“That They, Shakespeare's People, Play the Role of the Barbarians Here”

Abstract

“We, abandoned Europeans, armed to the teeth, only have the pleasure of reading the news of the war left; but we are revelling in them, and woe to our poor newspapers if they do not accompany the freshly baked bun of our breakfast with even fresher news –from South Africa.” (Szigethy, 1901, p. I) These lines come from the foreword of Lajos Szigethy’s Anglo-Boer War recollections and capture the atmosphere and tremendous interest of contemporary Hungarian public opinion regarding a war in which Austria-Hungary was not directly involved and took place at a considerable distance from the country. There was particular interest in the Hungarian participants of the war, most of whom, like the Hungarian public, supported the cause of the Boer republics. How they viewed the enemy, i.e. the British, stands at the centre of the present paper. Special emphasis is put on the influence the pro-Boer narrative about the war that was popular in other European countries had on the ways the Hungarian veterans constructed their war reminiscences about the national characteristics, imperial aspirations, and armed forces of the enemy in their respective books, articles, and lectures.