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Historical Studies on Central Europe 4, no. 2 (2024): 287–290
doi.org/10.47074/HSCE.2024-2.19
HSCE
Historical Studies
on Central Europe
Összeomlás és útkeresés 1917–1920. A magyar külpolitikai
gondolkodás útjai [Collapse and Quests for Direction, 1917–1920:
The Paths of Hungarian Foreign Policy Thinking].
By Gergely Romsics.
Trianon-dokumentumok és tanulmányok 13. Budapest: HUN-REN
Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, Történettudományi Intézet, 2023.
664 pp.
Virág Rab
University of Pécs, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; 2 Rókus utca, 7624 Pécs, Hungary;
rab.virag@pte.hu
e book systematically and comprehensively analyses the evolution of Hungarian
thinking about foreign policy in four political systems (late Dualism, Octoberist
governments, the Council Republic, and the Counter-Revolution) between 1917 and
1920. e period of just over three years, especially the year and a half preceding the
peace treaty, represents a sort of ‘transformation history,’ an important episode in
Hungary’s twentieth-century history, primarily from the perspective of the Treaty of
Trianon. is is one of the main reasons for the nearly overwhelming abundance of
relevant contemporary sources and the related literature, and also for the decades-
long sustained professional and lay interest in trying to understand what happened
between 1918 and 1920. By oering a foreign policy-focused perspective alongside
the prevailing domestic political narratives and by highlighting—in an unexampled
manner—foreign policy thought from under the shadows of intellectual, ideolog-
ical, and political history, the book will signicantly promote our understanding
especially of how contemporaries viewed these processes.
Gergely Romsics had been engaged with the topic, both in a broader and nar-
rower sense, for at least a decade before this publication, as evidenced by his numer-
ous studies and books.1 However, his interest in international political thought was
1 e Memory of the Habsburg Empire in German, Austrian, and Hungarian Right-wing
Historiography and Political inking, 1918–1941. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs,
2010; Nép, nemzet, birodalom: a Habsburg Birodalom emlékezete a német, osztrák és magyar
történetpolitikai gondolkodásban, 1918–1941 [People, Nation, Empire: Memory of the
Book Review
288
also fuelled by his experience in cultural diplomacy. For a decade (2007–2017), he
worked as a research associate, and from 2010 as a senior research associate, at the
Hungarian Institute of International Aairs, later the Institute of Foreign Aairs and
Trade. Subsequently, he joined the Institute of History at the Research Centre for the
Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. ere, he was involved in the
work of the Trianon 100 Momentum Research Group, where modern Hungarian
foreign policy thought was his main research area for ve years. e result is a mon-
umental, yet digestible synthesis built on new sources, showcasing Romsics’s own
relevant theoretical and/or methodological innovations, as well as a vast amount
of relevant literature produced by the historical profession over the past sixty years.
e main novelty of the book—fullling its objective—is that it provides insight
into the mindsets that make the contemporary witnesses’ (including politicians,
economic decision-makers, and members of the intellectual elite) understanding of
the autumn 1918 collapse and the ways to recovery comprehensible. e success of
Romsics’s endeavour is ensured by his consistent eort to understand the reasons
behind the actions of the individuals studied from the perspective of the actors of
the time (identifying with them). is approach allows him to avoid the so-called
‘fundamental attribution error’, which, according to social psychologists, stems
from the diering perspectives of an external observer and the subject in judging
the motives of actions.2 Former historians oen incorrectly explained actions with
the actors’ subjective reasons, personality traits and capabilities, while the subjects
themselves attribute their actions to external causes: opportunities and constraints
presented by the environment, in this case, primarily foreign policy constraints.
For this approach, the author uses a large quantity of contemporary sources
from various locations, including the Hungarian National Archives, the Manuscript
Collection of the National Széchényi Library, the Library and Manuscript Collection
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Archives of the Hungarian Reformed
Church Synod, the Military History Archives, and the Parliamentary Library. Since
Habsburg Empire in German, Austrian, and Hungarian Political ought about History].
Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2010; A lehetetlen művészete: diplomácia, erőegyensúly és vetélkedés
a klasszikus realizmus elméletében [e Art of the Impossible: Diplomacy, Balance of Powers,
and Competition in the Classical eory of Realism]. Budapest: Osiris, 2009; Myth and
Remembrance: e Dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in the Memoir Literature of the Austro-
Hungarian Political Elite. Wayne, NJ: East European Monographs, 2006; Mítosz és emlékezet:
A Habsburg Birodalom felbomlása az osztrák és a magyar politikai elit emlékirat-irodalmában
[Myth and Memory: e Dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in the Memoir Literature of the
Austrian and Hungarian Political Elite]. Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2004.
2 Hunyady, György. “Történelem és pszichológia: folytatódó d iskurzus” [History and Psychology :
Continui ng Discussions]. In Szociálpszichológia történelemtanároknak. Tanulmánygyűjtemény,
edited by György Hunyady. Budapest: Ökonet, 2002.
Book Review 289
some of the sources are fragmentary or entirely missing from Hungarian institutions,
he also relies on primary sources, in several cases gathered abroad, specically from
the Diplomatic Archives in Paris, and the French and Austrian National Libraries,
to present the foreign policy intentions and thoughts of Hungarian political actors.
Gergely Romsics’s most original thesis arises precisely because he devotes spe-
cial attention to perspectives contemporary to the time studied. Accordingly, fol-
lowing World War I, the foreign policy thinking of regimes with diering ideologies
exhibited constant features and similar reexes in crisis situations. He shows that the
challenges (foreign policy constraints) that each government’s representatives had to
face stemmed from a relatively unchanged international situation. ese were also
the so-called common points of foreign policy: a disintegrating multi-national state,
a collapsed army, and the hostile small states gathering strength around Hungary, on
whose military forces the war-weary great powers consciously relied starting from
the autumn of 1918.
Romsics draws the ultimate conclusion that the only way representatives of the
various regimes could face the constraints of the international environment was by
realistically considering their options; consequently, their foreign policy behaviour
was more coherent than previously assumed. is nding also indicates that the
author made every eort to keep in mind the social psychological assertion that the
likelihood of an event occurring seems much greater in retrospect aer the event
has happened than it did prior to the event.
According to the author, the realistic consideration of options also meant that
representatives of all three political systems successfully identied with their weak-
nesses and thus—in contrast to the illusions of the Late Dualism era elite—consciously
chose the path of adaptation, which most oen resulted in cooperation and compro-
mises, and only in exceptional cases did it lead to resistance (in crises or collapses).
At this point, through a consistent analysis of perspectives, the author manages to
supplement our previous knowledge with new explanations. Among other things, he
demonstrates that exchanges during compromises never involve items of equal value.
However, the Hungarian governments—as he shows—did not consider this fact (i.e.,
the costs of accepting oers); they failed to anticipate the perspectives of the winners.
e author’s conclusions about the four political systems follow from the
results described in over ve hundred pages. He demonstrates how informed the
contemporary elites were in terms of foreign policy and how they acquired their
knowledge. He also depicts the international system of the time as seen by contem-
poraries. Finally, he examines the extent foreign policy steps were in harmony with
theoretical conceptions.
Essentially, Romsics intends to capture the mindset of contemporary deci-
sion-makers and reveal their worldviews. To do this, he uses the ideas and key
Book Review
290
© 2024 The Author(s).
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0).
concepts of British historian Martin Wight, a representative of international polit-
ical theory, as an interpretative framework. e essence of this framework is that
political thinking about foreign policy can be described by three intellectual tra-
ditions that exist in parallel: realism, rationalism, and revolutionism. Accordingly,
Romsics describes the foreign policy thinking of the four political regimes as a jour-
ney segmented by revolutionary phases, ranging from rationalism to realism.
Gergely Romsics’s book approaches a complex topic fraught with challenging,
unprocessed, and controversial issues in a narrative manner. is ts well with the
author’s intention to understand the perspective of the contemporary person, ulti-
mately oering an interpretation that could provide the foundations not only for
professional discourse but, due to its digestible and invariably calm and balanced
style, also for broader society’s future discourse.