Treaty of Trianon

Signed in the Grand Trianon palace at Versailles on 4 June 1920, the Treaty of Trianon formally ended the First World War between the Allies and Hungary and fixed the new country's borders. It confirmed the break-up of the historic Kingdom of Hungary: some 72 per cent of its land and 64 per cent of its people were assigned to neighbouring states. In Hungary it is remembered as a national tragedy, often called the "Trianon dictate", while for Romanians, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs and others it confirmed their national self-determination.

The pre-war kingdom, one half of Austria-Hungary, was multilingual. In the 1910 census, the last before the treaty, Hungarian speakers made up about 54 per cent of the population of Hungary proper, excluding autonomous Croatia-Slavonia; Romanian, Slovak, German, Serb, Ruthenian and other speakers made up most of the rest. Its reliability is debated, since it recorded mother tongue rather than ethnicity.

As the monarchy disintegrated in autumn 1918, Hungary ended its union with Austria on 31 October, and Mihály Károlyi became prime minister. Neighbouring peoples moved to leave the kingdom: South Slav representatives in Banat, Bačka and Baranja proclaimed union with Serbia on 25 November 1918, and a national assembly of Romanians at Alba Iulia voted on 1 December for union with Romania. Czechoslovak, Romanian and Serbian troops occupied much of the territory.

When the Allies asked Hungary in 1919 to accept a line recognising further Romanian advances, Károlyi's government resigned and a communist regime under Béla Kun took power. Its army fought Czechoslovak and Romanian forces but collapsed in July, and Romanian troops entered Budapest on 4 August. With Allied help Admiral Horthy came to power in November, and a Hungarian delegation was invited to the Paris Peace Conference only on 1 December.

The terms, presented in January 1920, were not open to real negotiation. The Allies drew borders based in part on the principle of self-determination and on wartime commitments to their allies, including a 1916 promise to Romania, and they also sought to strengthen the new states. They rejected Hungary's demands for plebiscites, arguing in an accompanying letter that a popular vote would not change the results significantly. The Hungarian delegation signed under protest; the treaty came into force on 26 July 1921.

The new Hungary covered about 93,000 square kilometres with 7.6 million people, 28 per cent of the old kingdom's land and 36 per cent of its population. Romania received all of Transylvania, which according to the 1910 figures had a Romanian majority but also some 1.6 million Hungarians. Slovakia and Ruthenia went to Czechoslovakia, territory in the south to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and a western strip to Austria, where a 1921 plebiscite kept the city of Sopron in Hungary. Hungary lost its access to the sea at Rijeka, its army was limited to 35,000 men, and it had to pay reparations. About 3.3 million Hungarians now lived as minorities in other states.

For most Hungarians the treaty was a humiliation. Hungarian-majority areas along the new frontiers had been handed over without a vote, and an economy built around a single kingdom was disrupted. Slogans such as "No, no, never!" shaped interwar politics, and the wish for revision helped draw Hungary towards Germany and Italy, whose arbitrations in 1938 to 1941 temporarily returned some lands.

For the successor nations, the treaty ended rule by a Hungarian state they regarded as oppressive, pointing to laws that had made Hungarian the language of schools and local administration. Many saw it as a righting of historical wrongs and a form of national liberation rather than a punishment.

The peace treaties of 1947 restored Hungary's 1920 borders with only minor changes. The treaty remains a live issue in Hungary, reflected in debates over support and citizenship for ethnic Hungarians abroad, which has sometimes strained relations with its neighbours.

Our 1914 map shows the Kingdom of Hungary within Austria-Hungary, and our 1920 map the much smaller Hungary beside an enlarged Romania, new Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.