Hungary's Antisemitic Provinces: Violence and Ritual Murder in the 1880s

Abstract

The subject of this article is the Tiszaeszlár blood libel, one of several sensational Jewish ritual murder cases to unfold in central and eastern Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth century. By focusing on a region far removed from Tiszaeszlár, the article underscores the rapidity with which antisemitic violence traversed Hungary in the early 1880s. In examining the causes, function, and impact of this violence, Robert Nemes demonstrates the centrality of the provinces for understanding the depth and dynamism of political antisemitism in Hungary. Nemes also argues that Tiszaeszlár acted as a formative political experience for many people in the provinces and explores the wider consequences of this event, both in the near and in the long term.