The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 was an agreement which was reached in 1867 through which the constitutional structure of the Austrian Empire was altered to take adequate account of the large Hungarian minority within the state. Hungary had been under military rule and its traditional privileges within the Austrian Empire had been revoked since 1849 when the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was suppressed. This arrangement had proved costly for the government in Vienna to maintain for nearly two decades and had failed to quell nationalist sentiment in Hungary. Weakened by a humiliating defeat to Prussia and the nascent Kingdom of Italy in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the government of Emperor Franz Joseph agreed to intensify negotiations with the Hungarian leaders. The result was the Compromise of 1867 (also known as the Ausgleich) whereby many Hungarian traditional political rights were restored and the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with a separate assembly in Buda (Budapest from 1873) governing the Hungarian lands.[1]
Austro-Hungarian Compromise chronology of events
Hungary first became joined to the Austrian state politically back in 1526 when King Louis II of Hungary was killed at the Battle of Mohács while fighting the Ottoman Turks. With the end of the direct line of the Jagiellon Dynasty, the Hungarian throne fell to Archduke Ferdinand of the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg. Austrian rule became more domineering and more problematic over time, particularly in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as the government sought to impose Austrian imperial rule over its many lands in Central Europe and the Balkans. This was reflected in 1804 when a new Austrian Empire was declared with the former Archduke of Austria now becoming Emperor Francis I of Austria.[2]
These changes elicited opposition in Hungary at a time of increasing nationalist sentiment. It was not simply that Hungarians felt that Austria was acting as an imperial power. The entire arrangement contravened centuries of Austro-Hungarian co-operation, which had always been based on a union of crowns and a dual partnership rather than the subjugation of Hungary within the Austrian state. These resentments eventually led to the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, one which for a time threatened Austrian rule in Hungary altogether, before a join Austro-Russian military intervention in the country brought the unrest to an end in 1849. Thereafter Emperor Franz Joseph imposed military rule and the draconian April Laws.[3]
One might wonder how Hungary went from a violent suppression of its quest for liberty in 1849 to extracting such wide-ranging political concessions from the Austrians in 1867. The answer is multi-faceted. Firstly, the imposition of a form of unpopular military rule in Hungary was extremely costly and few in Vienna believed it could be sustained indefinitely in a country which was in the midst of a major fiscal crisis. Secondly, the Austrian Empire was the most ethnically, socially and linguistically diverse in Europe, with large Czech, Italian, Slovene, Croat, Ukrainian, Serb and Bosnian minorities in addition to the Austrians and Hungarians. In such a situation the government needed allies amongst at least some of its minorities in order to rule its empire more effectively. Establishing a partnership with the Hungarians once again made most sense politically. Finally, when the Compromise was negotiated in 1867 Austria had experienced a number of bruising defeats in quick succession, first in the Second Italian War of Independence against France and Sardinia-Piedmont in 1859 as part of the Italian Risorgimento, then another war in Italy in 1866 at the very same time that it was also losing the Austro-Prussian War. As fears in Vienna of further military reverses and imperial losses mounted an atmosphere in which a rapprochement with the Hungarians could be achieved developed.[4]
The Compromise of 1867 was negotiated in the shadow of the dual defeats to the Italians and Prussians just months earlier. It was a wide-ranging constitutional arrangement, one which transformed the Austrian state. The Austrian Empire came to an end and its place was created the new dual Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary’s traditional rights and privileges would be restored and the Hungary Diet or parliament was reconstituted. Henceforth the Austrians and the Hungarians would rule the Austrian Empire in association with one another. Both states, though, would continue to be ruled by the House of Habsburg, with Franz Joseph continuing to hold the title of Emperor of Austria, as well as the older title of King of Hungary.[5]
Extent of migration following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 did not by itself lead to any migration to or from Austria or Hungary. It had migratory implications though in other ways. After twenty years of political, military, economic and social repression in Hungary, the country was finally liberated in 1867. In the years that followed, the Industrial Revolution, which had arrived belatedly to the Austrian Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century, finally began to have an impact on Hungary and other lands adjoining it in Croatia and Slavonia. Over time, between 1870 and 1920, this had the same results that occurred elsewhere. Living standards improved and so too did life expectancies and birth rates, leading to a spike in population levels. Eventually neither the town nor the country could support the growing population and people began to leave Hungary altogether, in a small stream at first, and then in large numbers as the first wave of settlers in places like the United States facilitated ever large waves in the decades that followed.[6]
Demographic impact of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise
The demographic impact of all of this over time was quite large. Where migration levels from Hungary and other parts of the Austrian Empire had been very limited prior to 1867 by comparison with other European regions such as Italy, Ireland and Germany, it grew exponentially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and into the 1900s and 1910s. For instance, just over 7,500 inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are recorded as entering the United States in 1876. By 1900 that figure had swelled to over 60,000. The most recent studies on the Hungarian diaspora contend that slightly over one million Hungarians migrated to the United States overall in the half century between 1870 and 1920. Many of these headed for specific areas. For instance, Cleveland became known as ‘the American Debrecen’, the name of a Hungarian city, in recognition of its large Hungarian population, which was believed to be the largest concentration of the Hungarian diaspora anywhere in the world.[7]
Not all of this can be attributed solely to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, but this certainly played a part in the social and economic changes which fuelled this Hungarian emigration in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Therefore, anyone researching their Hungarian ancestry in the US today might well bear in mind that this political agreement in 1867 was perhaps at least partly responsible for their forbears’ decision to leave Hungary and strike out across the Atlantic Ocean.[8]
Explore more about the Hungarian Revolution
- Hungary, Baptisms, 1734-1895 record collection on MyHeritage
- Hungary Reformed Church Christenings, 1624-1895 record collection on MyHeritage
- Hungary Catholic Church Records, 1636-1895 record collection on MyHeritage
- Hungary, Jewish Census, 1848 from JewishGen record collection on MyHeritage
- New York Castle Garden Immigrants record collection on MyHeritage
- A primer on Austro-Hungarian geography at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ R. W. Seton-Watson, ‘The Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich of 1867’, in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 19, No. 53/54, The Slavonic Year-Book (1939–1940), pp. 123–140.
- ↑ https://www.thecollector.com/the-habsburgs-dynasty/
- ↑ Istvan Deak, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848–1849 (New York, 1979).
- ↑ John Deak, Forging a Multinational State: State Making in Imperial Austria from the Enlightenment to the First World War (Oxford, 2015), chapter 4.
- ↑ https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/dual-monarchy-two-states-single-empire
- ↑ Annemarie Steidl, On Many Routes: Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration in the Late Habsburg Empire (West Lafayette, Indiana, 2021), pp. 12–13.
- ↑ https://case.edu/ech/articles/h/hungarians
- ↑ https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/hungarian-americans-and-their-communities-of-cleveland/chapter/the-great-immigration-1870-1920/