‘We Are Hungarians Now’: Griffith Resurrecting Hungary
摘要
First published as a series of newspaper articles in 1904 before appearing in pamphlet form, Arthur Griffith’s The Resurrection of Hungary is the most famous comparison made between Ireland and Hungary in modern times. This chapter considers the claims that Griffith made for the precedent that Hungary’s modern history set for Irish nationalism at the start of the twentieth century. As part of the discussion, I assess the comparisons that Griffith drew between religious circumstances and the constitutional position in both countries, alongside his claim that Austrian perceptions of the Hungarian temperament were akin to English perceptions of the Irish. Central to Griffith’s argument in The Resurrection of Hungary was his interpretation of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 that featured prominently in the Irish Home Rule debates of the 1880s. The pamphlet was also significant both for the comparison that Griffith drew between the campaign for Hungarian language reform in the early nineteenth century and Irish language revival in his own day, as well as for the precedent that the literary movement of the Hungarian Reform era set for literary revival in Ireland. I discuss the various responses to Griffith’s work among nationalist thinkers. Their reactions testify to the transnational complexity of The Resurrection of Hungary. Griffith’s was an argument that called upon Irish politicians to look outward to an example provided by a nation on the other side of the European continent. Yet the work was also a call to turn inward, drawing away from Westminster Parliament in London to form an independent Irish assembly on the principle of ‘Ourselves Alone’, or Sinn Féin, the name of the political party that emerged from Griffith’s so-called Hungarian policy.