In this book, Alexander Maxwell has imaginatively examined the spread of patriotic fashion and national-nationality identification in everyday life, such as flamboyant pipe smoking; drinking fine wines and strong brandies; long, curling mustaches; and fancy patriotic attire. He illuminates the “porous frontier between banal and hot nationalism,” between national indifference and national presentation (236). What “emerges [is] a complex interplay between actors occupying many different positions” (93). Maxwell prefers a hyphenated “national-nationality” to capture the fluidity of the concept. He makes a sharp distinction between the terms “Hungary” (the territory of many different nation-nationalities) and “Magyar” (the dominant language and nationality). Magyars and non-Magyars display their patriotism to Hungary, nationality, and/or local community in his text.
Maxwell begins with tobacco and wine. Tobacco was the touchstone of the tariff dispute with the Habsburg monarchy during “effervescent early nationalism” (“national awakening”) (229). Supported by landowners, the Economic Society's antitariff and buy-Hungarian campaigns transformed everyday consumption into patriotic boosterism. Smoking was an individual act that crossed class and nationality. It was almost exclusively a male activity, but also a social affair with rituals of consumption that became so iconic that ostentatiously smoking a pipe on the street, in direct violation of the Habsburg tariff, set off the revolution in Milan in 1848.
“The emotion of ‘ethnic solidarity’ is not a precondition of national awakening,” Maxwell cautions, “but rather its aspiration; an aspiration, furthermore, which can only be temporarily achieved” (232). Effervescent early nationalism coincided with associational fever. Wine making also played to regional and community loyalties. Tobacco and wine were signatures of hospitality and the culture of the casino, where magnates, mid-nobles, entrepreneurs, and foreign travelers gathered. Fine wine was the purview of the elite, while brandies were tagged to the lower classes and specific nationalities. Thus, wine patriotism was more directly conflated with Magyar chauvinism.
Maxwell studies taste and fashion—the space where individual choice interacts with cultural norms. Hungarians sported mustaches: curly ones, long ones. Some were modest, others flamboyant, but each style was distinct to certain national-nationalities or communities. In contrast, Austrian Germans and the Habsburg monarchs had been clean-shaven for the past two centuries; Francis Joseph had long sideburns instead. There was a tradition of the mustached imperial infantry officer. In 1848 the Hungarian revolutionaries and soldiers sported beards and mustaches; in the 1850s, therefore, shaving off one's mustache was a sign of obedience to the Habsburgs. But in caricatures of Magyars, Hungarian peasants, and criminals, the mustache remained an identifying symbol.
Diversity was the norm in peasant costumes. Styles and colors varied from village to village. The folk costume remained subordinate to noble attire. The elite invested “national significance in an aristocratic men's costume” (189). Whether the gala costume had “authentic” folk roots or was a modern nationalizing invention is an “unprofitable debate,” Maxwell warns (190). It certainly packed a political message: the thirteen martyrs of the revolutionary war were depicted in gala Magyar costume. Actors in gala got raucous applause. Wearing the costume was “a safe but extremely visible means of political opposition” (207). The aristocrats donned their costumes when greeting Francis Joseph on his official tours of Hungary in the 1850s. Gala Magyar facilitated “the performance of nationality” in the ceremonial negotiations toward Compromise in the 1860s (198). Francis Joseph appeared in a Hussar uniform at the Hungarian theater, and balls became a kind of costume show. During the Dual Monarchy, men returned to their European suits, with gala dress reserved for special national-imperial holidays.
Under dualism civil constitutional rights were extended to other nationalities, but Maxwell persuasively criticizes the Hungarian construct of a national-liberal state for its possessiveness toward nationalism and insistence on a single political language. This consigned non-Magyar Hungarians to an “almost-but-not-quite” collective status (230). He is also little swayed by Pieter Judson's argument that the empire met Rogers Brubaker's concept of a nationalizing state because within its liberal framework it provided only vague guarantees of linguistic rights. He does not engage in the alternatives of dual and triple loyalties or the impulse to assimilation. Hungarian Jewry is not investigated in this study.
Maxwell is focused on the male gaze at culture and society. Men's clothing was more important in the display of nationalism than women's clothing. He tries to tackle gender by examining statistics of mixed marriage—a term that is/was reserved in Hungarian to mixed religious marriages. The role of the church and the array of religious affiliations is not studied in this volume. Mixed nationality marriages were not counted in the census. Nationality was counted within counties (for gerrymandering), physical movement from one county to the other (for tax purposes). The census counted mother tongue rather than nationality. Were mixed marriages a part of the process of Magyarization? The early nationalists believed in the possibility of learning Magyar and becoming Hungarian—that was one of the points of contention with the national-nationalities. Perhaps the state was indifferent as well? This analysis comprised the least successful chapter, though still chock full of interesting information.
It is possible to drink, smoke, wear a mustache, and dress up without any patriotic emotions. We do not know how transactional the fashion choices were. Maxwell assumes national indifference was predominant, which on the face of it seems to run counter to the material he is uncovering on national presentation in everyday life. He is also ardent in his appreciation of Rogers Brubaker's analyses that break down the code words in the nationalism literature. Consequently, his analysis is nuanced. Embedded in Maxwell's book is a first-rate historiographical essay on nationalism and everyday life. His comprehensive footnotes and commentary are a must for students preparing for qualifying exams. Everyday Nationalism in Hungary is a significant contribution in the methodology of everyday nationalism from its early stages through the Compromise. Maxwell has a good writing style; it is clear and full of energy that pulls one along, or tries to, against the sludge of thick detail embedded in everyday material culture in Hungary.
