A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

680 Ch. 17 • The Era of National Unification

The Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 created the Dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary. The Hungarian Parliament proclaimed Francis Joseph
constitutional king of Hungary, as well as emperor of Austria. The bureau­
cracy in Vienna would continue to carry out matters of finance, foreign
policy, and defense. Hungarian now became the language of administra­
tion in Hungary, and the Magyar domains henceforth had their own con­
stitution, parliament, and bureaucracy. The halves of the Dual Monarchy
would negotiate economic tariffs every ten years. The parliaments of
Austria and Hungary elected representatives to the Imperial Assembly, or
Delegation.
The Ausgleich left intact the dominance of German speakers in Austria
and of Magyars in Hungary. While in principle recognizing the equality of
all nationalities, the new constitution nonetheless maintained the dispropor­
tionate advantage enjoyed by Austria's Germans in the Austrian Imperial
Council (Reichsrat) in Vienna. The emperor routinely appointed Germans
to important ministries, and he could easily circumvent parliamentary oppo­
sition by ruling by decree when parliament was not in session, or by refus­
ing to sign any piece of legislation he did not like.
The Hungarian Constitution of 1867 allowed the Magyar nobles to hold
sway in the Hungarian Parliament, since the emperors powers as king of
Hungary were now more limited. Hungarian ministers were not responsi­
ble to Francis Joseph, but rather to the Hungarian Parliament s lower
house, which was elected by leading Magyar property owners. Thus the
Ausgleich was a victory for Hungarian liberalism. The Nationality Law of
1868 gave the peoples of each nationality the right to their own language
in schools, church, and in government offices, but it did not recognize any
separate political ethnic identity. The Croats and the South Slavs particu­
larly resented the settlement. Growing tensions were reflected by the claim
of one of the Austrian architects of the Ausgleich that “the Slavs are not fit
to govern; they must be ruled.” Many Serbs increasingly identified with
Russia, which saw itself as the protector of all Slavs.

Ethnic Tensions and Nationalist Movements in the Dual Monarchy

In Austria-Hungary, ethnic tensions generated continued political division,

stemming principally from Hungarian resentment of Austrian preeminence

within the Dual Monarchy and the demands of subordinate nationalities.

Beginning in the 1870s, Croatia, which was technically part of Hungary,

sent five representatives to the sixty-member imperial Delegation, while the

Slovaks, Serbs, and other minorities were left out. The Hungarian govern­

ment relentlessly carried on with a program of Magyarization, ranging from

dissolving non-Magyar cultural societies to banning non-Magyar names for

villages and streets. Hungarian remained the official language and the gov­

ernment refused to allow administrative or cultural autonomy of the other

nationalities. To an extent, the Magyarization campaign in Hungary was a