Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

by Simon Winder

Forms of nationalism are very easy for an outsider to deride. They are obviously poisonous, depressing and end in catastrophe for everybody. There was always a Habsburg argument that nationalism could be restricted to forms of the picturesque (costumes, foods, parades – not unlike in the United States). There was a socialist argument that nationalism was a demagogic sham and a trap for the workers. There was also a liberal argument for the dangers of hating someone simply because they spoke a different language or attended a different church. But these different arguments against nationalism could, for obvious reasons, find no common ground with one another. In addition, it was very hard indeed not to become infected. What did it take in practice for a Hungarian liberal to agree that the majority Romanian areas of Transylvania should be handed over to Romania, or that the Serbs could help themselves to southern Hungary? Such views were mere eccentricity. The longer I have spent thinking about this book the more horror and disgust I feel for nationalism, which seems something akin to bubonic plague, but clearly such a perception only gets anyone so far. Even the most intelligent and articulate figures in Europe embraced it in some form and could no more shed it than they could shed their own skins.