R. W. Seton-Watson's Changing Views on the National Question of the Habsburg Monarchy and the European Balance of Power

Abstract

SEER, Vol.82, No.3,JUdly2004 R. W. Seton-Watson's Changing Views on the National Question of the Habsburg Monarchy and the European Balance of Power LASZLOPETER Europeis a delicate organism,in which, if one member suffers,allthe other memberssufferwith it. R. W. Seton-Watson, TheScottish Review,I8January I906 ROBERT WILLIAM SETON-WATSON, historian, writer on current affairs, founder of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, has been widely recognized as a champion of the rights of Central and Eastern Europe's small nations. His vigorous protests in the British press against Russian policy in Finland in 1904 were, as he recalled in his memoirs,' 'my first serious letters to the press'.2 Two years later he took up the cause of the Habsburg Monarchy's nationalities, particularly those of Hungary. He felt a strong affinity towards the Slovak and later the Czech nations. During the First World War he steered a vigorous campaign for the replacement of Austria-Hungary, which he had come to regard as an unreformable oppressive state, by independent democratic nation-states. TheMaking of a New Europe,the title of Hugh and Christopher Seton-Watson's panoramic biography, testifies to the spirit of a Gladstonian liberal intellectual and, imbued with a strong sense ofjustice, speaks up for the underdog. Laszlo6Pter is Emeritus Professor of Hungarian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. ' The memoirs, on the first twenty-seven years of his life, written in the 1940s, well over thirty years after the events, were inevitably coloured by his memories of the two wars. Extracts from them were published in TheMakingofaNew Europe,R. W. SetonWatsonandthe Last Yearsof Austria-Hungary,by Hugh and Christopher Seton-Watson, London, I98I (hereafter, AIN>). This work provides a basic reference that has replaced much of the earlier works. On Seton-Watson's relations with Slovak leaders see his account written in I 942 and published in R. W. SetonWatsonandHis RelationswiththeCzechsandSlovaks,ed. Jan Rychliket al. [Bratislava],1995, pp. I09-15. 2 ANE, p. I6. The letter which The Spectator published on 13 February 1904 was, for instance, a detailed factual account of the 'reign of terror' inflicted on Finland by Russia not a civilized but a 'barbarian state'. Finland was not, however, the subject of SetonWatson 's firstpolitical letter to the press. TheSpectator published in June I 902 his letter, sent from New College, Oxford, where he was an undergraduate, in which Seton-Watson protested against the view that Germany had become 'our new foe' (MNE, p. 13). See further below. 656 SETON-WATSON S CHANGING VIEWS The sources of this moral revulsionare not hard to find. An earnest PresbyterianScot, raisedin a familyof 'bonnetlairds',yeomen farmers, Seton-Watsonwasdeeplyinfluencedby religiousliterature.Contemporarychurchaffairsalso engaged his interest: I wroteseverallettersto 7heScotsman and 7heScottish Review, underthe pseudonymof LaicusJuvenis,on 'Presbyterian Reunion a Pressing Need'.Thescandalous sectarianism oftheHighlands hadappalled me.3 Above all, Seton-Watsonwas impressedwith a strongsense of Scottish national identity.As R. R. Bettsobserved,he was theheiron hisfather'ssideto thecommercial andon hismother'sto the romanticgenius of his Scots ancestry.His great interestin his Seton forebears keptalivehis Scottishfeeling,andperhapsmadehimthemore sympathetic totherightsandsentiments ofsmallnations.4 As he explained in his memoirs, his firstpublication, Scotland Forever! andOther Poems (1898), had been 'writtenin the high Byronicstyle'.5Yet Seton-Watson did not become a narrow Scottish nationalist:he was anglicized by education at Winchester and New College, Oxford. His tutor, H. A. L. Fisher, set him off on a road to acquire an unusual breadth of historical knowledge, and also a taste for high literature, French,German,Italian,aswell as strongliberalpoliticalattitudes.His liberalism,however,hadmore to do withthe communitarianHippolyte Taine, whom he greatly admired,6 than with the dry utilitarian individualism of, for example, John Stuart Mill. Thus religion, nationality, and liberal education, reinforcing each other, all predisposed Seton-Watsontowards the defence of the underdog in national conflicts. Should we, therefore, regard him, as has commonly been the case, pre-eminently as a communitarian liberal, pleading the cause of the weak? In doing so we would not do justice to the man, for this view ignores the wider context of his thoughtsand his perception of Europe as a whole as 'a delicate organism',without...