During the last twelve years, two excellent textbooks have been published on modern Hungarian history. László Katus' Hungary in the Dual Monarchy, 1867–1914 reads very much like Ignác Romsics's much acclaimed Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest, 1999). The similarities in methods and language are not accidental. Romsics learned the craft and published his first book at a time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when quantitative history, whose perhaps best-known proponent and practitioner was then László Katus, held its sway over historical science. If read in combination, the two books display the state of current research on modern Hungary, as well as provide a glimpse into academic politics and the development of the historical profession in Hungary after 1990.

László Katus, an emeritus history professor from the University of Pécs and Péter Pázmány Catholic University, looks back on a long and distinguished career. His lengthy monograph honors and encapsulates his contribution to the study of Hungarian history. The book is divided into fourteen chapters and covers a wide range of topics, including the creation of the Dual Monarchy, the nationalities question, the development of the parliamentary systems, demographic and ethnic changes, urbanization, industrialization, and the development of the agricultural sector, as well as religious affairs, popular and high cultures, and foreign policy. Although every chapter is of high quality, the best and the most passionately argued sections are those based on the author's own interest and research in economic history and the nationalities question. Katus, like the majority of modern historians, has a positive opinion of the Hungarian experience in the Dual Monarchy. He considers the Compromise with Austria a realistic solution to the double problem of liberty and modernity and as a fair deal struck by level-headed politicians taking into consideration both the lessons of the recent past and the political climate of the 1860s. The long-term consequences, Katus argues, were also positive. The deal with Austria paved the way for the rapid modernization and industrialization of the country and the embourgeoisement of its population before World War I.

Katus clearly admires the achievements of this age; his barely disguised pride in and even a bit of nostalgia for the Hungarian past adds flavor and a personal touch to almost every chapter without, however, detracting from its quality and credibility. The growth rate of the Hungarian economy was among the highest in Europe between 1870 and 1913. By the end of this period, Hungary had not yet caught up to Austria and the states of Western Europe, but it was quickly narrowing the gap. The common market with Austria, Katus argues, provided the ideal conditions for the development of agriculture and the food industry. Thanks to the active support of the liberal state, which played a greater role as investor, business partner, and coordinator of economic developments in Hungary than it did in Western Europe, Hungary also acquired a highly developed industrial sector by 1914 as well. Yet, as Katus explains, the common market was a mixed blessing. The influx of cheap Austrian and Czech products, in particular, hindered the growth of the textile, clothing, and glass industries. As a result of uneven developments, modern plants continued to coexist alongside small traditional enterprises employing only a few workers. Although the industrial sector expanded rapidly in this period, it did not grow fast enough to absorb the surplus rural population. The result of this uneven development was mass emigration: About 1.4 million Hungarian citizens, including more than 400,000 Magyars, left the country between 1899 and 1913.

Emigration did not lead to a decline in the size of the population, however. On the contrary, thanks to falling mortality rates, the population of Hungary increased 57 percent between 1850 and 1910. The growth was uneven: While the Magyar population doubled, the non-Magyar population increased only 29 percent. The unprecedented increase in the size of the Magyar population was in part the result of assimilation. Katus paints a more complex picture of this process than any other Hungarian historian. Instead of one-dimensional explanations favored by earlier scholars, such as the attractiveness of Hungarian culture or, at the other extreme, the state's oppression of ethnic minorities, Katus lists modernization, industrialization, urbanization, changing settlement patterns, and the desire for social mobility as the main factors behind this process. He describes the Nationality Act of 1868 as a progressive piece of legislation, the result of a hard-won compromise between the more enlightened members of the Hungarian political elite and the representatives of the more chauvinistic and insular provincial nobility. The Nationality Act, Katus shows, was not window dressing. In fact, its provisions continued to be enforced well into the 1880s. Magyar became compulsory in all schools only in 1883; the minorities began to lose their schools and other cultural and social institutions only in the late nineteenth century.

Katus, unlike earlier scholars, paints a rather favorable picture of minority societies, showing them as more democratic in social structure and spirit than their Hungarian counterparts. He describes the political organizations and leaders of the national minorities as relatively moderate. Their goals, until the war, he argues, were national rights and autonomy within Hungary, rather than secession and unification with the neighboring states. Katus considers the rejection of the idea of Trialism by Hungarian leaders in the early twentieth century as a grave mistake, an expression of nationalist myopia that drove the Catholic South Slavs into the arms of the Orthodox Serbs and paved the way to war. Although he has a lower opinion of the last generation of Hungarian liberal leaders, Katus does have a favorable view of István Tisza, showing him as more clear-sighted and tolerant than many of his contemporaries. Katus considers the atavistic provincial Magyar gentry and the members of the predominantly German and Jewish urban middle class as the main forces behind nationalist agitation. Manufactured by intellectuals and cultivated in state institutions and press, illiberal nationalism quickly lost touch with reality and became a source of tension both at home and abroad before the outbreak of World War I.

The organization of the textbook reflects the author's interest and training in economic and social history. The discussion of domestic and foreign policy, while also of high quality, follows a more traditional path. In contrast to Marxist textbooks written in the 1970s and 1980s, the book devotes only a few pages to the rise of the Social Democratic Party, the agrarian socialist movement, and bourgeois radicalism before the war. Anti-Semitism, both as an ideology and a political movement, is discussed only tangentially as well. The weakest section of the book deals with cultural developments. Although the chapters on social and economic history draw heavily on theory and the author rarely misses the opportunity to draw parallels with developments taking place in other counties, in the cultural realm, he is often satisfied with the listing of names and titles. The work contains no images, which would be useful to illustrate achievements in the fine arts. The same could be said about the short translation of literary texts, especially Hungarian poetry, which remains largely unknown to foreign readers.

László Katus' textbook is a must-read for scholars specializing in modern Hungarian history. Yet the author and the translators have also done a great service to the teaching profession by making the works of Hungarian scholars accessible to undergraduate and graduate students who do not read Hungarian. The translation is excellent, and the work is well edited. Read in conjunction with Romsics's text, it provides an excellent teaching aid for introducing foreign students to Hungarian history.