From the 1860s onward, Habsburg Hungary attempted a massive project of
cultural assimilation to impose a unified national identity on its
diverse populations. In one of the more quixotic episodes in this
"Magyarization," large monuments were erected near small towns
commemorating the medieval conquest of the Carpathian Basin--supposedly,
the moment when the Hungarian nation was born. This exactingly
researched study recounts the troubled history of this plan, which--far
from cultivating national pride--provoked resistance and even hostility
among provincial Hungarians. Author Bálint Varga thus reframes the
narrative of nineteenth-century nationalism, demonstrating the complex
relationship between local and national memories.