The Role of Ethnographical Maps of Hungary and Romania at the Peace Talks After the Great War

Abstract

The First World War was mostly static, not only in Western Europe, but also in Central and Eastern Europe, leaving the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy unchanged until the end of the war. Hungary was one of the two member countries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy which was the largest state in Central Europe. Although Hungary opposed the war, she was allowed no independent policy on foreign or military affairs and was compelled to enter the war as part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

Hungary, the country that lost the most territory at the end of the war, had very few military operations conducted on its soil during the war itself. There were however many military operations subsequent to the cease-fire agreement until the signing of the Peace Treaty of Trianon which concluded the war for Hungary. In preparation of the peace conference in Trianon, France, the US president Woodrow Wilson suggested that the new borders should be drawn along ethnic lines. Hungary was a multi-ethnic state, with nearly half its population non-Hungarian. To justify their particular territorial claims, all parties prepared maps showing the ethnic composition in their particular regions. The reader of these maps gets a different picture from each map of the ethnic composition of the same area. This raises the question whether the changes made to national borders were the consequence of military operations, or merely the outcome of the peace negotiations.