Bálint Varga's book The Monumental Nation is a well-researched study of the Hungarian state's promotion of an official history of Hungary through the erection of monuments in regional urban centers in the late nineteenth century. Varga, a Botstiber Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University, examined periodicals, school reports, published primary sources, archival materials from fifteen archives in six countries, and secondary material in Hungarian, Romanian, German, Slovak, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, and English. The result is a fascinating examination of Hungary's 1896 Millennial Celebration through the lens of Hungary's provincial cities rather than Budapest and an exploration of the conflict between the state-sanctioned history and the multiple overlapping histories of Hungary's provinces.

The book's main point is that the Hungarian state attempted to use the construction of seven monuments and the celebrations surrounding their unveiling as a way of “anchoring a millennium-old past in the Hungarian minds” (21). The results of these attempts to anchor a specific Hungarian history in the minds of the kingdom's provincial subjects depended greatly on the makeup of the provincial societies. Different groups in the cities used the celebrations to their own advantage and connections between local histories and the official history were “accidental” because a monument would only serve its intended purpose if a group had already believed their history to be compatible with the state-sanctioned history. The use of the word “accidental” here may be problematic for some readers because it implies a rigidity of identities and precludes the possibility that the monuments influenced provincial interpretations of Hungary's history. The monuments did, however, fail to become the anchors between the provinces and the central state that they were fashioned to be.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides succinct accounts of the state's attempts to integrate Hungary's provinces during the nineteenth century and the development of the idea to harness Europe's statuomania in order to foster this integration. The middle and largest section of the book is devoted to an excellent overview of the social and cultural makeup—as well as the accompanying ideological, religious, national, linguistic, and class tensions—of the provincial cities Pressburg, Theben, Nitra, Munkács, Brassó, Pannonhalma, Pusztaszer, and Semlin, which were chosen as locations for the seven monuments. Except for a few instances of precelebration efforts to erect local statues, the discussion about the monuments largely disappears in this section. In part three, Varga demonstrates how the Hungarian state attempted to use the monuments to impose an official history on the provincial cities. One of the more interesting cases was the millennial monument in Semlin, the largest and most expensive monument erected (201). Built near the border with Serbia, the monument was meant to not only instill in Croatia-Slavonia's inhabitants a sense of official Hungarian history, but to make it clear to Serbia that Croatia's history was Hungary's history.

Varga is certainly correct that the book's most important contribution is “the establishment of the link between the macro- and the micro-levels, the government and ‘high politics’ and the local interests” (4). Some may wish that he had dedicated a larger part of the book to this relationship. The treatment of the makeup of the cities is excellent. But he could have focused more on the “reception of these monuments,” especially in the two decades after the construction (4). The place of the monuments in the lives of the cities after the millennial celebration is given only one chapter. It would be interesting to know more about how the monuments became part of people's daily lives over the next twenty years.

Varga's work contributes to the debate about the viability of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's political structure in the face of nationalist divisions. This is a welcome contribution especially because this debate over the past decade has focused largely on the Austrian half of the monarchy. Varga could have placed his work in relation to other scholarship in Central European or urban history or the history of nationalism. In the book's last few pages, he compares Hungary to Germany and France from the perspective of monument construction. This comparison sheds light on the specific circumstances of the Hungarian case and could have benefitted from a more extensive examination, perhaps in the beginning of the book. Despite these quibbles, The Monumental Nation is an excellent introduction to the social and cultural history of Hungary's provincial urban centers and will be a valuable resource for historians of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.