Hungarian Turanism
Hungarian Turanism is a diverse Turanist phenomenon that revolves around an identification or association of Hungarian history and people with the histories and peoples of Central Asia, Inner Asia or the Ural region. It includes many different conceptions and served as the guiding principle of many political movements. It was most lively in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
Overview
As a scientific movement, Turanism was concerned with research into Asian cultures in the context of Hungarian history and culture. It was embodied and represented by many scholars who had shared premises, and arrived at the same or very similar conclusions. Turanism was a driving force in the development of the Hungarian social sciences, especially in the development of linguistics and archaeology.Political Turanism was born in the 19th century, in response to the growing influence of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism, both of which were seen by Hungarians as very dangerous to the nation, and the state of Hungary, because the country had large ethnic German and Slavic populations. This political ideology originated in the work of the Finnish nationalist and linguist Matthias Alexander Castrén, who presented a belief in the racial unity and future greatness of the Ural-Altaic peoples. He concluded that the Finns originated in Central Asia and believed that far from being a small, isolated people, they were part of a larger community that included such peoples as the Magyars, the Turks, and the Mongols etc. Political Turanism was a romantic nationalist movement, which stressed the importance of the common ancestry and the cultural affinity of the Hungarians, the peoples of the Caucasus and the peoples of Inner and Central Asia, such as the Turks, Mongols, Parsis etc. It called for closer collaboration and a political alliance between them and Hungary, as a means of securing and furthering the shared interests and countering the threats which were posed by the policies of the great powers of Europe. The idea of a "Turanian brotherhood and collaboration" was borrowed from the Pan-Slavic concept of "Slavic brotherhood and collaboration".
After the First World War, political Turanism played a role in the formation of Hungarian far-right ideologies because of its ethnic nationalist nature. It began to carry anti-Jewish sentiments and tried to prove the "existence and superiority of a unified Hungarian race". Nonetheless, Andrew C. Janos, a Hungarian political scientist of the University of California, Berkeley, asserts that Turanism's role in the interwar development of far-right ideologies was negligible.
In the communist era which began after the Second World War and ended in 1989, Turanism was portrayed and vilified as an exclusively fascist ideology. Since the fall of communism in 1989 there has been a renewal of interest in Turanism.
Background
Early history of the Hungarians
Before the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, the Hungarians were semi-nomadic and their culture was similar to other steppe peoples. Most scientists presume a Uralic homeland for the ancient Hungarian conquerors. The proto-Hungarian tribes lived in the Eurasian forest steppe zone, and so these ancient ancestors of Hungarians and their relationship with other equestrian nomadic peoples has been and still is a topic for research.Hungarian nobiliary historical tradition considered and rendered the eastern origin of Hungarians. This tradition was preserved in medieval chronicles as early as the 13th century. According to Chronica Hungarorum, the Hungarians are descendants of the Huns, and came from the Asian parts of Scythia, and Turks share this Scythian origin with them. This tradition eventually served as starting point for the scientific research of the ethnogenesis of Hungarian people, which began in the 18th century, in Hungary and abroad. Sándor Kőrösi Csoma traveled to Asia in the strong belief that he could find the kindred of Magyars in somewhere in Central Asia, amongst the Uyghurs.
Development of Finno-Ugric studies
The linguistic theories of the Dutch philosopher Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn and the German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz gave the basis of the modern scientific research of the origin of the Hungarian language and people. Boxhorn conjectured that the European and Indo-Iranian languages were all derived from a shared ancestor language, and he named this ancestor language "Scythian", after the equestrian, nomadic warriors of the Asian steppes. But linguists theorizing about ancestor languages had to deal with the common belief of the era, that, according to the Bible, Hebrew was the original language of all humans. Leibniz published material countering the Biblical theory, and supported Boxhorn's notion of a Scythian ancestor language behind most of the languages of Europe. Leibniz however also recognized that some European languages like Sami, Finnish, and Hungarian were connected to each other, but did not belong to this family."Information about hither-to unknown peoples and languages of Asia and the Americas came into the hands of scholars such as Gottfried Leibniz, who recognized that there was no better method “for specifying the relationship and origin of the various peoples of the earth, than the comparison of their languages”. In order to classify as many languages as possible in genealogical groupings, Leibniz proposed that similar materials be collected from each newly described language. To this end he asked that explorers either obtain translations of well-known Christian prayers such as the Pater Noster, or, better yet, “words for common things”, a sample list of which he appended to a letter to the Turkologist D. Podesta. The word list included numerals, kinship terms, body parts, necessitates, naturalia and a dozen verbs. Leibniz took a particular interest in the expansion of the Russian Empire southward and eastward, and lists based on his model were taken on expeditions sent by the tsars to study the territories recently brought under their control, as well as the peoples living on these and on nearby lands." Kevin Tuite: The rise and fall and revival of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis. 2008. in: Historiographia Linguistica, 35 #1; p. 23-82.
The Finnish-Hungarian connection was further developed by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg and, a German historian and language researcher, who participated in the Great Northern Expedition of 1733–1743. In his work “Qvaestiones Petropolitanae, De origine Ungrorum”, published in 1770, Fischer put Hungarian into a group of kindred peoples and languages which he called 'Scythian'. He considered the Ugric peoples the closest relatives of Hungarians, actually as 'Magyars left behind', and originated them from the Uyghurs, who live on the western frontiers of China.
Ural-Altaic and the Turanian concept
By the early 19th century, connections with further languages were perceived by Rasmus Christian Rask, and Matthias Castrén, who included the Finno-Ugric languages as a part of a larger hypothesis today known as Ural-Altaic. The German linguist and Orientalist Schott was a proponent of Finn-Turk-Hungarian kinship, and considered the Hungarians a mixture of Turks and "Hyperboreans".Friedrich Max Müller, the German Orientalist and philologist, published and proposed a grouping of the non-Aryan and non-Semitic Asian languages in 1855. In his work "The languages of the seat of war in the East. With a survey of the three families of language, Semitic, Arian, and Turanian", he called these languages "Turanian". The Hungarian language was classed by Müller as a member of a Northern Division, in the Finnic Class, in the Ugric Branch, with the Voguls and Ugro-Ostiakes as its closest relatives. His theory was well known and widely discussed in international scientific circles, and was known to Hungarian scientists as well. He became an associate member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His public lectures received wide attention. His terms "Turan" and "Turanian" were originally borrowed from Persian texts like the Shahnameh, which used the term "Turan" to denote the territories of Turkestan, north of Amu Darya river, inhabited by nomadic warriors.
The role of the Habsburgs
In Hungary, discourse on the prehistory of the Hungarians generally lacked the political meanings up until the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and the 1848-49 War of Independence, but after the bitter experiences of the war and the defeat, many phenomena received new political overtones."… the Sun went down into a sea of blood. The night of immeasurable grief fell on Hungary; her noblest powers were broken. Even the gates of scientific institutions became closed…"
"…a Nap vértengerbe áldozott le. Magyarországra a mérhetetlen gyásznak éjszakája borult; legnemesebb erői törve voltak. Még a tudományos intézetek kapui is bezárultak…"
Hungary's constitution and her territorial integrity were abolished, and her territory was partitioned into crown lands. This signalled the start of a long era of absolutist rule. The Habsburgs introduced dictatorial rule, and every aspect of Hungarian life was put under close scrutiny and governmental control. Press and theatrical/public performances were censored.
German became the official language of public administration. The edict issued on 1849.X.9., placed education under state control, the curriculum was prescribed and controlled by the state, the education of national history was confined, and history was educated from a Habsburg viewpoint. Even the bastion of Hungarian culture, the academy was kept under control: the institution was staffed with foreigners, mostly Germans and ethnic Germans, and the institution was practically defunct until the end of 1858. Hungarians responded with passive resistance. Questions of nation, language, national origin became politically sensitive matters. Anti-Habsburg and anti-German sentiments were strong. A large number of freedom fighters took refuge in the Ottoman Empire. This resulted in renewed cultural exchange, and mutual sympathy. Turks were seen by many as good allies of the Hungarian cause. Such was the atmosphere, when Vámbéry traveled to Constantinople in 1857 for the first time.
"It should happen and it will happen - I encouraged myself with this, and did not hurt me other problems, just this one: how could I get a passport from the strict and suspicious Austrian authorities, and exactly to Turkey, where the Hungarian emigration resided, and, as was believed in Vienna, made rebellious plans tirelessly."
"Mennie kell és menni fog, - ezzel biztattam magam és nem bántott más gond, csak az az egy: hogy mi úton-módon kaphatok útlevelet a szigorú és gyanakvó osztrák hatóságtól; hozzá még épen Törökországba, hol akkor a magyar emigráczió tartotta székét és, mint Bécsben hitték, pártütő terveket sző fáradhatatlanúl.
And this atmosphere granted public interest for the then new theory of Max Müller. The Habsburg government saw this "Turkism" as dangerous to the empire, but had no means to suppress it. dreamed about Eastern land grabs.)
As a consequence of the Franco-Austrian War and the Austro-Prussian War, the Habsburg Empire was on the verge of collapse in 1866, because these misfortunate military endeavours resulted in increased state spending, speeding inflation, towering state debts and financial crisis.
The Habsburgs were forced to reconcile with Hungary, to save their empire and dynasty. The Habsburgs and part of the Hungarian political elite arranged the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The Compromise was arranged and legitimated by a very small part of the Hungarian society, and was seen by a very large part of the population as betrayal of the Hungarian cause and the heritage of the 1848-49 War of Independence. This caused deep and lasting cracks in Hungarian society. Academic science remained under state scrutiny and pressure, and press remained under censorship. Matters of nation, language, national origin remained politically sensitive themes, and Turkism remained popular.
"However, to get the Compromise accepted within the society posed serious difficulties. Many counties rejected the Compromise and stood up for Kossuth, the opposition organized a network of Democratic circles, on the Great Hungarian Plain anti-government and anti-Compromise demonstrations of several thousand men took place, etc.
"Viszont a kiegyezés elfogadtatása a társadalommal, komoly nehézségekbe ütközött. Több megye elutasította a kiegyezést és kiállt Kossuth mellett, az ellenzék megszervezte a demokrata körök hálózatát, az Alföldön többezres kormány- és kiegyezés-ellenes népgyűlésekre került sor stb.