„Legyenek a mi gyarmataink: Dalmácia, Bosznia, Hercegovina!”

Abstract

Hungarian imperial thought after the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy became a fantasy of past times, and thus the imperial propaganda of Rezső Havass was long irrelevant by the time of his death in 1927. In spite of this, Havass was called a “wholehearted devotee of Hungarian imperialism” in his obituary, a man who believed in further Hungarian expansion with the faith of prophets, and whose goal was to resurrect the imperium of Louis I of Hungary. Present study analyzes the works of Rezső Havass in order to uncover the specifics of Hungarian imperialism before the Great War. For Havass, the Hungarian Kingdom was undoubtedly a would-be colonial empire with well-defined political goals (the colonization of Dalmatia), and his texts mixed up and vulgarized scientific elements to serve political goals. Research questions concern the modalities of imperial thought before 1914. What did it consist of? How did it compare to other notions of imperialism and economic expansionism? How widespread was it in the public sphere in Hungary?