak translation, see Ján Bec̆ko. Dokumenty slovenskj národnej identity a štátnosti, Vol.1 (Bratislava: Národné literárne centrum—Dom slovenskej literatúry, 1998), pp. 361–6. 54. Cited from John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1988), p. 126. 55. Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1964 [1929]), p. 317. See also R.W. Seton-Watson’s description of a Magyar expert on national questions in Jan Rychlı́k (ed.), R.W. Seton-Watson and his Relations with the Czechs and Slovaks, Documents (Matica Slovenská: Ústav T.G. Masaryka, 1995), p. 114. National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 411 56. Andrew Janos, The Politics of Backwardsness in Hungary 1825–1945 (Princeton, NJ: 1982), p. 129. 57. Felvidék means “highlands,” i.e. the mountainous region of northern Hungary that later became Slovakia. Béla Grünwald A Felvidék (Budapest: Ráth mór, 1878), p. 35. 58. “Rec̆ Ferdiša Jurigu v uhorskom parlamente” Quoted from Ben̆ko, Dokumenty, p. 499–502. Ben̆ko cites Képviselház-Napló, Vol. 41 (Budapest, 1918), pp. 345–57. 59. Modern Slovak historiography often describes Hurban as a mere “collaborator of Štúr,” but an anti-Slovak pamphlet from 1850 described the volunteers as “Hurban and company.” Furthermore, the Hungarian government’s “wanted poster” listed Hurban first. See “Deutscher Michel” [Carl Stock], Die Umtriebe Hurbans und Compagnie und das Schattenreich der Slowakei (Wien: Carl Gerold & Sohn, 1850). The poster appears in Fraňo Ruttkay, L’udovı́t Štúr ako Novinár (Brno: Vydavatelsvı́ Novinář, 1982), plate 14. 60. Quoted from Samuel Osudský, Filosofia Štúrovov, II. Hurbanova Filosofia (Myjava: Daniel Pažický, 1928), p. 314. Osudský gives no date. The original quote appeared in Cirk. Listy, No.10, p. 314. 61. Jozef Miroslav Hurban, Českje hlasi proti Slovenc̆iňe (Skalice: Skarniel, 1846), p. 26. 62. Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, “Návrh zákona o urovnoprávnenı́ národnostı́” (23 October 1870), printed in BeÚko, Dokumenty, pp. 367–8. 63. The diet of the Triune Kingdom, however, did not have authority over Dalmatia, which remained under the jurisdiction of the Austrian Reichsrat. On the status of Dalmatia, see Mirjana Gross, “The Union of Dalmatia with Northern Croatia: A Crucial Question of the Croat National Integration in the Nineteenth Century,” in Mikuláš Teich and Roy Porter (eds.), The National Question in Europe in Historical Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 270–92. 64. For an example of Hungarian noble respect for Croatia’s distinctive institutions, see Pulszky’s comments in Leo Grafen v. Thun. Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843). 65. R.W. Seton-Watson, The Southern Slav Question, p. 67. 66. Nicholas Miller, Between Nation and State: Serbian Politics in Croatia Before the First World War (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1997), p. 55. Miller cites Stenografički zapisnici sabora Kraljevine Hrvatske, Slavonije, i Dalmacije (1901–1906), Vol. 2, part 2 (Zagreb: Tisak kraljevske zemaljske tiskare, 1903), p. 70. 67. Miller, Between Nation and State, p. 43. 68. This “diplomatic” nation, unlike Hojč’s, was class-inclusive. Vasilije Krestić, History of the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia, 1848–1914, translated by Margot and Boško Milosavljević (Belgrade: Beogradski izdavac̆ko-grafic̆ki Zavod, 1997), pp. 102, 104–5. 69. Ján Herkel, Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae (Buda: Regiae universitatis Hungaricae, 1826); Jan Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit zwischen den verschiedenen Stämmen und Mundarten der slawischen Nation (Pest: Trattner, 1837). For 412 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. A. Maxwell treatment of Slovak Pan-Slavism in secondary sources, see L’udovı́t Holotı́k (ed.), L’udovı́t Štúr und die Slawische Wechselseitigkeit (Bratislava: SAV, 1969); On Štúr’s unusual ideas about a “Slovak dialect,” see Alexander Maxwell “Literary Dialects in China and Slovakia,” International Journal of Sociolinguisitics, No.164 (2003), pp. 129–49. See František Kampelı́k, Čechoslowan Čili Narodnj gazyjk w Čechách, na Morawě, we Slezku a Slowensku (Vienna and Prague: Czech museum, 1842); Jan Kollár (ed.), Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky (Prague: Czech Museum, 1846); Stěpán Launer, Povaha Slovanstva se zvláštnı́m ohledem na spisovnı́ řeč Čechů, Moravanů, Slezáků a Slováků (Leipzig: Kommissı́ Slovanského Kněhkupectvı́, 1847). Hurban, Českje hlasi proti Slovenčic̆e; Samo Czambel. Prı́spevky k dejinám jazyka slovenského (Budapest: Joloman Rózsu a manželka, 1887). Hodža, Dobruo slovo, p. 43. Daniel Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum národa slowenského (Buda: Tlačiarny uhor. uniwersity, 1861), pp. 20–21. “We who are called Slovaks, additionally our brothers the Serbs, Croats, Russians; Magyars, Germans, Romanians . . . —we are all Hungarians, because we live in the Hungarian country and live under the same laws” (emphasis in original). See Daniel Lichard, Rozhovory o matiči slovenksej, Banská Bystrica: Matičnych spisov No. 4, 1865, p. 8. These geographical references sketch a Czechoslovak territory. Quoted from Albert Pražák, “Slovenská otázka v dobĕ J.M. Hurbana,” Sbornı́k filozofickej fakulty, Vol.1, No.13, Bratislava: University Komenského v Bratislave, 1923, 530/202. Unusually, Vladimı́r Kulı́šek gives the name of this group as Českoslovanská jednota. “O činnost a význama c̆eskoslovanské jednoty před vznikem ČSR.” Historický Časopis, Vol. 10, No. 3. Historians treat Hlas as the embodiment of late-Habsburg Czechoslovak feeling. See Paul Vyšný, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs, 1898–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 13; Owen Johnson, Slovakia 1918–1938: Education and the Making of the Nation (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1985), pp. 43–4. “Naše snahy,” Hlas, Vol.1, No.1 (1898) p. 6. Ibid. See e.g. Vavro Šrobár. “Mad’arisácia,” Hlas, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1898) p. 68; “Tiszov národnostný programm a národnostnı́ agitátori,” Umelecký Hlas, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1898), pp. 321–2. Franjo Rac̆ki, “Jugoslavenstvo,” in V. Kušc̆ak (ed.), J. J. Strossmayer, F Rac̆ki, Politic̆ki spisi (Zagreb, 1971), p. 278. Cited from Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 97. Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 89. Karl v. Zmertych, Rhapsodien über die Nationalität (Skalice: Fr. X. Skarnitl’s Söhne, 1872), p. 7. National Concepts and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” 413 84. Zmertych defined the political nation through (1) A lawful leader, (2) a welldefined fatherland, (3) its own constitution and laws, (4) its own customs and habits, and (5) its own history. A tribe of nomads, he tells us, “even though they posses a lawful leader, their own customs and habits, their own history and their own language, still do not make a political nation, because they have no well-defined fatherland.” Zmertych, Rhapsodien, p. 8. 85. Hennelore Burger, Sprachrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen, 1867–1918 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995), p. 24. 86. Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, an Inquiry into the Foundation of Nationality (Cambridge: MIT press, 1953), p. 63. 87. Domnique Schnapper, Community of Citizens: On the Modern Idea of Nationality, translated from the French by Séverine Rosée (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998 [1994]), p. 16. 88. Hans Kohn, “The Nature of Nationalism,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 33, No. 6 (Dec. 1939), pp. 1001–21 esp. 1001. 89. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993), p. 2. 90. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, p. 5. 91. Brian Porter, “The Social Nation and its Futures: English Liberalism and Polish Nationalism in Late 19th Century Warsaw,” American Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 5 (Dec. 1996), p. 1472. 92. Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, translated by Ben Fawkes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 23. 93. Keely Stauter-Halsted described Hroch’s book as “the prototypical work on capitalist transition and the spread of nationalist movements.” Robert Kaiser, in his detailed The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR, wrote that Hroch’s schema was “well suited to the study of national consolidation in the Russian Empire,” and classified nationalist events in reference to it. See Keely Stauter-Halsted. The Nation in the Village, the Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 4, note; Robert Kaiser. The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 34. 94. Some scholars have attempted to distinguish chronological development from the progression between stages; see Paul Robert Magocsi, “The Ukrainian National Revival: A New Analytical Framework.” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, Vol. 41, No. 1–2 (1989) pp. 45–62. 95. Michael Watson (ed.), Contemporary Minority Nationalism (London/New York: Routledge, 1990); Colin Williams, National Separatism, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982. 96. Stephen Velychenko, “Empire Loyalism and Minority Nationalism in Great Britain and Imperial Russia, 1707 to 1914: Institutions, Law and Nationality in Scotland and Ukraine,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (July 1997), pp. 413–41. 414 A. Maxwell 97. Louis Vos, “Shifting Nationalism: Belgians, Flemings and Walloons,” in Mikuláš Teich, Roy Porter (eds), The National Question in Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 143 (128–47). 98. Joseph Rudolph, “Belgium: Controlling Separatist Tendencies in a MultiNational State,” in Colin Williams, National Separatism (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1982), pp. 263–79. 99. Domnique Schnapper, Community of Citizens: On the Modern Idea of Nationality, translated from the French by Séverine Rosée (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998 [1994]), p. 15. 100. Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (London: Methuen, 1977), pp. 1–6. 101. Schnapper, Community of Citizens, p. 16. 102. Graham Spry, “Canada: Notes on Two Ideas of Nation in Confrontation,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1971), pp. 173–96. 103. On a scale of 1 to 100, with 50 being “neutral,” Francophone Quebecois rated Canada as 71.8 and Quebec as 73.3. Rounding to two significant figures, the affect ratings are almost identical: 72 and 73. Lawrence LeDuc, “Canadian Attitudes Towards Quebec Independence,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Autumn, 1977) p. 353 (347–55). 104. Daniel Frei and Henry Kerr, Wir und die Welt: Strukturen und Hintergründe aussenpolitischer Einstellungen (Bern: Eidgenössische Drucksachen, 1974), quoted in Kenneth McRae, Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies (Waterloo, ONT: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), p. 110. 105. Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism, (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), p. 227. 106. Hans Kohn, “Western and Eastern Nationalisms,” in Hutchinson and Smith (eds), Oxford Reader on Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 163–5. 107. Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging (London: BBC Press, 1992), pp. 3–5. 108. Their list includes the binary oppositions of Kohn and Ignatieff, as well as “political vs. cultural,” “liberal vs. illiberal,” “individualist vs. collectivist,” “Staatsnation vs. Kulturnation,” “universalistic vs. particularistic,” and “women-emancipation nationalism” vs. “patriarchal nationalism.” Philip Spencer and Howard Wilson, Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (London: Sage, 2002), p. 96. 109. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 6. 110. Ibid., p. 7. Alexander Maxwell finished his doctoral dissertation, Choosing Slovakia, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2003. He has since taught at the University of Wales, Swansea, won a Merian fellowship at the University of Erfurt, and is presently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nevada, Reno.