Conservative Ideology in the Making

Foreword

Foreword The fifty years or so preceding the watershed of 1848–49 witnessed the emergence of liberal nationalism in Hungary, along with a transmutation of conservatism which appeared then as a party and an ideological system in the political arena. The specific features of the conservatism, combining the protection of the status quo with some reform measures, its strategic vision, conceptual system, argumentation, assessment criteria, and values require an in depth exploration and analysis. There were and are historians and political journalists who claim that the goals and programs of the liberals and conservatives only differed in tone and timing, and not in content or character. An objective answer is now overdue by more than a century and a half to the question of whether the purpose of the Hungarian conservative response to the liberal challenge was to defend the equilibrium of social classes and nationalities at European, imperial, and national levels, or to safeguard and modernize the system of privileges by birth. Our sources of information for the political role and value system of the conservatives in the 1840s are their political journalism, the positions they took in the parliamentary debates, and their political and intellectual backgrounds, while the interpretation of the acquired information requires international comparison. Most of my primary research was accomplished between 1977 and 1984. Based on this material, I wrote two articles in the early 1980s and 1990s, which were published in The Historical Journal.1 In addition, I gained a great deal from the comments of the anonymous reviewers of both essays, and am grateful to the editors, Christopher Andrew and Jonathan Steinberg for their patience. I wrote the first version of this monograph in 1985 and the second in 2008.2 Upon Isaiah Berlin’s 1 Dénes (1983, 1993). 2 Dénes (1989, 2008). x Conservative Ideology in the Making (b. Riga, 1909, d. Oxford, 1997) encouragement, I initiated international research to explore the nature and contexts of liberal nationalisms so as to provide case studies of a contextual framework of future comparisons. The outcome of that work, Liberty and the Search for Identity: Liberal Nationalisms and the Legacy of Empires, lasting for nearly two decades, is not yet a comparative volume but the opening and clearing of the road to comparison.3 Upon receiving scholarships from the British Academy in 1981 and 1990, I had the opportunity to talk with several colleagues in the United Kingdom. In 1990–91, as a Fulbright scholar, and in 1993–94, as an IREX fellow, I accumulated further knowledge in the USA. I was particularly inspired by Isaiah Berlin (All Souls College, Oxford, Athenaeum Club, London), Stanley Hoffmann (Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University), John Graville Agard Pocock (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD), John Rawls (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; b. Baltimore, MD, 1921, d. 2002), James J. Sheehan (Stanford University, Stanford, CA), Quentin Skinner (Christ’s College, University of Cambridge), Paul Smith (King’s College, University of London), and Christopher Smout (St. Salvator’s College, University of St. Andrews). The post-graduate seminar for historians at Johns Hopkins University during the fall and winter of 1993 was a life changing experience for me. So much so, that three years later I initiated the foundation in Budapest of the István Bibó Intellectual Workshop (www.bibomuhely.hu) based on its model, which has been my reference point and intellectual milieu ever since. For all their helpful comments when I was working on the subject in the 1970s and 1980s, I remain indebted to my university tutor, György Szabad (Budapest), and János Varga (b. Sótony, 1927, d. Budapest, 2008). The writings of István Bibó (Budapest, 1911–1979), Miklós Szabó (Budapest , 1935–2000), and János Kis (Budapest–New York) have been seminal. The encouragement and remarks of András Gergely (Budapest) and Károly Kecskeméti (Antony, France) played salient roles in the awakening process of the 2008 text. In the first quarter of 2009, I thoroughly revised and supplemented the text of the 2008 monograph for the English version. I was greatly assisted in preparing it by the far-sighted comments of Károly Kecskeméti and Balázs Trencsényi (Central European University, Budapest), David Robert Evans’s linguistic corrections, the patient and attentive translation 3 Dénes (2006). Foreword xi by Judit Pokoly, the careful language revision by Thomas Szerecz and Breanne Herrera...