Review article
https://doi.org/10.22586/ss.24.1.5
The (un)importance of Slavonia for Hungarian politics during the disintegration of the Kingdom of Hungary after the First World War
Árpád Hornyák
orcid.org/0009-0007-0436-2614
Abstract
The state of war between the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Allies ended on November 3, 1918, when they signed an armistice agreement in Villa Giusti near Padua, which declared that hostilities had ceased. However, the armistice contained a number of inconsistencies, the most important of which was that the demarcation lines drawn in the Padua Agreement did not affect the historical borders of Hungary after the secession of Croatia. The Armistice Agreement of Padua, however, did not bring the war to an end for Hungary. There was every indication that the Allied army in the Balkans, under the command of General Louis Franchet d'Esperey, which consisted primarily of the Serbian army, would not consider Diaz's armistice agreement binding and that, crossing the Danube and the Sava, they would continue their march in the direction of Hungary. Prime Minister Count Mihály Károlyi and the government could not interpret this contradictory situation and for this reason they chose the alternative that best suited their political ideas. Namely, a special armistice agreement which, considering the conditions mentioned above and the increasingly threatening situation, seemed both desirable and useful. Károlyi believed that the Armistice of Padua did not have to be recognized by Hungary because it did not include the Balkan area and because it was signed in the name of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Instead, he believed that a separate armistice agreement would be desirable, which would recognize a new, friendly and democratic Hungary, recognizing Hungary's independent position and thus ensuring the integrity of the state until the peace conference. They did not achieve that goal, but in the newly signed Military Convention of November 13, a new demarcation line was established that was almost completely identical to the Trianon border. According to this, the whole of Croatia and Slavonia was separated from Hungary. Károlyi's government accepted the loss of Slavonia (and Croatia) practically without saying a word, just like all other Hungarian governments in the interwar period and beyond, they did not dispute this act and the later decision of the peace conference. The explanation for this was that at the end of the First World War this area was not of exceptional importance for the Hungarian political elite, what is more, we can state that both the Hungarian political elite and public opinion neglected Slavonia in comparison to other occupied areas. The reasons for this: the small number of Hungarians and their dispersion. Also, an equally important reason, although closely related to the first one, is the historical development of the region, which was quite separated from the core territory of the Kingdom of Hungary even before the Turkish conquest, and especially after the liberation of these territories and only after the Hungarian-Croatian agreement, when this region was annexed to Croatia.
Keywords
Kingdom of Hungary; Kingdom of SCS; Croatia; Slavonia; Hungarian minority
Hrčak ID:
323223
URI
Publication date:
8.12.2024.
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