Hitbizományok, földbirtokpolitika és nacionalizmus Magyarországon a 19–20. század fordulóján

In this paper, I will show how the issue of entails was linked to the actions agains ethnic minorities and the Hungarianisation of the country in the public discourse at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The sharpening tone of this debate reflects the turn in Hungarian politics concerning ethnic issues ont he turn of the century. While the Nationality Act of 1868, thinking in terms of the Hungarian political nation, emphasised equality of citizenship and relatively broad individual language rights, three decades later, the aspiration to build a linguistically and culturally homogeneous nation-state was expressed as an expectation by a wide range of Hungarian politically active groups. In this view, any political and economic means could be used to promote Hungarianisation. As far as the land tenure aspect of the problem was concerned, there was undoubtedly a need to reduce the geographical space occupied by the ethnic minorities and, at the expense of this, to expand the Hungarian population. However, deu tot he lack of financial resources and substantial government support it remained rather a sort of daydream. This often took the form of visions that were far from reality and took little account of practical conditions and human factors. This was the case with the idea of the transfer of the entails, elaborated and tirelessly promoted by Gusztáv Beksics, which was present in the discourse on the subject until the collapse of historic Hungary in 1918.