The institutionalization of Hungarian historiography and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century

Abstract

Scientific historiography in Hungary was founded on the largescale collection of sources and publication of documents in the 18th century. Although development stalled in the first half of the 19th century, national institutions were established (the National Museum in 1802 and the Academy of Sciences in 1825), which greatly contributed to the modernization of historical science. This was aided by the reform of university education, which took effect in the second half of the century, the opening up of aristocratic, ecclesiastical, county and municipal archives, the start of research in foreign archives (primarily in Vienna and Rome), and the founding of the Hungarian Historical Society in 1867.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ oldest committee, the Committee on Historical Sciences, which has been operating since 1854, played a key role in the modernization of 19th-century Hungarian historiography. With its support, a series of source publications were published that are still useful today, with more than 300 volumes published by the end of the century. It was largely thanks to this that Hungarian historical science approached Western European standards in the second half of the 19th century and reached them in the last third of the century, and that a number of comprehensive works covering many aspects of Hungarian history were published in connection with the series of millennium celebrations in 1896.