Royall Tyler and His Evaluation of the Treaty of Trianon

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Zoltán Peterecz

Abstract

The Trianon Treaty after World War I can only be compared to the tragedy of Mohács in 1526. In both cases the Hungarian nation suffered in the wake of a lost war such losses that defined its history and the nation’s mental situation for a long time. The collective trauma that Hungarians had to endure in the two decades after the Trianon Treaty was signed was perhaps the sharpest in all of the Hungarian history. Foreigners often expressed their opinion regarding this peace treaty in the interwar years. Royall Tyler, an American citizen and an officer of the League of Nations was no exception. Tyler, who spent more than a decade in Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s, and knew Hungary and Hungarians exceptionally well, sometimes formulated thoughts on the question of the changed borders. His opinions are interesting because he was an American, and most Hungarians hoped for a possible revision with the help of the United States. Also, foreigners were detached form the Hungarian collective mind and could formulate much more realistic views concerning the Central European situation and possibilities. The article is focusing on Tyler and his vision concerning immediate post-Trianon Hungary and the larger question of possible changes in the peace treaty.

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How to Cite
Peterecz, Zoltán. 2020. “Royall Tyler and His Evaluation of the Treaty of Trianon”. AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary 16 (1). https://iskolakultura.hu/index.php/americanaejournal/article/view/45450.
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Essays
Author Biography

Zoltán Peterecz

Zoltán Peterecz earned his Ph.D. degree at Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, in 2010. He teaches as an associate professor at the Institute of English and American Studies at Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary. His main field of research is American history, American foreign affairs, and American-Hungarian relations in the first half of the twentieth century, on which subjects he regularly publishes articles. He has also done exhaustive research on the financial reconstruction of Hungary orchestrated by the League of Nations (Jeremiah Smith, Jr. and Hungary, 1924–1926: the United States, the League of Nations, and the Financial Reconstruction of Hungary (London: Versita, 2013), of which the Hungarian version came out in 2018. His book that appeared in 2016 introduced the history of American exceptionalism to Hungarian readers (A kivételes Amerika [The Exceptional America] Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 2016). He translated the diaries of Nicholas Roosevelt, American minister to Hungary, 1930-1933, Nicholas Roosevelt, Forradalmi időkben Budapesten és Bécsben. Egy amerikai katona-hírszerző-diplomata feljegyzései 1919 első feléből. [Revolutionary Central Europe: Diary of an American in 1919] Eger: Líceum Kiadó, 2019. His latest book has just come out: Royall Tyler and Hungary (Helena History Press, 2021), which deals with the American who knew Hungary beyt in the interwar period. Peterecz is the editor-in-chief of Pro&Contra, an online journal for PhD students and young academics.