Friday, August 02, 2019

The Dot Map of 1910 Hungary


The Native-Ethnic Composition of Hungary in 1910 is a dot map showing the native languages of Hungarians in 1910. The map is based on data from the 1910 Hungarian census. On the map one dot represents one person and the different colors represent the different languages spoken by Hungarians in 1910. The languages shown are Hungarian, German, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Slovak, Ukranian and Slovenian.

The 1910 census was the last census in Hungary before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. After World War I the Treaty of Trianon was the peace treaty between the allies and the Kingdom of Hungary. The treaty led to the break-up of much of Hungary (after the treaty was signed Hungary was round 28% of the size of pre-war Hungary). One of the principle aims of the treaty was the doctrine of 'self-determination of peoples', and the treaty attempted to give non-Hungarian speakers their own national states or to cede the territories where they lived to the countries of their mother tongues. The Hungarians didn't exactly sign the treaty willingly.

On the map you can see how many areas with a high density of non-Hungarian speakers in 1910 correspond to modern day country borders. For example, in the north the high density of Slovak speakers corresponds pretty accurately to the borders of what is now Slovakia. In the east the high density of Romanian speakers seems to correspond fairly closely to the the borders of modern day Romania. Although in the far east of 1910 Hungary, in the Burzenland area of Romania, there was a high density of both Hungarian and German speakers in 1910 (German speakers have lived in this region since the 12th century).

No comments: