Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1998 (15. évfolyam, 51-54. szám)
1998 / 53-54. szám
counties during the years of his study's focus. In the new setting they also considered themselves to be Hungarian lews and they collaborated with the Christian members of the Hungarian- American community. They provided this community with its peddlers, small shopkeepers, skilled workers, most of the Hungarian journalists and even most of the Hungarian physicians. Their language skills, and social mobility enabled them to integrate more rapidly than the Christian Hungarians. Furthermore, by the 1920’s they became more and more part of the larger lewish American communities. Perlman's book fills a real void. In the wealth of information about lewish immigrants in general, the fate of Hungarian lews is rarely mentioned, and they are frequently lost among the East European lews or among the Christian Hungarians. Thus, Perlman brings them back into our general awareness as Jews with distinctive cultural traits acquired through their long association with Hungarians and a Hungarian setting. Julianna Puskás Péteri, György REVOLUTIONARY TWENTIES: ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL MONETARY AND FINANCIAL RELATIONS AFTER WORLD WAR I |Trondheim Studies in History, No.91. Trondheim, Norway: Department of History, University of Trondheim, 1995. Pp.vii+204. ISBN 827765009-4. The decade following World War I, right up to the Wall Street crash of 1929, was known in the United States as the “Gay Twenties." The situation was completely different in Europe, where the years following the war were characterized by revolutions, coups, financial collapses, and attempts to reestablish a degree of normalcy on that war-ravaged continent. The situation improved significantly by the middle of the 1920s, only to fall prey once more to the financial crash and the worldwide depression that followed. This is the period that is dissected and analyzed by the nine essays enclosed in this volume, eight of which have already appeared in print earlier in the form of periodical articles and book chapters. Eight of these essays are in English and one in Swedish. Three of them deal with Europe-wide monetary developments, while six concentrate on Hungary's economic and financial problems during the same period. The author of this volume, György Péteri of the University of Trondheim, is a rising economic historian. He is the product of the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences in Budapest, who began his research on interwar monetary history at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences during the 1970s. Moving to Sweden in 1980, and then more recently to Norway, he expanded his research from strictly Hungarian topics to the question of European reconstruction following the war. Péteri’s Hungary-related chapters deal with such interrelated topics as international liquidity and national economy as a factor in Hungary’s monetary policy, British foreign economic strategy in Hungary's financial stabilization, the role of the state and the market in capital imports regulations, the interrelationship between banking and industry, and reserve and vehicle currencies in Hungary's financial structure. The first three of these studies are supplied with a brief introductory essay, which is the only hitherto unpublished piece in this volume. All in all, Péteri’s book represents a valuable and timely contribution to our understanding of the economic and monetary developments of the 1920s. It should perhaps be mentioned that the author dedicated his work to Professor György Ránki (1930-88), one of the most prominent representatives of the Western oriented liberal branch of the Marxist Economic History School in post- World War II Hungary. Steven Béla Várdy Tar, Ferenc: LINCOLN MAGYAR TÁBORNOKA: ASBÓTH SÁNDOR ÉLETÚTJA iLincoln's Hungarian General: The Career of Alexander Asboth], Hévíz Város Önkormányzata, 1998. Pp. 172 with 36 illustrations. Hungarian Americans have their own heroes, just like any other ethnic group in America. The most prominent among these is undoubtedly Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894), the governor of revolutionary Hungary, whose travels in America during the early 1850s produced a virtual “Kossuth craze” in the United States. His popularity among the turn of the century immigrants and their descendants remains unrivaled even today. Immediately following Kossuth come such prominent military leaders and pioneers as Colonel Michael de Kováts (1724-1779), the founding commandant of the first American cavalry; Ágoston Haraszthy (1812-1869), the "father" of California’s viticulture; General Julius H. Stahel IGyula Számwald] (1825-1912), The highest ranking and most decorated Hungarian military leader in the Civil War; and General Alexander [Sándor] Asbóth (1811-1868), who - after a distinguished service in the Civil War - died as the American Minister to Argentina. The book under review is the first full-scale biography of the last mentioned Hungarian-American hero, Alexander Asbóth. It is written by a scholar who had devoted well over a decade of his life to the preparation of this work, while also publishing about half a dozen articles on this topic. Ferenc Tar is a historian who was motivated in this undertaking both by scholarly curiosity and by local patriotism. The latter, by the way, is derived from the fact that Asboth was born in the TransDanubian city of Keszthely, which is also the author's home. The main part of Ferenc Tar's biography of Alexander Asboth consists of seventeen chapters that detail his life (pp. 13-120). This is followed by a chronology of Asbóth’s life (pp. 121-123), and then by an appendix consisting of five contemporary documents (pp. 124-136) and an English language study on Asbóth (pp. 137-159). The latter was originally published in the volume Triumph in Adversity (Columbia, 1988) that was co-edited by the present reviewer. The appendix, in turn, is followed by scholarly notes (pp. 160-165), a selected bibliography (pp. 166-172), and thirty-six wellchosen illustrations, seven of which depict General Asboth himself. Tar’s Lincoln's Hungarian General is indeed a handsome volume that presents an excellent and credible portrait of this nineteenth-century Hungarian American hero. The only question I have concerns the author’s perpetuation of the belief in Asbóth’s alleged role in the planning and construction of New York’s Central Park. This belief has been very popular with Hungarians, but it does not seem to be rooted in historical facts. This biography of Alexander Asbóth deserves to be translated and published in English. Steven Béla Várdy Tezla, Albert (Ed.) THE HAZARDOUS QUEST: HUNGARIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES 1895-1920. Budapest: Corvina, 1993. The Hazardous Quest is an abbreviated English language version of the original two volume collection of documents edited by (Continued on page 8) NO. 53-54, AUTUMN-WINTER, 1998-99, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER 7
