Malachi Smith's List: EASTERN EUROPE

• History of Hungary
• Prehistoric survey
• No written sources on the early history of the Hungarian people have come  down to us. Consequently, the material for study must be sought in the  evidence of language, archaeology, ethnography and anthropology.
• for it demonstrates that the Hungarian  language, judging by its vocabulary and structural pecularies, belongs to  the Finno-Ugrian group of the Uralic languages, more precisely, to its  Ugrian branch.
• Comparative linguistics provides the main field of research for what is  known as Hungarian prehistory,
• It has not been possible to determine whether the original  home of the Uralian prehistoric peoples was in Europe or Asia. It is  believed, however, that the common homeland of the Ob-Ugrians and the  ancient Hungarians (the Magyars) was along the central Volga.
• The  ancestors of the Hungarians were for the most part fishermen and hunters,  but is is probable that they were acquainted with animal husbandry, the  tanning of leather, pottery, and the carving of wood and bone.
• Here they came under the influence of the  Bulgar-Turkic pastoral tribes, with a resulting change in their manner of  life: their primary occupation as mounted nomads was transformed into  herding, and they lived in a tribal society.
• In the middle of the first millennium B.C., the ancestors of the Hungarians  migrated from the lands they had shared in common with the other Ugrian  peoples and moved south.
• In the course of their  migrations, they came into contact with different nomadic empires which  formed with amazing speed on the steppes only to collapse later with the  same dramatic suddenness.
• In the middle of the fifth century B.C., the  ancestors of the Hungarian people joined the Onogur tribes of  Bulgar-Turkic origin and lived with them along the northern shore of the  Black Sea.
• For a time they were subject to the lax sovereignty of the  Turkish Empire.
• Later a part of the Onogurs withdrew themselves from the  Khazar overlordship and migrated to the south to found the Bulgarian  homeland on the lower Danube.
• Another group of the remaining Onogurs  drifted towards the Volga, while the rest formed a tribal alliance under  Khazar overlordship.
• As time went on, they began to use the name of the  strongest tribe in the alliance - the Megyer tribe - as a generic  term for the whole group. This is the origin of the name Magyar,  and of Magyarország - the name for a Hungarian and for Hungary in  their own language today
• The world applied to them in foreign languages  (Hungarus, Hongrois, Hungarian, Ungar, etc.) derives from the term  Onogur.
• Accounts of the Magyar migration differ in different sources. All  we know for sure is that they were forced by the attack of the Pechegens  to move west to the land between the Don and the Dnieper.
• Fleeing from this  region after another sweeping offensive in or around 895-896, they entered  the Carpathian Basin, familiar to them from their earlier raiding  expeditions. At the time of the Magyar Conquest, the area was inhabited  mostly by Slavic ethnic groups; and Great Moravia, situated on the  northern part of the Carpathian Basin, had been in a state of  disintegration since the death of Prince Svatopluk.
• The military power of  the Pannonian Slav principality in the west did not represent notable  strength. The rule of the Bulgars, extending over the Great Plain and  Transylvania, was not consolidated.
• Under these circumstances, the Magyars  were able to overrun the whole area of the country without difficulty. The  military leader of the conquering tribes was Árpád, and after the founding  of the state, his descendants became the rulers of the country.
• The History of the Carpathian Basin
• According to the archaeological evidences found at  Vértesszõlõs, the Carpathian Basin had already been the dwelling place of  prehistoric man half a million years ago.
• The land occupied by the conquering Magyars had been inhabited since  prehistoric times.
• In the caves of the Bükk  Mountains, for example, the one hundred and fifty thousand-year-old tools  of Paleolithic man have been unearthed. Human settlement also existed in  the Middle Paleolithic period in the region along the middle section of  the river Tisza, and in the Neolithic period the people of the Körös  culture, who used polished stone tools, had already taken up farming.
• During the early  Iron Age, Thracians settled east of the Tisza and Illyrians west of the  Danube. The latter erected enormous earthwork as defence against the  Scythians and later against the Celts, who came from the west.
• THe  earliest known art also originates from the people of the Tisza, the Great  Plain and later from the Bükk and Transdanubian cultures.
• In the early years of our era, the Romans, who had conquered the Celts,  extended their rule to the region of the country lying west of the Danube,  which then became a province of the Roman Empire under the name of  Pannonia.
• The four centuries of Roman rule created an advanced and  flourishing civilization and the founding of the majority of the  present-day towns in western Hungary can be traced back to Roman  antecedents.
• A century later the province of Dacia was formed in the region  of Transylvania.
• For example, both Sopron and Szombathely (Scarbantia and  Savaria), located near the Austro-Hungarian border, developed into  important settlements along the Amber Route which extended from the Baltic  countries to Italy;
• the predecessor of Pécs in southern Hungary was the  Roman town of Sopianae, and Aquincum, the Roman predecessor of today's  Budapest, was a large town along the river Danube with a waterwork system,  a sewage system, steam baths, markets, and two amphitheatres.
• For five hundred years the Carpathian Basin had been  already the "the people's highway", with various tribes such as the  Visigoths, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards migrating across the area after  sojourning for various lengths of time.
• After four centuries of existence, Roman civilization was swept away by  the great migrations.
• Later, the empire of the Huns came  into being, the military power that finally forced the withdrawal of the  Roman legions.
• After the fall of the great Hun and Avar nomadic empires,  only the Western Slavic and Southern Slavic people succeeded in  establishing themselves in the Carpathian Basin.
• The advanced economic and political conditions of the Slavs, who had been  settling in the area since the 6^th and 7^th centuries, exerted a  significant influence over the Magyars; in fact, several words related to  agriculture and handicrafts are expressed in the Hungarian language by  words borrowed from the Slavic peoples.

34 more annotations...

• Hungary:  Historical Setting
• Library of Congress Country Study    

  Early  History
• The  Hungarian nation traces its history to the Magyars, a pagan  Finno-Ugric tribe that arose in central Russia and spoke a  language that evolved into modern Hungarian.
• Historians  dispute the exact location of the early Magyars' original  homeland, but it is likely to be an area between the Volga  River and the Ural Mountains.
• In ancient times, the Magyars  probably lived as nomadic tent-dwelling hunters and fishers.  Some scholars argue that they engaged in agriculture  beginning in the second millennium B.C.
• Before  the fifth century A.D., the Magyars' ancestors gradually  migrated southward onto the Russian steppes, where they  wandered into the lands near the Volga River bend, at  present-day Kazan, as nomadic herders.
• Later, probably under  pressure from hostile tribes to the east, they migrated to  the area between the Don and lower Dnepr rivers. There they  lived close to, and perhaps were dominated by, the  Bulgar-Turks from about the fifth to the seventh century.
• During this period, the Magyars became a semisedentary  people who lived by raising cattle and sheep, planting  crops, and fishing.
• The Bulgar-Turkish influence on the  Magyars was significant, especially in agriculture.
• Most  Hungarian words dealing with agriculture and animal  husbandry have Turkic roots.
• By contrast, the etymology of  the word Hungary has been traced to a Slavicized  form of the Turkic words on ogur, meaning "ten  arrows," which may have referred to the number of Magyar  tribes.
• The  Magyars lived on lands controlled by the Khazars (a Turkish  people whose realm stretched from the lower Volga and the  lower Don rivers to the Caucasus) from about the seventh to  the ninth century, when they freed themselves from Khazar  rule.
• The Khazars attempted to reconquer the Magyars both by  themselves and with the help of the Pechenegs, another  Turkish tribe.
• This tribe drove the Magyars from their homes  westward to lands between the Dnepr and lower Danube rivers  in 889.
• In 895 the Magyars joined Byzantine armies under  Emperor Leo VI in a war against the Bulgars.
• However, the  Bulgars emerged victorious. Their allies, the Pechenegs,  attacked the weakened Magyars and forced them westward yet  again in 895 or 896.
• This migration took the Magyars over  the Carpathian Mountains and into the basin drained by the  Danube and Tisza rivers, a region that corresponds roughly  to present-day Hungary.
• Romans, Goths, Huns, Slavs, and  other peoples had previously occupied the region, but at the  time of the Magyar migration, the land was inhabited only by  a sparse population of Slavs, numbering about  200,000.
• Tradition  holds that the Magyar clan chiefs chose a chieftain named  ¡rpad to lead the migration and that they swore by  sipping from a cup of their commingled blood to accept  ¡rpad's male descendants as the Magyars' hereditary  chieftains.
• The Magyars probably knew of the lands in the  Carpathian Basin because from 892 to 894 Magyar mercenaries  had fought there for King Arnulph of East Francia in a  struggle with the duke of Moravia.
• Estimates are that about  400,000 people made up the exodus, in seven Magyar, one  Kabar, and other smaller tribes.
• The  Carpathian Basin and parts of Transylvania southsouthwest of  the basin had been settled for thousands of years before the  Magyars' arrival. A rich Bronze Age culture thrived there  until horsemen from the steppes destroyed it in the middle  of the thirteenth century B.C.
• Celts later occupied parts of  the land, and in the first century A.D. the Romans conquered  and divided it between the imperial provinces of Pannonia  and Dacia.
• In the fourth century, the Goths ousted the  Romans, and Attila the Hun later made the Carpathian Basin  the hub of his short-lived empire.
• Thereafter, Avars,  Bulgars, Germans, and Slavs settled the region.
• In the late  ninth century A.D., only scattered settlements of Slavs  occupied the Carpathian Basin. The Magyar forces, light  cavalrymen who used Central Asian-style bows, quickly  conquered the Slavs, whom they either assimilated or  enslaved.
• Romanian  and Hungarian historians disagree about the ethnicity of  Transylvania's population before the Magyars' arrival.
• The  Romanians establish their claims to Transylvania by arguing  that their Latin ancestors inhabited Transylvania and  survived there through the Dark Ages.
• The Hungarians, by  contrast, maintain that Transylvania was inhabited not by  the ancestors of the Romanians but by Slavs and point out  that the first mention of the Romanians' ancestors in  Hungarian records, which appeared in the thirteenth century,  described them as drifting herders.

27 more annotations...

• The Ethnogenesis of the Hungarian People and their Place in European Culture
• The Hungarians constitute the largest group of the Finno-Ugric language family, followed in numbers by the Finns, then the Estonians and some other smaller and larger groups in the Soviet Union.
• Based on the testimony of linguistics, archeology, the study of plant and animal species and other sciences, the original home of the Finno-Ugric peoples has been located west of the Volga–Kama region, where they lived in the near vicinity of each other until about the third millennium B. C.
• These fishing-hunting peoples, according to the evidence of archeology and linguistics, already practised husbandry and even primitive agriculture before they began to disperse.
• The Hungarians were located in the original homeland near the Voguls (Mansi) and Ostyaks (Khanti), together with whom they created the Ugric branch,
• Very little remains for posterity from the material culture of the Finno-Ugric and Ugric period.
• but the vocabulary of Hungarian shows that they also maintained contact with the Permian branch.
• There is more of this early cultural stratum hidden in the intellectual culture. In lamentations and in certain carols, in children’s games, in the beliefs about the soul, and in shamanism, there occur certain elements of Hungarian ethnic history which are traceable to its early phase (cf. also pp. 670–72).
• Here and there in the area of fishing and hunting we can suspect some inheritance in certain tools or methods of procedure.
• The Ugrians (the Voguls, Ostyaks, Magyars) separated slowly in the middle of the third millennium B. C. from the Finn-Permian branch (the Finns, Estonians, Zyryans [Komi], Votyaks [Udmurt], Cheremissians [Mari], Mordvinians, Lapps, etc.).
• The separation of the Magyars and the later Ob-Ugrians (Voguls, Ostyaks) must have taken place between 1000 and 500 B. C.
• The so-called Ananyino culture, to which presumably the pre-Magyars also belonged, existed during this period.

• The ancient Magyars, pushed from the Volga–Kama region towards south–south-east, emerged from the forest belt into the world of the wooded steppes.

   

   

  Fig. 2. Eastern Europe in the 9th century, and the early Hungarian settlements
• By then they were building earthworks, and their tools made of bone have remained in large number.
• Thus they learned the most {28.} important branches of animal husbandry: the domestication of sheep, cattle, and horses. They were nomadic during the period of pasturing. At this time they also became acquainted with the basic elements of plough agriculture, which presupposes a partially settled existence.
• Not only did the land change around them, but they also came into contact with newer, largely Turkic peoples.
• Their contact with the Turkic peoples must have been strong, because Byzantine sources in the beginning called them Turks, and other sources mention them also by a Turkish name, calling them Onugrians, ten tribes.
• The naming of our people in most European languages derives from this word: (H)Ungarus, Ungar, Vengri, etc., while the Hungarians call themselves Magyars after the tribal name Magyer of Ugrian origin.
• This empire, possessing a well-developed animal husbandry, field, garden and grape culture, already wore the features of a nearly feudal state and in this the Magyars also participated.
• During the move southward the Magyars reached the foothills of the Caucasus, where, at least from the 8th century, they became members of the Khazar Khaganate.
• In the 9th century seven Magyar tribes, also joined by one Khazar and a rebel Kabar tribe, moved on towards the west and occupied the large territory that stretched to the Lower Danube.
• By then even the Byzantine sources called them Magyars. They were engaged not only in nomadic husbandry, but in agriculture as well, and settled mostly along the river in semi-permanent dwellings.
• The traces of contact with the various Turkic peoples can be shown primarily in the characteristics of husbandry, especially nomadic animal husbandry, in the plough cultivation of fields, and in vine growing.
• Some characteristics can be found in building construction and in clothing as much as in the processing of hemp with certain implements that remind us of these peoples.
• In the area of folklore, many elements survived almost until the present day, though they might show up in different structures. Examples are the learning of a kind of runic script and the expansion of shamanism, the major characteristics of which are preserved in the person of the táltos (shaman).
• The trail of pentatonic melodies, characterized by the exact repetition of the melody a fifth lower, can be followed through the Turks to Inner Asia, and this type of melody constitutes about ten per cent of Hungarian folksongs.
• We can also find traditions referring to this period in the range of customs relating to weddings and burials.
• They warred with them and sold the prisoners to Byzantine merchants at the Black Sea port.
• It was in South Russian territory that the Magyars first met different Eastern Slavic tribes, such as the Poljan and Severjan, from whom, instead of the Khazars, they collected the taxes.
• Their contacts left imprints not only of wars but of peace as well. They gained additional knowledge of fishing, and became acquainted with the tools and methods of group work.
• Their agricultural knowledge also expanded; they probably learned the use of the wheeled plough from the Slavs.
• Some elements of their body of beliefs, e.g. relating to witches, also originated from this period.
• The warring, nomadic groups of the Magyars broke into the Carpathian Basin from 862 on and interfered in the conflicts of the peoples who lived there.
• At this time the head of the Magyar tribal confederacy {29.} went to war with about 20,000 horsemen, beyond which we must suppose a body of people adequate to support them, so that the number of families must have numbered at least 100,000, and the total numbers reached and possibly exceeded half a million.
• The Magyars, while helping the Byzantines, defeated the Bulgarians, who in turn took revenge by releasing the Pechenegs who pushed from the east against the Magyars just at the time when their military force was roaming far afield.
• On seeing the devastated settlements and fearing renewed attacks, the entire confederacy of tribes realized that there was nothing else to do but to push into the Carpathian Basin. This they did and in the course of a few years they had occupied it.
• Such were the Celts (4th century B. C. ), who were known as the disseminators of iron tools.
• The Carpathian Basin, throughout its history, has given a home to many peoples, some of whom passed on their culture to their successors.
• Then came the Romans, who left behind in Transylvania (Dacia) and Transdanubia (Pannonia) such a culture that even the centuries of the period of migration could not sweep away certain of its elements.
• At other places different Slavic peoples had settled in pockets: Moravians, Danubian Slovenians, White Croatians, Slovakians, and others.
• The Bulgarians had settled on the central great steppes and a part of Transylvania.
• The Magyars found many different kinds of peoples in the relatively sparsely populated Carpathian Basin.
• A remnant of the Frankish rule of Charlemagne, Bavarians lived at the western boundaries.
• Only one substantial state stood in the way of the Magyars, the Moravian principality, stretching from the west to the Garam, but this too they defeated. The conquered peoples adjusted to the Magyars, but the Magyars also adapted themselves to them and so began the interaction of Magyar and Slav that continues even today.
• They exploited the dismemberment and eternal warfare of the feudal West.
• For more than half a century the contact of the Magyars with Europe meant war, with roaming and marauding to the west.
• They attached themselves to one or another ruler and fought in Italy, Germany, and got as far as Switzerland, France, and on one occasion even Spain.
• The head of the tribal confederacy looked favourably upon such military excursions, not only because they helped to keep the military force fit, but also because the practice held off western attacks while he was organizing his own country.
• The speed of the Magyar light cavalry, their terrible arrows, and their new fighting method not only brought victory, but also gave rise to general fear in Europe, until the united German armies indicted a decisive defeat upon them at Augsburg in 955.
• In the course of their roaming the Magyars looked at a completely different and for them new world; they met the new and for them strange European culture.
• However, this did not basically change their half-settled, half-nomadic way of life. The change took place at the time when, following efforts made by Byzantine missionaries, King Stephen I (997–1038) took up Roman Christianity.
• He urged, and occasionally forced, the entire Magyar nation to do the same. By this step the Magyars avoided attrition, which had led to the disappearance of many peoples during the {30.} period of migration in the Carpathian Basin.
• They retained their language and their independence, but a large part of the culture, the world of beliefs and the customs they brought with them vanished, changed, or were amalgamated with other cultural elements.
• Accordingly, they were acquainted with a great many new words, concepts, objects, and phenomena. Some examples are: keresztény (Christian), pap (priest), barát (friar), apát (abbot), apáca (nun), szent (saint), pokol (hell), csoda (miracle), malaszt (divine grace), vecsernye (vespers); some of the names of weekdays: szerda (Wednesday), csütörtök (Thursday), péntek (Friday), szombat (Saturday); and among major holidays, karácsony (Christmas).
• Ultimately, Christianity came to the Magyars through Slavic mediation.
• The Magyars also became acquainted with the new social order primarily with the aid of the Slavs:
• császár (emperor), király (king), ispán (bailiff), tiszt (officer), kenéz (magistrate), udvarnok (Lord High-Steward), bajnok (champion), and a string of other concepts.
• Significant changes took place in the system of working the soil: parlag (waste land), ugar (fallow), and in the method of cultivation and harvesting. In particular the domestication of garden vegetable production: bab (beans), cékla (beets), mák (poppy seed), retek (radish), uborka (cucumber) can be attributed to the Slavic peoples with whom they lived together.
• However, from the point of view of ethnology, the influence that affected the Magyars in the area of agriculture is even more important.
• The influence of close ties may be found in many fields: crafts, trades, family relationships, houses, dwellings, nutrition, clothing, and many others.
• Not all influences were, of course, one-way, as is shown by the fact that in the Slovakian language the words of Hungarian origin approach one thousand. New concepts and new attainments were linked to these expressions.
• This was especially strengthened in the time of Stephen I, who brought in and settled Bavarian–Austrian knights, priests and burghers.
• Contact with the Germans at the western border region had already begun at the time of the conquest of Hungary.
• However, already during the 12th and 13th centuries peasants and artisans whose descendants are still living in the region of Szepes (Czechoslovakia) and Transylvania came in much greater numbers.
• This influence affected primarily city life, the guilds and trades, but also certain new objects and concepts reached the peasantry (tönköly [German wheat], bükköny [vetch], csűr [hayloft], istálló [stable], kaptár [beehive], major [farmstead of an estate], puttony [butt], etc.), which seem to indicate development toward more intensive farming.
• Some of the technical terms of navigation (sajka [small boat], bárka [bark], gálya [galley]), and of commercial life (piac [market]) left marks mainly on city culture. Buildings of Italian masters who worked here (churches, forts, castles) transposed European forms of architecture into peasant styles.
• The Hungarians soon came into contact with Italians also, but Italian influence was much less compared to Slav and German influence.
• The turn of the 12th and 13th centuries saw significant French and Walloon settlements. Besides priests and monastics, peasants came too, who left clearly visible marks in areas such as viniculture.
• Amongst the ruling classes the great cultural change came earlier, but it gradually became observable among the peasantry also. One of the transmitters of the new culture was the Church, which introduced a completely new intellectual culture to the Hungarians through its liturgy, its saints and the associated legends, and through customs connected with church holidays.
• Slavic, German, French, and other Western influences can be traced {31.} not only in the material culture but in the folklore as well.
• In the courts of the king and the high nobility, western heroic songs were propagated by bards, while the one-time pagan bards were driven back among the people, and the priests cruelly persecuted them along with the memories of the old world of beliefs.
• The separation of the epic literary forms slowly began at this period. Side by side with heroic songs now legends, myths and ballads began to play an increasing role.
• An early stratum of the ballads very likely came to the Carpathian Basin with the Walloon-French settlers.
• The folklore of the Hungarian peasantry, while retaining many elements from the previous period, slowly set out on the European road. That this change did not take place without a jolt is shown by the recurrent pagan rebellions, but the ever-strengthening economic and intellectual process proved irreversible.
• All this was supported by the fact that Eastern political ties, although not broken completely, became significantly weaker. The kings of the House of Árpád (until 1301) still maintained their ties, primarily based on kinship, with Kiev and Byzantium, which represented Eastern Christianity, but it was no longer an economic and cultural influence touching upon the entire nation.
• In 1241–42 the Tartars destroyed a significant part of the country.
• The nomadic Cumanians and after them the Jazygians appeared at this time on the country’s central, flat areas, well suited for extensive animal husbandry.
• This meant the strengthening of the pagan tradition in the second half of the 13th century, since even some kings (Ladislas IV, or Ladislas the Cumanian) revered ancient customs.
• However, during the next centuries the Cumanians and Jazygians assimilated into the Hungarians, whose social development represented a higher stage, and so only a few words and objects were accepted into the Hungarian language and culture (buzogány [mace], csődör [stallion], komondor [sheep dog], balta [hatchet], csákány [pick ax]).
• The bulk of the Hungarians were working people divided already in the Middle Ages into several social groups, more or less differentiated from one another.
• The situation and living conditions of servants, of permanent or free serfs, freemen (szabadok) and the artisans changed in every era.
• A ninth of the produce was paid to the landlord for their land, and a tenth of the produce to the Church, besides which the people had to do labour service and occasionally give money and gifts.
• The amount of gifts changed according to what the landlord needed at certain times.
• In general it may be observed that towards the end of the Middle Ages, the situation of peasants increasingly declined. The result was that the number of local peasant risings, smaller and larger ones, multiplied.
• After a cruel defeat, the legal rights of peasants were drastically cut back, permanent serfdom was declared, the right to move was {32.} prohibited, and the amount of work due to the landlord was increased to a whole day or two days a week or often even more.
• The peasant rebellion in 1514 led by Dózsa was the largest and most notable.
• Furthermore, all this happened just at the time when the Turkish Empire posed an immediate threat to Hungary.
• In 1526 the Turks defeated the Hungarian army at Mohács, a town along the Danube; the king, Louis II, fell on the battlefield and the historical period began when the country was divided into three parts.
• The Turks ruled the central and southern areas, the House of Habsburg acquired the northern and western regions, and in Transylvania a more or less independent principality was set up.
• Although this period, which lasted to the end of the 17th century, was one of the most difficult periods of Hungarian history, cultural development did not come to a halt.
• The great artistic and intellectual currents of Europe arrived and had their full effect here: the Renaissance, Humanism, the Reformation. The printing of books expanded, more and more schools were established.
• The most difficult situation for Hungarian peasants was within the territories occupied by the Turks, where taxes, ransoms, robberies, and the burning of villages were everyday occurrences.
• In spite of all this, peasant culture continued to develop even in this period. The three-unit house (room + kitchen + room) spread over a larger and larger territory, and at the same time some pieces of furniture appeared, new in form and function.
• In those market towns which were spared by the Turks, trade flourished. Even articles of clothing taken over from the Turks (kalpag [hat], csizma [boots], papucs [slippers], dolmány [dolman]) were made, and new foods (tarhonya [granulated dry pastry made of flour and eggs]) were adopted.
• A large proportion of the cultural goods of Ottoman Turkish origin came to the Hungarians through a South Slavic filter.
• In Transylvania peasant culture was shaped by the mutual interaction of the Hungarians, Rumanians and Saxons who lived next to or near each other.
• The Hungarians supplied agricultural goods, the Rumanians supplied animals, while the Saxons supplied the products of the artisans.
• The multiplicity of Renaissance style and the influx of Turkish industrial products and their effects on folk culture can easily be traced here.
• The population of the country’s northern region became more dense in this period, since primarily nobles, but in part even serfs fled in large numbers to this area from the southern region.
• However, even in this territory they could not escape the robberies of the Imperial mercenary troops, who often surpassed even the Turks in cruelty. German influence can be more strongly felt here, but it affected the peasantry to a lesser degree.
• Turkish occupation had barely ended at the end of the 17th century when the Hungarians again took up arms to free themselves from Habsburg oppression.
• After the loss of the fight for independence (1703–1711), led by Ferenc Rákóczi II, the Habsburgs gave the most fertile areas of the pillaged and depopulated country to those Austrian–German landlords who earned merit during the war.
• At this time the migration from north to south began, the result of which was that the Hungarian groups who had previously fled from the Turks to the north, now swarmed down to the Great Plain.
• Slovaks also settled in the same area. The German influx exceeded even these in numbers, {33.} mainly in Transdanubia, but also in certain areas of the Great Plain and Upper Hungary. Thus, by the end of the 18th century the Hungarians totalled barely fifty per cent of the population.
• All this again affected Hungarian peasant culture, although only to a smaller degree, because settlement pockets of the various nationalities either assimilated to the Hungarians or took on significant elements of Hungarian culture.
• Beginning in 1920, with the breaking up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the nationalities living in Hungary formed their own states in accordance with the peace treaty, and the present borders of Hungary were drawn up.
• Within these live 10.5 million citizens, and Hungarian is the mother tongue of 95 per cent of them.
• Among the nationalities, Germans, Slovakians, South Slavs and Rumanians live in Hungary in larger numbers.

106 more annotations...

• Hungarian Ethnic Groups, Ethnographic Regions and Pockets of Survival
• The folk culture of the Hungarians is uniform in its basic structure and major characteristics, just as the dialects are not divided by differences that hinder comprehension. Yet we have recorded smaller and larger groups, regions, and pockets surrounded by other ethnic groups, which differ more or less from their immediate or distant neighbours.
• This difference, however, is never manifested in the entirety of the culture, but perhaps only in certain phenomena, or at most in groups of phenomena.
• Certain ethnic groups that remain as pockets within the Hungarian whole are separated from their neighbours by characteristic elements. The differentiating elements take new shapes and change just as the entirety of folk culture is not a static unit, because it is constantly renewing itself and abandoning features that for some reason have become superfluous.
• We are able to trace the roots of the formation of ethnic groups back to {35.} the Magyar Conquest.
• Among the eight tribes that settled here there could well have been differences in origin, culture, and occupation, even though these differences may have been washed away by later eras.
• The diversified geographical conditions in the mountains, steppes, and swampy regions of the Carpathian Basin affected the development of local cultures as factors determining life style.
• Differences were emphasized by historical factors such as the fact that in the age of feudalism certain groups and areas enjoyed greater or lesser privileges that differentiated them from the other groups.
• Similarly, in various sections of the country economic and social differences also contributed to the development of ethnic groups, in which in certain cases we can discover the feeling of identity.
• Some groups of Hungarians living near the Rumanians, South Slavs and Slovakians took over particular characteristics into their own culture that emphasized their separation. All this makes it beyond doubt that ethnic groups, ethnological regions and pockets are formations that look back upon a longer or shorter historical past.
• Broadly speaking, we can separate or distinguish them only by taking the following considerations into account. The people who live in isolated pockets in the main incorporate the typical characteristics of their own ethnic group, which differentiate them from their neighbours, and by means of which they can also draw their own boundaries. This is comparable to what the representatives of the surrounding villages or ethnic groups tell about their neighbours.
• The picture is completed by the characteristics which for some reason are not mentioned by the members of the group in question. We must especially be aware of the feeling of identity and its manifest forms, which may be expressed in endogamy or in some other form.
• We can determine the characteristic traits of the culture of certain ethnic groups primarily with the aid of already assembled and evaluated ethnological material, and by relating them to their environment, and perhaps comparing them with those of other ethnic groups in which some of these traits might have originated.
• Ethnological maps and in general the cartographic delineation of phenomena can provide excellent service in determining the diffusion of elements.
• In the case of ethnic groups, the mutual historical sense of cohesion dominates, and often spreads across geographical and administrative boundaries. Geographical factors determine the border in the case of ethnological regions, when the peoples of a mountain district, a swamp area, a river valley, or a vine-growing region belong together.
• In the determination of a linguistic or ethnic pocket it is the language surrounding the group in question on every side that dominates. Although the delimitation is from a variety of points of view, still the differentiation of the groups is determined by the special colouring of their culture.
• Thus, if in one case we encounter the naming of a group of people, and in another we make use of the regional or area designation, we are referring in both cases to a certain relatedness with an ethnic tinge of the people who live there. This can appear in very diverse forms, through occupation and costume, or custom to folk poetry.
• The most {36.} recent research shows that we cannot use the dialect in every respect to determine ethnic groups. As a rule, phonetic and linguistic boundaries only exceptionally coincide with the territories of ethnic groups.
• The most important intellectual cohesive force of a nation is language, the significance of which is ever more increasing in our times.
• Research in word geography offers much better opportunities, but unfortunately we can make use of this in full confidence only in the rare instances when a page of the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects projects on the map the concept suited exactly to our purpose.
• Reaching over present-day borders, partly from geographical, partly from historical consideration, we can divide that part of the Carpathian Basin into four large sections where the mother tongue of the people who live there is Hungarian. Transdanubia (the Dunántúl) is the western territory bordered by the Danube and the Dráva rivers, and there are also smaller Hungarian areas in Austria.
• Upper Hungary (the Felföld) contains the northern hill and mountain area and reaches into Slovakia.
• The Hungarian ethnic groups of Transylvania (Erdély) in places even sweep through the crest of the Eastern Carpathians. We will follow this geographical division in the following chapters.
• The Great Plain (Alföld) is the central plain of the Carpathian Basin, which continues into Yugoslavia on the south.

22 more annotations...