The thematic issue of Americana e-Journal of American Studies in Hungary entitled THE TRIANON PEACE TREATY, POST-WAR SETTLEMENT AND THE ANGLO-SAXON WORLD: 100th Anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon deals with the importance and impact of peace treaties and post-war settlements in Hungary and East-Central Europe with special regard to the 100th anniversary of the Trianon Peace Treaty. Starting with Brest-Litovsk in 1918 and ending with Lausanne in 1923, a number of peace treaties brought the First World War war to a stuttering end. With respect to Hungary, the 1920 Trianon Peace Treaty counts as the most prominent and most controversial aspect of the peace-making process. The centenary of the Trianon Treaty, along with the fresh scrutiny historians have recently given to post-war treaties, provides a unique occasion to reassess the repercussions of post-war arrangements in Hungary and in East-Central Europe. The consequences of the above-mentioned peace treaties are well-known; however, a series of new perspectives regarding the outcome of these pacts have started to proliferate recently.

This Americana issue assesses some of the political, social and cultural ripples the Trianon Treaty sent across Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world by examining the short-term and the long-term consequences of this pact from comparative, transregional and transnational perspectives. The papers in this issue include but are not limited only to the following topics: 1) the political, social, intellectual and cultural reception of the post-war settlement, the Trianon Peace Treaty, and the Hungarian, as well as the Danubian post-war experience in the Anglo-Saxon world; 2) comparative, transregional and transnational studies related to the repercussions of the First World War and the Trianon Peace Treaty and their representations, with a focus on British and American dimensions; 3) the impact of regionalism, Wilsonism in Hungary and East-Central Europe; 4) post-imperial approaches in East-Central Europe to the post-war global order in Europe; 5) transformations of imperial rule and struggle against this by the peoples in the Danube region; 6) border crossings, cross-border experiences and new post-war identities in the 1920s; 7) social and symbolic power relations with respect to regional transformations after WWI and their representations in British, American and Hungarian literature and culture.

The issue starts with “The Treaty of Trianon and the Hungarian Post-war Settlement in the Eyes of the British” by Erik Papp, Dorottya Forrai and Zoltán Cora and examines the political reasons that affected British politicians and activists in shaping their views on the Hungarian post-war settlement and the creation of the Trianon Peace Treaty. Maintaining the power balance in Europe was the main political interest of Great Britain. In order to reach this aim, the politicians’ main motivations at the peace settlement after the war was primarily to hinder German expansion towards the Balkans and Russian Bolshevism towards Europe by securing a long-lasting peace on the continent. British foreign policy examined Hungary’s role with respect to its effect on such a European power-balance and judged Hungary favourably as long as it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but, as Hungarian separatist ambitions grew stronger, the country was rather treated as a threat in the given context. The paper looks at how members of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference saw differently the way through which the maintenance of the above-mentioned power balance could have been reached; it also focuses on various interest groups that exercised considerable impact on the outcome of the negotiations. The study argues that the Trianon Treaty was not only the result of political instability in Hungary, in particular, and in the Carpathian Basin, in general, but also showed the validation of the Great Powers’ political interests on the continent, with which they proposed to impede German expansion and Russian Bolshevism; moreover, it was also influenced by an effective propaganda activity of the anti-Hungarian group of British political activists and their international network led by Wickham Steed and Seton-Watson.

Éva Mathey’s article on “Semi-Official Hungarian Efforts in the United States for Territorial Revision in the 1920s”, investigates Hungarian revisionist propaganda targeting the USA. The author argues that during the Bethlen era Hungary could not really follow an openly declared revisionist program. Therefore, since the possibilities of official, governmental revisionism were rather limited, revisionism found new, semi-official channels through which it worked and which the Hungarian government, and István Bethlen himself, tacitly accepted and supported. The essay presents some important mainstream, non-governmental, yet front-line contributions to revisionist propaganda aimed at the United States, such as the efforts of Counts István Bethlen, Pál Teleki and Albert Apponyi.

Zoltán Peterecz’s paper, “Royall Tyler and His Evaluation of the Treaty of Trianon,” discusses historian and diplomat Royall Tyler’s embodiment of American foreign policy thinking in the interwar years. Tyler payed close attention to what was unfolding in Europe but stood aloof of European political problems; he did not take responsibility for what was happening on the old continent believing that it was outside the realm of US interests. Since the United States did not ratify the Versailles peace treaty and signed separate treaties with the defeated countries, the new borderlines in Central and South-Eastern Europe were not of its making. Tyler participated in the financial reconstruction of Hungary, and watched closely how Hungary and Hungarian society reacted to the Treaty of Trianon, and how fervently Hungarians believed in a forthcoming revision. Tyler shared the attitude—together with many of his compatriots—that the peace treaties were not totally fair and progressive enough in order to usher in and maintain peace in the long run. As Hungary had no one to turn to with her revisionist hopes but Italy and Germany, Tyler detected this Hungarian dilemma, and helplessly observed how Hungary drifted onto an orbit closely around Germany in the hope of regaining the lost territories. Not only were Hungary’s hopes only partially satisfied, but the fragmentary revision with the help of Germany doomed Hungary’s chance to retrieve any of her former territories after the war. If the former Austro-Hungary Monarchy could not be remade—a recurring point in American thinking—, Hungary’s joining the European Union sixty years after World War II, at least to some degree, rectified many shortcomings of the outcome of the 1920 botched peace treaty.

Márton Tőke and Gizella T. Molnár’s study on “Redemption Through Culture: Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy and Its English and American Perspectives in the 1920s,” looks at Hungarian cultural diplomacy with a focus on Kunó Klebelsberg activity. The authors argue that regarding the postwar situation and the opportunities of the age, Klebelsberg did all he could for the development of Hungary’s international standing through cultural diplomacy, apart from his successful modern, Western-style science policy. As a culmination of his efforts, Klebelsberg offered a department chair to biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi at the University of Szeged in 1928 (who was also a recipient of a Rockefeller scholarship, pursuing research in Cambridge in 1926) and who was to have an important role in Klebelsberg’s concept of Hungarian academic life. Although Szent-Györgyi asked for some time to finish his research abroad, he took the position in Szeged in 1931 with the development of the laboratories in Szeged was also supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Klebelsberg could not know at the time—and did not live to see it that Szent-Györgyi’s research will be awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1937, but his well-structured and prescient cultural diplomacy and science policy contributed significantly to this shared national success.

The book review section offers a valuable tableau of recent works related to the Trianon peace treaty and its reception in the Anglo-Saxon world as well as in the American political and intellectual history. A Nation Dismembered. The 1920 Treaty of Trianon in Hungarian Poetry, edited by Csilla Bertha and Gyula Kodolányi, an important volume reviewed by Réka M. Cristian, is a practical anthology of poetry as part of the ‘literature of Trianon’ that helps understanding the historical trauma from the perspective of literature and the community forming power of culture. The volume inspires an international dialogue on Trianon a century after the treaty and is intended for English-language readers interested in the history of Hungary and of East-Central Europe, but also for those with interest in Hungarian poetry in particular. Last but not least, it is a must read for the Hungarian diaspora throughout the globe.

Alan J. Lichtmann’s book The Embattled Vote in America. From the Founding to the Present is reviewed by Zoltán Cora, who writes the development of suffrage in the USA. The work is quite relevant in light of recent anomalies surrounding the presidential elections in the United States of America. What will happen to US democracy when the parties are evermore bound on combining racial and nativist tensions? On the one hand, white men tend to prefer the Republican Party, on the other hand, immigrants and African-Americans generally opt for the Democrats. This way, old parties amplify old antagonisms with eventually drawing on the same consequence: blocking the ballot box. The book concisely discusses not only the pitfalls of the US elections from a historical perspective, but it also provides valuable insights into the ninetieth and twentieth century US history, too.

Márton Tőke reviews Charles Kupchan’s A. Isolationism – A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself From the World by looking at the history of US isolationism. There are six, so-called logics, understood as modes of operation Kupchan identifies from the start and employs throughout the book as organizing principles around the ebbs and flows in the history of American isolationism: the beneficial role of isolation in national security, the promotion and consolidation of the newly gained liberties and the emergent prosperity, the ability to act abroad, the maintenance of a homogeneous society, and the promotion of pacifism. This is not a methodological novelty, but is rather a set of criteria that aims at achieving a general “formula” for analyzing isolationism in the United States. According to the reviewer, Kupchan’s thinking and rhetoric is far from being tainted by critical theory or by the many pitfalls of overtly-politicized history writing; moreover, he showcases biases while not acknowledging the one-sidedness of the final argument.

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