Lost Prestige. Hungary's Changing Image in Britain. 1894-1918

This book is not about how present-day Hungary has recently lost so much of the prestige it won with its heroic uprising in 1956 and its role in the fall of the communist satellites in 1989. Rather, it is the story of the formation of Hungary's image abroad before and during World War I. Geza Jeszenszky chronicles how the very favourable reputation of Hungary and the Hungarians, established in their 1848–49 war for a liberal constitution and independence from Habsburg absolutism, was seriously damaged in the decade preceding the First World War. He shows its causes: the internal political crisis in 1904–06 undermined the notion that Hungary was a stabilizing and liberalizing factor in the Habsburg Monarchy; the almost daily London Times reports by its extremely well-informed correspondent, H.W. Steed, exposed the short-sighted social and electoral policies of Hungary's political elite; and increasing awareness of the unfair treatment of the non-Hungarian national minorities, as rev