Hungarian writers on the military mission of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans

Hajdu, Péter (2007) Hungarian writers on the military mission of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. Hungarian Studies, 21 (1-2). pp. 297-314. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’s military missions on the Balkans can provide the only experience in Hungarian history that can be connected with a notion of colonization. The paper scrutinises some Hungarian writers’ responses to that experience. Kálmán Mikszáth as a journalist shows a shift in attitude; he strongly criticized the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but eventually he proudly advertised a colonizing discourse. The most important monument of the 40-year connection with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Hungarian culture was János Asbóth’s monography in two volumes entitled Bosnia and Herzegovina . In that work the celebration of modernisation, westernisation, the development of economy and infrastructure does not imply racism and religious intolerance. The short stories by István Tömörkény that describe the military life in the sanjak Novi Bazar offer a careful analysis of the cultural and linguistic aspects of the experience of otherness in the multicultural Balkan environment.

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