Why Are There So Many Hungarians In Slovakia & Romania?

A lot of countries in the world don't contain their entire population within their borders. It's common to many nations that, at a time when they were economically struggling, parts of their population moved abroad in search of better lives. Portugal, for instance, has 20% of its people living abroad. This number is even higher in Bosnia with 43% or Albania with 38%. In Portugal's case, while there is a pretty big concentration of these people in France, Luxembourg and Switzerland, they're pretty distributed across the world and don't live immediately next to Portugal, in this case they could only live in Spain. However, for some countries this worldwide distribution isn't the case. Hungary exists today, here in Europe, having these borders. However, a good amount of Hungarians live outside of them. They're not a huge or super relevant percentage of their population, only 6% of Hungarians live outside Hungary, but then why is this a relevant or even interesting case? Well, while Portuguese, Albanian or Bosniak diasporas are spread throughout the world, Hungarians abroad almost all live immediately outside Hungary's current borders. So why? Before we learn the reason, let's find out how many Hungarians exist in the surrounding countries. Over 1 million live in Romania, about 5 to 6% of Romania's population, around 450,000 live in Slovakia, over 8% of that country's total people, 184,000 live in Serbia, 2 to 3% of the population total, and then 94,000 in Austria, 10,000 in Croatia, 10,000 in Slovenia, and there used to be 150,000 in Ukraine, it's uncertain how many remain, the last available data is from 2001. Don't get me wrong, there's a wider Hungarian diaspora worldwide too, but that's consisted of more people with distant Hungarian heritage, like the US with over 1.5 million people that can trace back their heritage to Hungarian migrants. The difference for the ones we mentioned first is they weren't migrants, they were people that lived inside what was Hungary at the time and then suddenly they didn't anymore. Hungary has existed in the Carpathian Basin for centuries, ever since the arrival of the Magyar people into Europe from Asia. I did a whole video on Hungary's territorial evolution, I'll link it in the description if you want, I'm just gonna go over it very very briefly here, there were on and off periods with Mongol invasions in between, but the Hungarian kingdom quickly established itself and its rule over this general region, which today would include a good part if not all of Slovakia, part of Carpathian Ukraine, Transylvania, today in Romania, and part of Vojvodina in Northern Serbia, even reaching into Croatia at times. Even Moldova and Wallachia themselves were once found under direct or indirect Hungarian rule, but all countries temporarily reached out into areas they once lost. That's no reason for ethnic populations to stay, the key is in that word, temporary. While Hungarian rule over Wallachia, Moldova or Croatia were reasonably short in the wide view of history, their rule over Carpathia, Slovakia and Transylvania weren't that short. Despite losing parts or all of it at times to Mongols, Ottomans or other nations, they always came to get them back. So now we can understand why there were and are so many Hungarian people there, it was their territory for a pretty long time throughout history. Then came the Habsburgs and their union with Austria, the Kingdom of Hungary became a part of the Habsburg Empire, later known as Austria-Hungary, and it was this union with their western neighbours that ultimately led to their demise. I'm not saying the Hungarians were just dragged into it against their will, their rights and influence had at this point grown significantly within the against Habsburg occupation, part of which was Hungarian. However, an Austrian-led empire decided to go to war alongside Germany, against Russia, self-proclaimed defender of the Slavic people in the Balkans, and then with the rest of the Entente, France and the United Kingdom, the First World War began. As we know, the Central Powers were defeated and heavy peace treaties were imposed upon them. Germany and the losing powers in general had the Treaty of Versailles which many argue crippled their economy to the point that it partly contributed to the rise of a certain other Austrian man that caused a whole second world war. But there were two more treaties that help us understand why all these people suddenly found themselves not living in Hungary anymore. Legally, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was formalized in the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. However, this just broke Austria-Hungary apart and it was only with the 1920 Treaty of Trianon that the Kingdom of Hungary itself was also dissolved and most importantly for us here, split up. A fun fact, the treaty began being prepared in Paris and was also signed in Versailles at the Grand Trianon Chateau. I may be stupidly always assumed Trianon was another city that the treaty had been signed in, but apparently not. The treaty regulated the status of the Kingdom of Hungary and defined its borders generally within the ceasefire lines established at the end of the war. So this was one of the causes for losing the territory, they had effectively lost it in the war, but it wasn't the only one. This treaty left Hungary as a landlocked state that was made up of 93,000 square kilometers, only 28% of the former 325,000 square kilometers that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary. Their population was also cut significantly. Before the war, the Kingdom had almost 21 million subjects and now it was taken down to 7.6, only 36% of the previous total. The remaining 64% lived in the lands that Hungary now lost. It is important however to point out that the majority of people living in those lands were in fact not Hungarian. After the treaty, 3.3 million Hungarians were left outside Hungary's new borders. If you add that to the 7.6 million inside them, that would make roughly 11 million people, the remaining 10 million were the majority, Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, and other groups, so Hungarians now became minorities within these other new neighboring countries, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and this minority status of ethnically Hungarian people within the regions is the second big reason why they lost them paired with the loss of land during the war. You see, at the end of World War I, in which the US played a key role for victory, the American president was a man called Woodrow Wilson and he gave a key speech that outlined, among many other things, the idea of self-determination of all regions as a staple for lasting peace. The 14 points were a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a 1918 speech on war aims to the United States Congress. British and French officials were skeptical of implementing many of them as they likely threatened their own status as world powers, namely within their colonial empires. After all, Point 4 stated that a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims based upon the interests of the population concerned should be made. But still, some of the points were taken into account and effectively influenced the Treaty of Versailles and also that of Trianon. For instance, Point 4 stated that adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. The Treaty of Trianon did also limit Hungary's army to 35,000 men and the Austro-Hungarian Navy ceased to exist. But the key point for Hungary was Point 10, stating that the people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development. And this not only included entire countries within the empire, Croatia, Slovenia, but also parts of bordering countries that had been, in Wilson's view, occupied by the empire, such as Romania or Serbia. Point 9 also stated that a readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognized lines of nationality, which not only directly affected part of the former Habsburg Empire itself, but it also reinforced how lines of nationality were key to this post-war readjustment of borders. It is a little odd, however, that certain things happened upon dissolution, such as uniting Czechs and Slovaks under one state instead of giving each independence, especially when Czechia was already semi-autonomous alone within the empire, or uniting all the Slavics into Yugoslavia, which didn't solve the issue of self-determination at all. In addition, the lines of nationality were not respected, and regions were treated as a whole rather than looked at in detail. For instance, this ethnic map at the time shows us how majority Hungarians still existed directly outside of Hungary's borders. Sure, if you look at the big picture, by region, there were minorities in Slovakia and in Romania, but there were majorities in these small regions adjacent to the new border. So if the winning powers wanted to truly respect their own principles, perhaps the borders should have been adjusted there, still granting Slovakia independence and adding territory to Romania, but not blindly doing it and allowing at least the adjacent ethnic Hungarians to remain within Hungary. Only one referendum was permitted to settle a small dispute with Austria, no others were allowed. But again, maybe it was a compromise, we're doing part of what Wilson and the US wanted, but the UK and France didn't necessarily agree to, and when we look more into it, we find out precisely that French diplomats played the major role in designing the treaty, with a view to establish a French-led coalition of the newly formed states, namely with Romania and Czechoslovakia, perhaps leading to an unfair redistribution of land in order to strengthen their newly desired allies. So now we understand three key things. First, how Hungarians came to be in these lands, through the establishment and lasting territorial control of them by the former Kingdom of Hungary. Then, how Hungary lost those lands by being a losing power of WWI. And third, why the winning powers wanted to take those lands away, because they had conquered part of them during the war itself, because they wanted to pursue a policy of self-determination for territories and, not to be ignored, they wanted to weaken their defeated enemies to make sure they wouldn't be a threat again, see how well that worked out, and to strengthen potential new allies. And what effectively did Hungary lose with the treaty? First, they lost Slovakia to the north, which became a part of Czechoslovakia, then these small western provinces to Austria, Galicia to Poland at the time, their eastern lands, mostly Transylvania to Romania, as well as Croatia and, I think, Vojvodina to Yugoslavia. Hungarians at the time recognized the partial unfairness of the treaty, but being a losing power, they were forced to accept it, even if under protest. Soon after, many propaganda posters were published protesting the loss of the territories, such as this one with hands clawing away their land and pointing out the amount of Hungarians living in each of them, or these ones published abroad which tried to make French, British, Italian, German and American people understand the dimension of their loss by comparing them to their own countries. This one dedicated to the US even went as far as to conceptualize who they would lose the land to, losing the north to Great Britain, the west coast to Japan, the southwest to Mexico and the southeast to a local ethnic group. But to no avail, the loss was made official with the treaty and there was no going back for the allies. As Hungary descended into authoritarianism and became closer to Germany in the 1930s and 40s, they were able to regain some previously lost land, as the German Reich forced their neighbors to cede it back, the first Vienna award granted southern Slovakia back in 1938, in 1939 Hungary annexed Carpathian Ruthenia again, in 1940 the second Vienna award forced Romania to hand Transylvania back and in 1941 part of the old Yugoslav territories were also recovered with the exception of Croatia. However, Hungary still had chosen poorly again and sided with the losing side of the war once more. After the defeat of the Axis powers, Hungary was forced to give back all of this land once more and so they came back to the current borders they have today. These decisions and their consequences, despite now having taken place over a hundred years ago, have been the cause of deep resentment in Hungary ever since and have been picked up by many extremist groups and figures as a banner. The five biggest communities of native Hungarians abroad today are those that we mentioned and directly correspond to the lost territories, Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine and Austria. Open disputes and provocations only exist, I believe, with Romania, the others are countries that Hungary actually has friendly relationships with, however, their government has taken steps to act upon this. A total of 1.1 million of the 4 million Hungarians living abroad have been granted Hungarian citizenship, most of them in Romania, 600,000, Ukraine recently abolished the possibility of dual citizenship and even friendly Slovakia didn't like it, claiming this Ever since 1920 there are significantly less Hungarians there as many migrated back inside Hungarian borders but there are still significant communities grouped up as we can see on this map in light green. The local communities sometimes have special statuses within those countries and at the very least they enjoy full rights as citizens. Many have created their own customs like those in Slovakia which fly this flag and while they conserve their Hungarian identity, I believe the belief in reunification with their country begins to fade away. What do you think? Should Hungary have kept some of this territory? Considering they didn't, would it make sense to give some of it back today? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching this video, subscribe to catch future ones and I will see you next time for more general knowledge.