For decades, Béla Borsi-Kálmán has researched the post-1849 Hungarian émigrés' nationality policy, with special reference to the conciliatory efforts directed towards the democratic elements among the Romanian political emigrants, in the two Romanian principalities, and later on, among the political elite of united Romania. Each of his successive works has enriched the picture with new detail. His Hungarian Exiles and the Romanian National Movement, 1849-1867 (Highland Lakes, N.J.: Atlantic Research and Publications, 1991) is the fullest presentation of his research results to date in English. Of the two books currently under review, Illúziókergetés vagy ismétléskényszer? is a collection of studies written as preliminaries to the above-mentioned monograph; the author-as he himself points out in the Preface-had hoped to see them published before the latter's appearance.
Thanks to the Bucharest-based publisher Kriterion Könyvkiadó, these preliminary studies are now readily available to the Hungarian-speaking segments of the Romanian reading public. And, indeed, there is a serious need for opportunities for the peoples of the region to learn about each other's history, as well as about the points of contact between these national histories, which, reflected as they have often been through the prisms of national historiography, generally appear in very contrasting light. Although Béla Borsi-Kálmán's main interest is the political role of the Hungarian emigration, he is no less committed to studying the "other side", the Romanian national movement, so as to be able to describe the points of convergence and divergence all the more clearly. In Kihívás és eretnekség the author himself tells of the intellectual and biographical motives which inspired him to choose this particular area of research. Being an "ideal assimilant," one who is therefore familiar with the contradictory dynamics of majority-minority situations, he treats with empathy the paradigms of the Romanian national movement, paradigms self-evident to Romanians. At the same time, he gives careful consideration to the image formed of the Hungarians by the members of the Romanian political elite (and, vice versa), and analyzes the influence exerted by these factors on the course of events. "The task", as he sees it, "is to break out of the cognitive framework described by Jenô Szûcs as the national angle of historical interpretation, and learn to switch back and forth between the various national viewpoints and angles" (Kihívás és eretnekség, p. 68).
Illúziókergetés vagy ismétléskényszer? follows the same structure as Borsi-Kálmán's earlier works, and is largely a variation on the same themes. First the author introduces the ethnic/national/intellectual genesis of the generation of Romanians who "made" 1848-49, and describes the differences between the respective traditions of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, their subsequent harmonization, and the eventual predominance of the Transylvanian angle in the question of Hungarian national aspirations. Next he turns to the "Hungarian side", discussing the principles and purposes of the émigrés' nationality policy. There follows the description of some of the conciliatory gestures that the Romanian political elite and certain prominent members of the Hungarian emigration made towards each other, in this particular instance focusing on György Klapka's attempts in 1864 to make contact with Prince Cuza, and the attempts at conciliation in 1868-69. The finished structure, however, is rather lopsided. Introducing the program of the Hungarian side, the author has included only one of his early writings, originally published in 1981 ("A Kossuth-emigráció és a nemzetiségi kérdés-dilemmák és alternativák" [The Kossuth Emigration and the Nationality Issue-Dilemmas and Alternatives]), a somewhat sketchy treatment. It would perhaps have been better in this instance to insert the relevant chapters of the 1991 monograph. As it is, the Hungarian national viewpoint comes across rather vaguely and imprecisely, making the switch from one national perspective to the other very difficult for the reader, as well as eroding the book's cohesion. Although this cohesion was meant to be established by the last study ("Néhány fogódzó a XVIII-XIX. századi ma gyar-román "differendum" történetéhez" [Some Pointers to the History of the Hungarian-Romanian "Difference" from the 18th to the 19th Centuries]), this essay, written as a response to the Romanian reception of the three-volume Erdély története (A History of Transylvania), is in fact much more a treatise on politics and political science than a work of historical analysis.
Kihívás és eretnekség, which is a collection of short essays and interviews on the relations between Romanians and Hungarians, is much more homogeneous in character, with the study of the same name providing the book's center of gravity. In this study Béla Borsi-Kálmán makes some inspiring, wise and sensitive comments on Francisc Pacurariu's collection of studies Roma^nii s , i maghiarii de-a lungul veacurilor (Romanians and Hungarians in the Course of the Ages) emphasizing again and again the need for mutual empathy.
My comments relating to these books primarily concern the feasibility of a shift in the national viewpoint, as proposed by the author, along with the possible points of reference appropriate to such a shift.
The 1848-49 confrontation with the nationalities came as a great shock to the Hungarian liberal reform movement. It put an end to the earlier belief that social and political modernization under liberal principles would naturally coincide with Hungarian national interests, and prevent the Hungarian and non-Hungarian national movements clashing head-on. In his monograph Borsi-Kálmán attributed this conviction to the Hungarian reform movement's lesser-noble approach founded on the "jovial-patriarchal" idea of extending rights and to the survival of certain elements of its medieval "Hungarus identity", when in fact such features characterized the European liberal movements generally. In those circles it was a characteristic mistake to underestimate the power of the national idea in comparison to that of the universal values of liberty and progress; also, each movement took it for granted that, in its own special case, freedom was compatible with national interest.
Like all the other nationalities, the peoples of the Habsburg empire, too, invoked European values in proclaiming their respective national programs. The Hungarians were not the only people claiming to be the bastions of Europe against the tide of eastern barbarism, pan-Slavism; the Austro-Germans, too, made the same claim in support of their imperial-centralizing ambitions, making frequent references to their cultural superiority; while the empire's Slavic elements and the Romanians (this is also mentioned by Borsi-Kálmán) proclaimed themselves to be the champions of European values in the face of the "Asiatic Hungarian hordes". Another idea generally shared by the liberal elements of the age was that political equality and political freedom would ferment a process of cultural and linguistic assimilation among a heterogeneous population, to the benefit of the nationality leading the struggle for freedom. They also thought it natural to envisage their nation-state as including the broadest possible circle of fellow-nationalities. Borsi-Kálmán blames the Hungarian politicians for rigidly rejecting, after the Croatian compromise of 1868, the demands put forward by the Romanian population of Transylvania for similar autonomy in Transylvania, once again tracing this attitude back to the continued survival of the nobility's feudal mentality, claiming that "faithful to the Hungarian reform generation's view of history, it only accepted as an equal the Croatian nobility, which, typologically, was considered to be the peer of the Hungarian (and Polish) nobility, but not the representatives of the Transylvanian Romanians (in the final analysis, because the Romanian nobility, having been integrated into the "Natio hungarica" over the centuries, had in fact assimilated to the Hungarian nobility)" (Illúziókergetés vagy ismétléskényszer? p. 148).
There are two factors that must not, however, be overlooked: unlike in Transylvania, there was no large population of Hungarians in Croatia; in Croatia's case there was no mother-nation just across the border, the gravitational pull of which, in accordance with the most modern principles, had to be taken into account by the Hungarian politicians of the day. This may in fact explain the extraordinary fact-extraordinary in terms of Borsi-Kálmán's line of reasoning, that is-that of all the politicians negotiating with him, it was József Eötvös (who can hardly be regarded as representative of the feudal mentality of some of the Reform Age nobility) whom R. Ionescu found to be the most intransigent in this question (Illúziókergetés vagy ismétléskényszer? p. 148). Though some elements of this mentality were incorporated into the thinking of the Hungarian reform movement, I myself am of the opinion that Borsi-Kálmán somewhat overestimates the significance of these factors, thus endorsing the view that the 1848-49 generation of Romanian intellectuals had formed of the Hungarian national movement: a view he himself has often criticized for completely confusing the feudal concept of nation with the modern concept of political nation in the case of the Hungarian movement, while at the same time interpreting their own movement as the champion of the modern liberal national idea fighting the oppressive tendencies of feudal forces.
It seemed at the time that the military defeat of the War of Independence had put a definite end to all hopes regarding the realization of the national program devised during the Reform Age, a program which linked the idea of a sovereign Hungary within the Habsburg empire to the idea of a centralized nation-state-a program which all opposition groups shared before 1848. In the new situation arising after 1849 a much more colorful picture emerged. On the one hand there was the main group in Hungary, led by Ferenc Deák, which, as the Diet of 1861 demonstrated, remained faithful to the program of a sovereign Hungarian state within the empire, regardless of the conciliatory gestures it made to ease the tension with an Austrian political elite insisting on imperial centralism, although it never actually abandoned the program. This movement, however, could not come out into the open in the 1850s, except via a few pamphlets published abroad. So the main opposition front was presented on the one hand by the movement ready both to revise the program of a sovereign Hungary within the empire and to accept imperial unity as an accomplished fact (this movement was primarily represented by József Eötvös, Zsigmond Kemény, and Aurél Kecs ke méthy), and on the other hand by the "official" policy of the emigration, determined above all by Kossuth. Radically rejecting the axiom of Hungary's association with the Habsburg empire, this latter movement announced a program of complete sovereignty and the formation of a confederation with the Balkan states.
All three groups-together with the conservatives now omitted from the analysis-set out to revise the Reform Age liberals' policies on nationality and imperial issues. To draw the lessons of 1848-49 was not at all "left to the leaders of the Hungarian emigration, most notably to Kossuth", as Borsi-Kálmán claims (Illúziókergetés vagy ismétléskényszer? p. 89.) In the early 1850s, and even in the late 1850s for that matter, it was still not possible to envisage the role the émigrés were to play in shaping the subsequent history of Hungary; however, from the 1860s onwards it seemed increasingly likely, and in retrospect it became quite obvious, that the main trends of international power politics (of which Borsi- Kálmán gives a careful description at every opportunity), instead of improving the Kossuth emigration's position, gradually limited the room it had to maneuver in, to the point that later historical developments unfolded not in accordance with the principles and strategy of the emigration, but in spite of them. Within Hungary, too, there were those who advocated leaving the empire and forming a confederate state with the Balkan nationalities. In the writings left behind both by Mihály Táncsics and by Márk Gasparich (the latter was executed in 1853 for his part in the conspiracy organized by Károly Makk and Károly Jubál), we find the idea of replacing the Habsburg empire (after its disintegration) with a democratic confederation of Danubian nations. Nevertheless, the idea of a Danubian confederation was unable to strike root in Hungarian public opinion in the 1850s, or in the 1860s for that matter. Therefore, it seems inappropriate to identify the émigrés with "the" Hungarian political elite, and it is necessary to study their nationality policy in conjunction with the ideas put forward by the other movements, as these together formed the Hungarian national viewpoint.
Béla Borsi-Kálmán completely ignores programs devised in Hungary. He talks of "Kossuth's more comprehensive and democratic plans", yet he makes no comparison with other plans, regardless of the fact that the program worked out by a committee of the Hungarian Diet of 1861 lends itself to ready comparison with Kossuth's draft constitution. In what way does Kossuth's plan have the advantage? On the matter of administrative autonomy for the non-Hungarian regions, Kossuth's original draft constitution and the Diet's program of 1961 were similar in that they both rejected it. Kossuth could accept neither László Teleki's prognosis of the inevitable break-up of historical Hungary, nor the internal federation he proposed by way of a solution; in this regard Kossuth's concessions went no farther than a willingness to consider the modification of certain county borders, but even this only in exceptional cases. Admittedly, this element of his plan, in conjunction with the proposal to introduce the representation of counties in the two houses of the Parliament-a proposal formed by combining several elements of county autonomy existing before 1848 with the basic principles of modern regional self-government-would have enabled the nationalities to have a collective mandate in the Parliament behind the protective shield of a county administration. Then, in 1859, Kossuth added to his program a referendum on the status of Transylvania, on the question of whether to be part of Hungary within the empire or whether to have self-government. He was also prepared to consider the possibility of setting up a Serbian voivodate (but one to consist only of areas with a compact Serb population, in accordance with the aspirations of the Serbian national movement in Hungary, which, unlike in 1848-49, would have been content with such a voivodate), along with the possible secession of Croatia-but only as a final concession and as a last resort, which explains why his published plans did not include these elements. Rather than giving regional autonomy to the nationalities, Kossuth wished to base the solution of the nationality problems on three elements: personal freedom; freedom of association, religious and otherwise; and a system of administrative autonomy at a local and county level. Together these would have provided any national minority whose members formed the majority within a village or a county broad scope for the use of its own language. The plan formulated by the 1861 Diet (it was inspired by Eötvös, like all the Hungarian pamphlets published on the subject after 1849) was built on these three elements, adopting a somewhat sterner view only in one respect: the Diet's plan declared Hungarian to be the language of deliberation in Parliament, while Kossuth would have allowed the use of any language. (We might add, however, that writing in his personal diary around the mid-1860s, even Eötvös did not categorically rule out the idea of re-adjusting the county borders along national lines.) Admittedly, there was one substantial difference: unlike Eötvös and the other liberals in Hungary, Kossuth started out from democratic principles, advocating the extension of the franchise to all males-which was the only way to invest the administrative autonomy of villages and counties with real national significance for the non-Hungarian population, since it followed from the social structure of these nationalities that, regardless of the extent of decentralization, the liberal franchise proposals would not have allowed the local national majorities to emerge as political majorities, nor would they have helped them articulate their political will.
This shortcoming would not have been remedied by the proposals incorporated in Eötvös's plan of 1861, aimed at protecting the minorities. Again, it was the acceptance of the majority principle of democratic rule that enabled Kossuth to consider and accept the possibility of a plebiscite on the question of Transylvania. On the other hand, it is understandable if the liberals were, on the whole, bewildered by it. If the Romanian population of Transylvania were allowed to decide whether it wanted to be part of Hungary within the empire or wanted to keep Transylvania as an independent entity, then why-a Hungarian liberal of the early 1860s would wonder-should the population of Hungary not be asked whether it wanted to belong to the Habsburg empire? Or why should the Romanians of Transylvania not have a say on whether they would rather belong to Romania? And so on.
In evaluating the goals of the Hungarian émigrés after 1849, account must also be taken of the programs of the non-Hungarian nationalities of Hungary, such as those programs of the national districts as re-formulated in 1861.
What constituted, for Kossuth, the very maximum in terms of concessions-so much so that it had to be kept secret from the public-could, under favorable historical conditions, have been the acceptable minimum for the other side (disregarding for the moment the Slovak national demands which the emigration completely ignored, as we shall later see).
Additional points that should perhaps be raised concern actual support for the Kossuth-Teleki-Klapka-Szemere line within the emigration on issues such as nationality policy and the consequent Hungarian independence program, as well as the actual number of the émigrés who supported the idea of confederation. A good example could be the case of Miklós Jósika, who in the late 1850s and early 1860s was one of Kossuth's most loyal colleagues in organizing the press office in Brussels. Yet on the issues of nationality policy and the plans for confederation he continued to adhere to the paradigms of the Reform Age. In his monograph, Borsi-Kálmán touches on the differences of opinion among the émigrés, but only discusses the views of a few prominent figures. Hungarian historians have not yet completed studying, or indeed gathering together, relevant pamphlets published abroad after 1849. There was, for example, an anonymous pamphlet published in 1850 in Leipzig (we do not know whether or not the author was a Hungarian emigrant). Entitled Die Conservativen in Ungarn und die Centralisation. Zur Beleuchtung der ungarischen Zustände. Von einem Alt-Liberalen (Carl Geibel, Leipzig, 1850), this tract was still arguing for "personal union": for the transformation of the empire into a dualist state. Another example is Ede Horn, who in a pamphlet published in 1850 in German (Zur ungarisch-oestreichischen Centralisations-Frage, Fried rich Ludwig Herbig, Leipzig, 1850), enthusiastically welcomed the Austrian ambitions for imperial centralization, although it must be added that he also raised the possibility of Hungary's becoming an independent state sometime in the distant future.
It is not only the alternation of the Romanian and the Hungarian viewpoints that Béla Borsi- Kálmán promises and demands; he also calls for a "European perspective", which would automatically imply some higher point of view (Kihívás és eret nek ség, p. 68). He does not tell us, however, what insights such a perspective would bring to the issues at hand.
The program put forward by the emigration's leading figures was not restricted to the rejection of the "personal union" program originating in the Reform Age, but also contained criticism of the other plans proposed in 1848-49 for the re-organization of the Habsburg empire. An interesting, but by no means accidental, point is that direct references to these programs were never made, as though they had never existed at all, so that these heated theoretical and political disputes that were to divide the stay-at-home liberals after 1849 were hardly reflected on in emigration circles.
And this is all the more striking, since-as Borsi-Kálmán himself writes-the nationality struggles of 1848 did not take place in "some kind of sterile vacuum" (Kihívás és eretnekség, p. 67), but were fought out in a very volatile milieu, in the extremely sensitive environment of power politics. The disaster at Világos was brought on not only by the opposition of Hungary's national minorities to the Hungarian political line (opposition which Vienna was clever enough to exploit to the full), but also by the fact that, with the exception of the Austro-German democrats, all the political forces within the empire rejected Hungary's dualist program, thus leaving the imperial government a great deal of room in which to maneuver. Faithful to the tradition of the Reform Age, Kossuth continued throughout his years in exile to think in terms of the bi-polar system of Hungary and the Court, and in speculating on the break with Vienna, all along he had in mind the strategy of Hungary's separation from the empire; thus, he never attempted to draw the political lessons of Hungary's confrontation with the other peoples of the empire in 1848-49. (By contrast, the Eötvös-Kemény-Kecs keméthy line, which continued to accept unconditionally the axiom of links with Vienna, looked for a solution in this very direction, and tried to revise the nationality policy of the Reform Age accordingly.)
Led by considerations of the contemporary political and military situation, the emigration was from the start interested in strengthening its links with the Balkan states. In a letter written to Sebô Vukovics in February 1862, Kossuth openly described these considerations: "You should not forget that we can dispatch an expedition neither to Kolozsvár, nor to Szeged, nor to Siklós-if that were possible, then all our problems would disappear. But the road to Ko lozs vár leads through Wallachian territory, the road to Szeged through Serbian territory, and the road to Siklós through Croatian territory, and what do you do if these people are enemies?" (Illúziókergetés vagy ismétléskényszer? p. 184). We know of only two attempts on the part of the émigrés to try to find allies within the empire for its anti-Habsburg line: one occasion was back in the spring of 1849, when László Teleki and Ferenc Pulszky negotiated with Frantisek Rieger, a prominent leader in the Czech national movement, about the possibility of a federation; the other was the Polish uprising of 1863, when certain plans were drawn up, entailing possible co-operation with the Galician insurgents.
Admittedly, this strategy was not entirely the choice of the Hungarian émigrés, since, with the Austro-German democrats forced into exile, its only allies within the empire had been removed. The émigrés-again, faithful to the traditions of 1848-reckoned with the establishment of German unity, and wished to avoid an open conflict with the forces of German unification on German territory. Thus, in accordance with the principles of traditional Hungarian dualism, they did not wish there to be a common cause with the Slavic population of the Austrian part of the empire, who were bent on opposing German unification. The émigrés' decision to look to the Balkan region for allies could also be explained by the fact that this was the area where the most bitter fighting with the nationalities had taken place in 1848-49. However, it was not just on the level of political tactics that they failed to take into account the other nationalities of the Habsburg empire: it was also on the level of framing programs. As Kossuth announced on several occasions, the confederation was not a Hungarian plan, but a joint Serbian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Polish idea. And also a Czech, a Slovene, a Ruthenian, and occasionally even an Austro-German idea, we might add. And although Kossuth did make one slight reference to the confederation as being also a Polish and Czech idea (which Borsi-Kálmán mentions in his monograph, referring to György Szabad's Kossuth biography of 1977), his programs never reflected this insight. Of the members of the emigration, it was Mór Perczel who reacted most explicitly to the challenges posed by the 1848-49 plans to transform the empire-and Borsi-Kálmán was the one to call attention to this, referring to a previously unpublished archival source-in an attempt to try to fuse these with the émigrés' confederation plans. From the former he took over the unification of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, the Military Border populated by South Slavs, and the region inhabited by Slovenes, with the Serbian Principality thrown in, and also the unification of Moravia and Bohemia, while from the confederation plans he took over the idea of Wallachia, Moldavia, and historical Hungary providing the basic units of the confederation. He rounded all this off with the program of Poland's restoration and admission to the confederation (Nemzetfogalom és nemzet stra té giák, pp. 68, 78, 284-85). Some of these same notions can also be found in Bertalan Szemere's memoirs of 1853, in which he vaguely outlines the concept of a confederate union of all the peoples within the Habsburg empire, including perhaps even the Austro-Germans (Szemere Bertalan miniszterelnök iratai az 1848/49-i magyar kormányzat nemzetiségi politikájáról (Prime Minister Bertalan Szemere's Papers on the Nationality Policy of the Hungarian Government of 1848/49). Szemere's writings of 1859-60, however, to which Béla Borsi- Kálmán refers in his monograph, already reflect the confederate ideas of the main political line within the emigration. The emigration's implacable refusal to consider the possibility of preserving the imperial framework of the Habsburg dominions effectively meant that it took no part in working out alternatives within that framework, when in fact the political elite of the dualist era would have badly needed such orientational models.
The examination of movements united in their rejection of the suggestion that the Habsburg empire was still a necessary element of the post-1849 European balance of power provides yet another reference point in the evaluation of the Hungarian emigration's performance. Borsi-Kálmán discusses the plans of the Polish émigrés in Western Europe, along with those of the Slav and Romanian émigré circles, calling attention to the inspiring influence these had on the views of certain leading members of the Hungarian emigration, yet the confederation plans of the Austro-German democrats, a movement in a way pursuing a parallel course with the Hungarian emigration, escapes his attention. Writing in 1849, Ernst Ritter von Violand, for example, anticipated Austria's disintegration, and saw it replaced by the democratic association of its peoples. He outlined plans for a federal state in Central Europe, with Germany, Austria, and the Romanian Principalities forming part (Enthüllungen aus Oesterreichs jüngster Vergangenheit. Von einem Mitgliede der Linken des aufgelösten österreichischen Reichstages, Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1849). Whether on principle or out of considerations of realpolitik, the Slav ideologists and politicians within the empire abided by the concept of Austro-Slavism during these decades, despite all their disappointment and bitterness. It was also during this period that one of the representative pamphlets of nineteenth-century political pan-Slavism was issued: entitled Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft. Written by Ludovit Stúr, it announced the program of the break-up of the Habsburg empire, and the integration of the Austrian Slavs into Russia, using arguments showing a close affinity with the ideas of Russian Slavophilism.
Still on the note of the European perspective- and bearing in mind that this particular critical comment should really be reserved for the monograph treatment of the subject and that, therefore, the two volumes presently under review only provide an excuse for mentioning it-we might add that a discussion of the main characteristics of European federalism would perhaps be expedient, in view of the fact that, under the inspiration of German and Italian unification and owing to the propaganda of the Polish emigration, this was the idea's first golden age. The confederation plans drawn up by Central European and South European émigrés in the period between the 1840s and the 1860s constituted only one variation, with the Hungarian confederation program primarily associated with Kossuth as one of the sub-species.
The main problem is, of course, that it would be difficult to find a suitable perspective for the confederation plans of the Hungarian émigrés and the nationality policy that went with them, regardless of whether we consider them from a European viewpoint or from a Hungarian one. Looking at the given balance of power in retrospect, the plan might seem very much an illusory one; at the same time, however, for people living in that period it was by no means evident how the causes of German and Italian unification would proceed-that they would somehow be settled was generally understood. For that reason, the Hungarian émigrés' hopes of securing a minor role for Hungary in the great game of power politics, and of enlisting the support of a great power, seemed warranted. If we choose the program of the Compromise of 1867 as our point of reference, then the entire work of the emigration, along with its nationality policy, would at best seem to be an insignificant episode, if not a complete cul-de-sac. If, however, we take 1918 as our point of reference, then all the previous efforts to find an alternative for the Monarchy would suddenly appear to be founded on a realistic appraisal of the situation. And if we look back from the present day, then the efforts of the previous century will appear even more illusory, as our century has seen the awesome rise of the idea of the nation-state, accompanied by the frailty of co-operation between nations and the vehemence of their rivalry, in the wake of which-exactly as Kossuth had predicted in his letter of January 1850 to Giuseppe Carosini, and also as the Hungarians wishing to preserve the Monarchy at all cost had feared-the two great powers of the region successively penetrated along the fault-lines, exploiting the still ongoing processes of the fragmentation, with but faint signs of any integration among the small nations and states of the region. On top of everything, the main direction of this integration is certainly not the Balkans. As compared to the euphoria caused by the victory of the nationality principle at the beginning of the twentieth century, today-in the wake of the Yugoslav tragedy alone-we have every reason to be skeptical about the possibilities for the closer political integration of countries with such vastly different cultural, religious, and social traditions, countries which the émigrés had wished to weld into a union. (It is, as yet, too early to judge the historical significance of the process of amelioration and reconciliation initiated by the Romanian political changes of 1996.) By now, it is increasingly apparent that cooperation-at least in the near future-will be realized within the larger context of the European Union, within an integration centered on Western Europe, which is significantly different from Kossuth's paradigm. For this reason, one might indeed be justified in seeing Kossuth both as an "unsuccessful émigré politician" and as a "political thinker who may someday regain significance" (Kihívás és eretnekség, p. 74). It might well be that the task of sketching an overall picture of the Hungarian emigration's goals and achievements is possible only by alternately considering the perspectives of the various national and European movements as these appeared at the successive time periods outlined above. Béla Borsi-Kálmán's work is an important stride in this direction; nevertheless, in this area too, there are numerous challenges still in store for historians, Hungarian and non-Hungarian alike.