Századok – 1996

Tanulmányok - Romsics Ignác: A brit külpolitika és a „magyar kérdés” 1914–1946 II/273

A BRIT KÜLPOLITIKA ÉS A „MAGYAR KÉRDÉS" 1914-1946 3 339 War by Gyula Juhász and recently by D. András Bán, and the peace treaty of 1947 by Mihály Fülöp. The present article is based partly on these, partly on the available foreign literature and on documents of the British archives. It reviews the period between 1914 and 1946 and examines the role of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Hungary in the British policy concerning East-Central Europe, and the ways the British attitude influenced the fate of the Habsburg Empire, and the determination and rectification of Hungary's frontiers. Chapter one (Plans Concerning the Future of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the New Order in the Carpathian Basin During the First World War) supports the view that British politics was hesitating quite up to the spring of 1918 between the federal transformation of the Monarchy and its breaking up into nation-states. The success of the latter was finally determined by the failure of the talks on separate peace with Austria-Hungary, and by the strengthening of the economic, political, and military relations between the Monarchy and Germany. Chapter two examines the role of Great Britain in the peace treaty of Trianon in 1920. It points out that there was an anti-Hungarian bias among the British decisionmakers represented primarily by the Foreign Office and the experts around it, but at the same time there was also a pro-Hungarian attitute, mainly on the part of Prime Minister Lloyd George and his advisersungarianH. The debates of the two groups were generally won by the former, so the official British standpoint was always closer to the French one than to the American or the Italian. Chapter three discusses the British views on Hungarian revisionism and the correction of the Hungarian frontiers between 1922 and 1941. Up to the early 1930, Great Britain stood for the status quo. From that time on, however, it considered the peaceful and partial rectification of the frontiers (on an ethnic basis) more and more probable, and did not protest against the First Vienna Award of 1938 and the reannexation of Carpatho-Ukraine in March, 1939. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the British views were influenced both by theoretical considerations and by the war itself. It followed from this that the British opinions on the Second Vienna Award of 1940 were already contradictory, and the marching in of the Hungarian troops into Bácska in 1941 resulted in the breaking off of the diplomatic relations. Chapter four deals with the preparation for peace on the part of the British during the war as far as the Hungarians were concerned and the antecedents of the conculsion of peace in 1947. Although the British delegation (the Toynbee Committee) were inclined to modify the Trianon frontiers according to ethnic principles and to let Transylvania become independent, the attitude of the Soviet Union in 1945-46 frustrated these hopes. Contrary to the situation following the First World War, the British public opinion dropped the matter quickly and „without regret". -К у <o Ő 0