Héthy Zoltán szerk.: Bihari Múzeum Évkönyve 2. (Berettyóújfalu, 1978)
TÖRTÉNELEM — GESCHICHTE - An English Traveller in Bihar County and Nagyvárad in February, 1850
György Módy AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER IN BIHAR COUNTRY AND NAGYVÁRAD IN FEBRUARY, 1850 This source-study, accompanied by some explanatory words by the above author, presents in Hungarian translation a chapter of the book The Goth and the Hun (London, Richard Bentley, 1851) by Andrew Archibald Paton (1811—1874), English writer and diplomat. Paton visited Hungary several times, and he started his journey referred to above not long before the surrender of the Hungarian Army to the combined forces of Austria and Russia at Világos. After sojourning in Transylvania, he travelled to Pest-Buda via Nagyvárad, Debrecen and Szolnok and then, back to Vienna through Pozsony (Bratislava) and Upper —Hungary. In the chapter presented here he gives a description of his impressions of Bihar-County and the town Nagyvárad. This chapter in an excellent example of what he thought of the Hungarian bourgeois revolution and fight for independence of 1848—49 on the one hand, and what his judgement was of the historical role of Hungary and the Hungarians on the other. Impartial as he wanted to seem, this extremely well-informed English traveller gave a very much biassed account of the Hungarian fight for independence. In his view, the Hungarian reformmovement and Kossuth himself can be held responsible for the attack against the unity of the Empire which, quite justifiably, provoked the most brutal political-military retaliation of the part of the Austrian government, and the quieries whether the Hungarians and their government were honest in their intentions to remedy the grievances of the nationalities living in Hungarian territory. Ha fails to recognise the cultural results of Hungarian civilisation achieved in the course of the history of the country or, in a better case, he failed to notice them, as for example, in the description of Nagyvárad he points out that he found no trace, either in that town or elsewhere in the country, of civilised life in medieval Hungarian kingdom or of the period of preTurkish occupation. He gives an undue emphasis to the role of Germans settled in Hungarian territories who, in his view, introduced „civilisation" to this land, and he goes as far as to say that the role of Hungarians in shaping the history of this country was in no way different from that of the Huns and Turks. In his view the Hungarians are generous, courageous and hospitable, but incapable of creating a civilization of the own through work, preffering to it the utilization for this purpose the achievements of other peoples. Admitting that his criticism of the relation between Hungarians and other nationalities in the country is not unfounded, his biassed attitude is revealed by his acceptance of the theory of the so-called Daco-Roman continuity without any recervation, by his failure to find any social causes in the oppression of the Slovak population, and by stating that the Hungarians bent for commanding but unfitted for liberty, are responsible for the backward state of the nationalities in matters of culture. 161
