Introduction: Hungary and the Ottoman Empire in Early Modern History

Hungary had contact with the Ottoman Empire from the late Middle Ages. After attempts to block Ottoman expansion by Hungarian sovereigns such as Louis I, Sigismund of Luxembourg, Ladislaus I, and Mathias Corvinus, part of the Kingdom of Hungary came under an increasingly strong influence from this eastern power. After the Battle of Mohács (1526) the Kingdom of Hungary fell into a period of political crisis, which was reinforced by the division of the country between the supporters of Habsburg King Ferdinand I and those of his adversary John I Szapolyai, who even allied himself with Sultan Süleyman I (the Magnificent). Following the capture of the castle Buda by the troops of Süleyman in 1541, the Kingdom of Hungary was literally split into three parts: the Ottoman occupation zone in the middle of the country; the remains of the Kingdom of Hungary in the West under the domination of the Habsburgs; and a third part composed of Transylvania and some other eastern territories of the country, which became ostensibly a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire—from 1556 under the name of Principality of Transylvania—but in reality was an almost autonomous political unit, possessing a political history and distinct culture. In summary, Hungary metamorphosed from a Central European middle power into a buffer state, and often a field of military operations, for about one hundred and fifty years.The consequences of this period were above all political and military, as well as cultural. Apart from hosting a civil war that disturbed Hungary for a long time, this territory also became a theater of military operations between the armies of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. Among these major conflicts on a European scale, let us recall the Long (Turkish) War (1591–1606) and the Great Turkish War (1683–1699), which mobilized a coalition of Christian armies against the Ottoman forces. On the cultural level, Hungarian history produced very curious phenomena even at the international level. Among these, the persistance of the institutions of the Hungarian orders in the territories under Ottoman domination, in a kind of condominium, presents a unique evolution in European history.The study of the Ottoman era in Hungary has long been a matter of concern to Hungarian historians. The centenaries of major events (the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Reconquest of Buda in 1686, etc.) have played a key role in commemorations and in the organization of scientific projects. A certain revival of interest in the history of Ottoman Hungary can be observed in recent decades at the international level. Over the last thirty years a great number of books and research papers have been published on relations between Christianity and Islam in Europe, encompassing various disciplines and geographical regions. However, academic work has commonly been enclosed in single disciplines and chronological periods, and it has invariably been developed in national scholarly communities or in international working groups focused on national questions. For instance, Hungary has sometimes been taken as the main hub for East-West relations. While it is undeniable that it was a gateway between the East and the West, it has been forgotten that it was also a key link between different European territories. Ottoman rule lasted for about 150 years and deeply marked the history of Hungary.Military history research was particularly rich, both on the various stages of the Ottoman conquest of a third of the Kingdom of Hungary and on the reconquest of the country from the seventeenth century onward. The study of Ottoman sources has sometimes yielded surprising results. For example, the work of Klára Hegyi has shown that the majority of the “Turkish” military serving in the Hungarian fortresses were of Balkan origin, with the presence of Anatolian Turks, Middle Eastern Arabs, and Hungarians very low.Similarly, new trends in Hungarian historiography also nuance the contribution of the Habsburg Monarchy to the reconquest of Hungary. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the period of the reconquest was seen as a defining period of the Hungarian struggles for independence; later, in the 1980s and 1990s, it was replaced by a new conception: the theory of attempts at state reunification from the Principality of Transylvania. Current research in Western archives allows us to better place these events in the context of European history. The reconquest of Hungarian territory ended in 1718, when the Peace Treaty of Passarowitz marked the beginning of a general reconstruction and relative modernization of the country. The military retreat of the Ottoman Empire signified the glory of imperial arms and the success of the Catholic reconquest in Central Europe. The commercial aspects of this treaty have often been overlooked or forgotten. However, its economic consequences are also important, as the Ottomans extended the most-favored-nation principle, which France had long enjoyed through the capitulations, to the citizens of the Habsburg Monarchy. In many ways, the treaty can be compared to the treaties of Utrecht (1713–15), with both being successors to the legal system of the Westphalian treaties of the middle of the preceding century.Both trends could lead to publications such as the special section of this issue of Hungarian Studies Review. In 2024, we celebrated the 360th anniversary of the Battle of St. Gotthard and the Peace of Vasvár, which ended a bloody war in central and eastern Europe. These events had a profound impact on the history of European international relations. After the Peace of Vasvár, the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest extent in central Europe. An international scientific symposium was organized in 2024 in Szombathely and Vasvár to review the general questions of war and peace in the Hungarian and Ottoman context.Two major lines of questioning emerge in this thematic block. The first attempts to highlight the complexity of international issues that had an influence on military operations and diplomatic negotiations. Who were the main military and political actors? How did they succeed in gaining power? What were their roles in operations on different fronts and in negotiations? What was the impact of the war at the local level and what was its image at the international level? The first study presented in this issue, by Özkan Bardakçi, pursues these questions. The second axis of this cluster examines the consequences of the peace treaties on the relations between the European powers, especially in central Europe. To what extent did the great powers (the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy) succeed in taking advantage of it? The two other studies published here, by Georg Michels and Zeynep Arslan Çalik, are particularly interested in issues more closely related to peace, in particular diplomacy, and economic and commercial activities after the peace treaties of Vasvár (1664) and Passarowitz (1718).In the first study, Bardakçi offers a presentation of the daily service of French soldiers and captains in the campaign in Hungary in 1664. Thanks to their correspondence, memoirs, and other personal papers conserved in different archives, we can reconstruct their itinerary, know their difficulties and problems during the trips, and last but not least receive their impressions of serving in an international army. Among these sources, we can find real gems, such as the journal of the Count of Bissy or the travelogue of Charles Le Maistre, giving us extraordinary descriptions of the daily life of soldiers in wars.In the next contribution, Michels provides a critical edition of sources that shed light on the efforts of the Hungarians who sought help from the Ottoman authorities against the Counter-Reformation policy of the Habsburg Empire. The documents of the 1671 negotiations of Pál Szepessy, a Hungarian nobleman of Calvinist confession, with the Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü clearly show the position of the Hungarian Protestant elites who considered the Turkish threat less dangerous than the integration of the country into the Monarchy. The documents concerning this exchange between Hungarians and Ottomans and the reports of the agents of Habsburg intelligence show that the situation of the Kingdom of Hungary was quite precarious and that the threat of an Ottoman invasion was still possible.The last study, by Çalık, introduces us to a later period of Hungarian history. It concerns the role played by Ottoman merchants transiting Pest-Buda between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire long after the Turkish Wars, at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It provides an archive-based analysis of mobility and trade involving the Hungarian capital, Transylvania, and Ottoman territories. Çalık’s research shows us that a century after the reconquest of Buda from the Turks, this city was transformed from a fortress into a gateway for Habsburg-Ottoman relations.Together these studies show the complexity of the relations between western Europe, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. These relationships range from war to diplomacy and trade, from violence to peaceful coexistence. I hope that this collection will contribute to a better understanding of Hungary’s place between East and West in this particularly eventful period.

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