Q: Why Versailles was territorially harsher with Austria-Hungary than Germany?

Oh yes, Hungary was rather determined to get its language out there, though it varied in whether or not the people in the Hungarian government wanted it to only be Hungarian or if people could speak their own language in their free time. Having everyone being given schooling and learnt he language of the majority of country in itself wasn’t too bad I would say, though back then a lot of languages were just solidifying. Think it was in that book I read where the person codifying or pushing the Croatian language deliberate chose the dialect closest to Serbian. They kept their own Latin script of course, and they used Latin longer than the Hungarians did. As good a lingua Franca as any I suppose, at least back when they were a bunch of Military Frontiers with Germans of all strips coming in to settle and fight. Anyways, might you be able to list some of the examples given in the book? And we might not want to overstate Austria’s love for minorities, as it seemed that some of their support for them was to spite the Hungarians.
Yes, Austria had no real fondness for the Slavs, but they (at least some Viennese politicians) supported things like trialism not out of 'spite', but merely to curb Hungary's growing influence in the early twentieth century..

Here are just a few things I've found from Wawro's book at the moment:

- P. 32-33 - Franz Joseph proclaims universal male suffrage in 1907 - ignored in Hungary. In 1910 parliamentary elections, Hungary's vote confined to "wealthy, educated Magyars". "More chauvinistic among the Magyars... spoke proudly of a cultural 'policy of colonisation'."

35 - Unlike their German counterparts, Hungarian officers were usually exempt from learning the languages of their troops, "so desperate was the emperor to have proofs of 'loyalism' from the Magyars"

42 - "The survival of Magyar supremacy in Hungary depended on keeping the kingdom's Slavs and Rumanians cowed in a system that gave the Hungarians, with only 55 percent of Hungary's population, 98 percent of its 405 parliamentary deputies."

And from Christopher Clark in 'Sleepwalkers', who is relatively sympathetic towards Austria-Hungary:

66-67 - "Education laws imposed the use of the Magyar language on all state and faith schools... Teachers were required to be fluent in Magyar and could be dismissed if they were found to be 'hostile to the [Hungarian] State'. This degradation of language rights was underwritten by harsh measures against ethnic minority activists... In Cisleithania, by contrast, successive administrations tampered endlessly with the system in order to accommodate minority demands."
 
I think there was no real need to 'satisfy' the territorial claims of newly created states like Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia could have worked anyway without the southern Sudetes or the southern Magyar districts of Slovakia, and the same for Yugoslavia regarding Lower Styria and most of Vojvodina. Italy could have received more parts of Dalmatia rather than the South Tyrol.

The Allies accepted Czechoslovakia's argument that Bohemia's historical frontiers must be respected for strategic and economic reasons. Wilson referred to the Sudetenland "which is undoubtedly predominantly German in population but which lies within the undoubted historic boundaries of Bohemia and constitutes an integral part of her industrial life. In such circumstances ethnographic lines cannot be drawn without the greatest injustice and injury." https://books.google.com/books?id=L7UOyPGYBkwC&pg=PA191 F

One thing to remember abooutthe Sudetenland is that despite the treaty banning an Austrian-German Anschluss without the consent of the League Council, everyone knew that in the long run such a union might come about. So giving more Sudeten territory to Austria might in the end amount to the same thing as giving more territory to Germany which would then surround Czechoslovakia on three sides and could easily crush her--as indeed would happen twenty years later.

In the same way, letting Austria keep South Tyrol might ultimately mean a larger Germany extending south of the Brenner Pass and potentially menacing Italy. In any event, Great Britian and France, having induced Italy to joiin the war effort with the Treaty of London promising Italy the South Tyrol, felt that they could not go back on their promise. True, the treaty had also promised Italy much of Dalmatia, but if one had to choose between limiting self-determination for the South Slavs versus limitig it for the German-Austrians --well, the Allies' view (whether or not historically sound) was that the latter were responsible for the war and should get less consideration.

As foe Vojvodina. even the 1910 Hungarian census--which was certainly not biased against Magyars!-- showed that they were only 28.1 percent of the population compared to 33.8% Serbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Vojvodina#1910_census Even for the city of Novi Sad there was at most a narrow Magyar plurality: "According to the 1910 census, the city had 33,590 inhabitants, of which 13,343 (39.72%) most frequently spoke Hungarian language, 11,594 (34.52%) Serbian language, 5,918 (17.62%) German language, 1,453 (4.33%) Slovak language, etc. It is not certain whether Hungarians or Serbs were largest ethnic group in the city in this time, since 1910 census is considered partially inaccurate by most historians because this census did not recorded the population by ethnic origin or mother tongue, but by the "most frequently spoken language", thus the census results overstated the number of Hungarian speakers, since this was official language at the time and many non-Hungarian native speakers stated that they most frequently speak Hungarian language in everyday communication. The city was also home to 2,326 Jews, of whom many were native Hungarian speakers. Another aspect of the census was that it not only recorded permanent residents of the city, but also temporary residents, who did not live in the city, but were situated there as part of the civil and military services.[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Novi_Sad

So fae as the Allies were concerned, I think they would tend to dismiss any complaints from German-Austrians or Magyars by saying "Well, really you should have thought of that before presenting Serbia with that ultimatum in 1914..." (Again, I'm not necessarily justifying that view of the origins of the Great War, only saying that it was the one held by the victors.)
 
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I think the borders drawn in Trianon could have been a bit more generous with Hungary without damaging much their neighbours claims, something like in this map (real borders in blue, proposed borders in red: the yellow area means majority of Magyar population in 1920):

ExpHunTria.png
 
I think the borders drawn in Trianon could have been a bit more generous with Hungary without damaging much their neighbours claims, something like in this map (real borders in blue, proposed borders in red: the yellow area means majority of Magyar population in 1920):

View attachment 710735

Maybe but why? Austria-Hungary had started a war and lost the Serbs and Romanians were on the winning side and the Czechs had the service of the Czechoslovak Legion on their side.
 
Maybe but why? Austria-Hungary had started a war and lost the Serbs and Romanians were on the winning side and the Czechs had the service of the Czechoslovak Legion on their side.
Even with these alternate borders, Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia had carved around two thirds of the pre-war Hungarian territory, isn't enough punishment?

With that excuse they could have also completely divided Hungary among them (in fact the Romanians marched up to Budapest) and erase it completely from the map. But 'winning a war' is not carte blanche for whatever, because maybe unwanted consequences could come later (as it clearly happened with Versailles).
 
Maybe but why? Austria-Hungary had started a war and lost the Serbs and Romanians were on the winning side and the Czechs had the service of the Czechoslovak Legion on their side.
I've always found it odd that Serbian nationalist started the war and yet got everything they wanted
 
I've always found it odd that Serbian nationalist started the war and yet got everything they wanted
Including deposing the King of Montenegro and annexing a country that had been independent far longer than them and was helping the Serbs during the war. Still, the Austrians (plus some of the high ranking Hungarians who preferred not losing their land to Serbia{in the Banat area, versus the Croatian and Bosnian areas}) were intent on not having an ultimatum the Serbians would accept. One of them (I think from the royal family or foreign ministry) wrote that he was tossing and turning at night out of fear the Serbs would accept.
 
Even with these alternate borders, Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia had carved around two thirds of the pre-war Hungarian territory, isn't enough punishment?

With that excuse they could have also completely divided Hungary among them (in fact the Romanians marched up to Budapest) and erase it completely from the map. But 'winning a war' is not carte blanche for whatever, because maybe unwanted consequences could come later (as it clearly happened with Versailles).

Historically speaking winning a war is carte blanche for whatever you can get away with. Ask the Gallic slaves Caesar marched through Rome in his triumph, vae victis. Now 1919 AD isn't 50 BC but as settlements go "everything you can plausibly claim on a ethnic self determination plus a bit more to give you a buffer" is actually pretty reasonable. Certainly compared to the post Second World War standard of "this is what's happening, if you're on the wrong side of this line flee with the clothes on your back before we shoot you."
 
Historically speaking winning a war is carte blanche for whatever you can get away with. Ask the Gallic slaves Caesar marched through Rome in his triumph, vae victis. Now 1919 AD isn't 50 BC but as settlements go "everything you can plausibly claim on a ethnic self determination plus a bit more to give you a buffer" is actually pretty reasonable. Certainly compared to the post Second World War standard of "this is what's happening, if you're on the wrong side of this line flee with the clothes on your back before we shoot you."
I think that by 1919 politicians have known by History and experience that even if anything could be done in these cases, maybe it is not the most reasonable thing to do. We have many many examples in History about how harsh punishments to the defeated later backfired to the victors. Versailles, Sèvres or Brest-Litovsk are good examples of that.

In fact, the consequences of the Treaty of Trianon still cause b*hurt today and have some political consequences we all know, but I am not going to talk about current politics.
 
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