Authors

Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics¹;  ¹ Research Centre for the Humanities , Hungary

Discussion

Within the secure framework of the Austro-Hungarian dualist system, it was possible for the Hungarian political and economic elite to respond to the challenges posed by non-Hungarian nationalisms and neighbouring empires (Germany, Russia) not only by nationstate-building, but also by empire-building. In order to preserve the hegemon role of the Hungarian nation, an attempt was made to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina to Hungary in a subordinate position, thus formally organizing the country into an empire. There were two ways to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina: to drive out the economic interest groups of the Austrian subempire through the instrumentalisation of the financial institutions of the provinces and to influence Bosnian nation-building. Although both attempts ended in failure, the latter became the basis for the process that created a sense of nation among Bosnian Muslims by the early 1970s.

Within the framework of the new Austro-Hungarian policy towards Albania launched in 1896, the task of the Hungarian subempire was to influence modern Albanian nation-building. The Hungarian experience was successfully adapted here, as the conditions for nation-building were similar to those of the Hungarian nation: the linguistic borders of Albanians was closed as in the case of Hungarians. The members of the Turanian Society, the most important civil organization of the Hungarian imperial idea, Turanism, were actively involved in this experiment. Albania was a laboratory for Hungarian Turanism abroad.