page_title: History of Hungary
section_title: Austria–Hungary (1867–1918)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Hungary / Modern history / Austria–Hungary (1867–1918)
context_page_description: Hungary in its modern borders roughly corresponds to the Great Hungarian Plain.
  During the Iron Age, it was at the boundary of Celtic, Illyrian and Iranian cultural spheres.
  The name "Pannonian" comes from Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire. Only the western part of the territory of modern Hungary formed part of the ancient Roman Province of Pannonia. The
  Roman control collapsed with the Hunnic invasions of 370–410 and Pannonia was part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom during the late 5th to mid 6th century, succeeded by the Avar Khaganate.civil
  The Magyar invasion takes place during the 9th century.
  The Magyars were Christianized at the end of the 10th century, and the Christian Kingdom of Hungary was established in AD 1000,
  ruled by the Árpád dynasty for the following three centuries.
  In the high medieval period, the kingdom expanded beyond Pannonia, to the Adriatic coast. In 1241 during the reign of Béla IV, Hungary was invaded by the Mongols under Batu Khan. The outnumbered Hungarians were decisively defeated at the Battle of Mohi by the Mongol army. King Béla fled to the Holy Roman Empire and left the Hungarian population under the mercy of the Mongols.
context_section_description: Vienna realized that political reform was unavoidable to secure the integrity of the Habsburg Empire. Major military defeats, such as the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, forced Emperor Franz Joseph to accept internal reforms. To appease Hungarian separatists, the emperor made an equitable deal with Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 negotiated by Ferenc Deák, by which the dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary came into existence.
  The two realms were governed separately by two parliaments from two capitals, with a common monarch and common foreign and military policies. Economically, the empire was a customs union. The first Prime Minister of Hungary after the Compromise was Count Gyula Andrássy. The old Hungarian Constitution was restored, and Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary.
  In 1868, Hungarian and Croatian assemblies concluded the Croatian–Hungarian Agreement by which Croatia was recognised as an autonomous region.
  The new nation of Austria-Hungary was geographically the second largest country in Europe after Russia. Its territories were appraised at 621,540 square kilometres (239,977 sq mi) in 1905. After the Russia and the German Empire, it was the third most populous country in Europe.
  Hungarian nationalists demanded education in the Magyar language, a position that united Catholics and Protestants opposed to instruction in Latin as desired by Catholic bishops. In the Hungarian Diet of 1832–36, the conflict between Catholic laymen and clergy sharpened considerably, and a mixed commission was established. It offered the Protestants certain limited concessions. The basic issue of this religious and educational struggle was how to promote Magyar language and Magyar nationalism and achieve more independence from German Austria.
  The landed nobility controlled the villages and monopolized political roles. In Parliament, the magnates held life memberships in the Upper House, but the gentry dominated the Lower House and, after 1830, parliamentary life. The tension between "crown" (the German-speaking Habsburgs in Vienna) and "country" remained a constant political fixture as the Compromise of 1867 enabled the Magyar nobility to run the country, but left the emperor with control over foreign and military policies. However, after Andrássy served as Prime Minister of Hungary (1867–1871) he became Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary (1871–1879) and set foreign policies with an eye to Hungarian interests. Andrássy was a conservative; his foreign policies looked to expanding the Empire into Southeast Europe, preferably with British and German support, and without alienating Turkey. He saw Russia as the main adversary, because of its own expansionist policies toward Slavic and Orthodox areas. He distrusted Slavic nationalist movements as a threat to his multi-ethnic empire. Meanwhile, conflicts between magnates and gentry appeared regarding protection against cheap food imports (in the 1870s), the Church-state problem (in the 1890s), and the "constitutional crisis" (in the 1900s). The gentry gradually lost their power locally and rebuilt their political base more on office-holding rather than landownership. They depended more and more on the state apparatus and were reluctant to challenge it.
caption: Magyars in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1890
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