Origins

The homeland of Canada’s Hungarians – or Magyars as they call themselves – is the Carpathian (or Middle Danube) Basin of east-central Europe, an area blessed with rich soils and plentiful resources. At its centre is the Hungarian Plain, bisected by the Danube River, which from pre-Roman times was an important waterway linking the western and southeastern parts of the European continent. The climate is tempered continental, resembling that of southern Ontario and parts of interior British Columbia.

Previous to their settlement in the Middle Danube Basin at the end of the ninth century, the Magyars inhabited the foothills of the southern Ural Mountains and later the steppelands of what are now southern European Russia and Ukraine. During their migrations from the Urals, they came into contact with various peoples and civilizations, each of which had made an impact on Hungarian culture and traditions. This intermingling of peoples and cultural influences only intensified once the Hungarians settled in the Carpathian Basin, abandoned their semi-nomadic life-style, and established a feudal kingdom of their own. In 1000 C.E., during the reign of King Stephen the Saint, Hungary accepted Christianity, whereupon the country became a member of the European family of Latin Christian kingdoms.

In the course of the next 500 years, the Kingdom of Hungary was a major power in east-central Europe and encompassed all of what is present-day Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and parts of Romania (Transylvania), Ukraine (Ruthenia/Transcarpathia), Yugoslavia (Vojvodina), and Austria (Burgenland). Hungary’s prominence ended in the sixteenth century, a period that saw the expansion of Ottoman Turkish power throughout the Balkans and of Austrian Habsburg influence in the western and northern borderlands of the Carpathian Basin.

From 1526 to 1699, Hungary was divided into three spheres: the central lowlands were ruled directly by the Ottoman Empire, the northern and western regions were controlled by the Habsburgs, and Transylvania in the east was nominally an Ottoman vassal state headed by Protestant Hungarian princes. In this period, Islamic Ottoman, Protestant Transylvanian, and Catholic Habsburg armies repeatedly clashed for control of Hungarian lands. Habsburg Austria and Transylvania finally formed an alliance which together with other Christian states was able to drive the Ottoman Turks from Hungary by 1699. Both during and after the Ottoman period, the Hungarians attempted to expand their degree of self-rule within the context of the Habsburg Empire. The last and unsuccessful effort in this regard was the revolutionary war of 1848–49, which had an impact on Hungarian emigration to North America as thousands of the conflict’s participants sought refuge in the United States and a few made their way to British North America.

In 1867 Hungary reached an agreement with the Habsburg authorities and became an equal partner in what thereafter was known as the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Certain areas of post-1867 Hungary prospered, but many districts remained underdeveloped. Between 1880 and 1914, these regions became a source of emigrants of various ethnic backgrounds who made their way to the United States and Canada.

At the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated. As part of the peace settlement (the Treaty of Trianon of 1920), the Kingdom of Hungary was partitioned. One-third of its territory was left to the largely Magyar-inhabited state of Hungary; a little over one-third (including Transylvania) was transferred to Romania; and much of the rest was divided between the newly created states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, while a strip of land along the western border was awarded to Austria. As a result of such political changes, after 1920 Hungarian immigrants to Canada came not only from Hungary proper but also from neighbouring Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia which had substantial Magyar minorities.

These historical factors have made it difficult to define just who is a Hungarian, and no definitions have been developed that avoid confusion in at least some cases. In this entry the term “Hungarian” will refer to: (1) immigrants of Magyar ethnocultural background from the pre-World War I Kingdom of Hungary, from post1918 Hungary, and from neighbouring countries where Magyar minorities live; and (2) immigrants of other (or mixed) ethnic origin from the historic Kingdom of Hungary, or from other parts of the Hungarian diaspora, who identify themselves as Hungarians. (See also AUSTRIANS; CARPATHO-RUSYNS; GERMANS; JEWS; ROMANIANS; SLOVAKS.)

During the inter-war years, Hungarian foreign policy aimed to revise the provisions of the post–World War I territorial settlement. To this end the country’s leaders sought the diplomatic support first of Italy and later also of Nazi Germany. On the eve of and during the early years of World War II, Hungary did succeed in regaining certain territories: southern Slovakia and Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia, northern Transylvania from Romania, and the Vojvodina from Yugoslavia. In return for support of Hungary’s territorial claims, Hungary became allied with Nazi Germany during the war. When the Hungarian government tried to extricate the country from that alliance, Germany responded by occupying Hungary with its troops in early 1944. Under pressure, the majority of Hungary’s Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps. By early 1945, the German army and its Hungarian allies were driven out of the country by the Soviet Red Army. With the help of the Soviet Union, Hungarian Communist activists were able by 1947 to establish a Communist government that was to rule Hungary for the next four decades.

The new Communist regime tried to integrate Hungary politically and economically with other Soviet bloc countries and to close off contacts, including the movement of people, across what became known as the Iron Curtain, a part of which formed Hungary’s border with Austria. Growing discontent with the harshness of Communist rule provoked the Hungarian Revolution of October 1956. After weeks of bitter fighting, the revolt was crushed by Soviet troops, and thousands of Hungarians fled westward, many of whom eventually settled in Canada. The Revolution also brought to power János Kadar, who, while remaining loyal to the Soviet Union, was eventually able to remove many of the Communist regime’s more stringent controls. By the 1970s the country even enjoyed a modicum of economic prosperity and was one of the most open Soviet-bloc societies.

With the fall of Communist regimes throughout east-central Europe in 1989, Hungary was transformed into a multi-party parliamentary state. Since that time, it has tried to implement democratic reforms and a market-economy that can function easily with the rest of Europe. The post-1989 transformation in neighbouring countries has created political tensions and economic hardship that have had a negative impact on the Hungarian minorities living there. As a result, Hungarians from those countries have since the late 1980s sought refuge in Hungary or have emigrated to other countries abroad, including Canada.

Hungarians speak a language that is not related to any of the major European language groups. Hungarian, or Magyar, is a Finno-Ugric tongue distantly related to Finnish and Estonian. Because their language is so different, Hungarians are often considered to be linguistically isolated from other Europeans. This isolation, however, has never been complete either for individual Hungarians or for their society. In medieval and early modern times educated Hungarians used Latin – the language of the Roman Catholic Church, of the arts, sciences, and scholarship – and they often knew other European languages as well. By the end of the nineteenth century, German had gradually replaced Latin as the country’s “second language,” while in recent years English has started to become the second language of commerce, technology, and tourism.

From the time of their official conversion to Christianity, the vast majority of Hungarians were Roman Catholic. During the Reformation, many became attracted to various Protestant faiths. In fact, the anti-Habsburg struggles often assumed undertones of religious wars, in which Protestant Hungarians fought against the Catholic Habsburg emperor. In the end, the Counter-Reformation triumphed in regions controlled by the Habsburgs, while elsewhere (in particular in Transylvania and the eastern portions of the Hungarian Plain) Protestant religions retained a foothold. In modern times, about two-thirds of the Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin are Roman Catholic, while the remainder are divided mainly among Calvinists, Lutherans, Uniate or Greek Catholics, and Jews. Roman Catholics predominate in western Hungary, Protestants in the east, Greek Catholics in some northeastern counties, and Unitarians in Transylvania. Since the late nineteenth century, the capital city of Budapest has had a large Jewish population. Hungary’s religious groups were seldom proportionally represented in the various waves of immigrants to Canada.