A comprehensive history of the land, people, society, culture and economy of Hungary.

Are you looking for a complete course in Hungarian which takes you effortlessly from beginner to confident speaker? Whether you are starting from scratch, or are just out of practice, Complete Hungarian will guarantee success! Now fully updated to make your language learning experience fun and interactive. You can still rely on the benefits of a top language teacher and our years of teaching experience, but now with added learning features within the course and online. The course is structured in thematic units and the emphasis is placed on communication, so that you effortlessly progress from introducing yourself and dealing with everyday situations, to using the phone and talking about work. By the end of this course, you will be at Level B2 of the Common European Framework for Languages: Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Learn effortlessly with a new easy-to-read page design and interactive features: NOT GOT MUCH TIME? One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started. AUTHOR INSIGHTS Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience. GRAMMAR TIPS Easy-to-follow building blocks to give you a clear understanding. USEFUL VOCABULARY Easy to find and learn, to build a solid foundation for speaking. DIALOGUES Read and listen to everyday dialogues to help you speak and understand fast. PRONUNCIATION Don't sound like a tourist! Perfect your pronunciation before you go. TEST YOURSELF Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress. EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE Extra online articles at: www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of the culture and history of Hungary. TRY THIS Innovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

Despite its relatively small size, Hungary has shown remarkable resilience in its long and difficult history, resisting hostile neighbors and the pressures of two massive neighboring empires. Subjected to invasion, occupation, and frequent historical tragedy, the country has nevertheless survived and even flourished, becoming a stable, sovereign democratic republic with a seat in the European Union. Drawing on his experiences as ambassador to Hungary during the declining years of János Kádár's communist regime, Bryan Cartledge recreates a rich portrait of the country's political, economic, and cultural development. Spanning eleven hundred years, his account begins with the arrival of the Magyars in the ninth century and concludes with the acceptance of Hungary into NATO and the EU. Cartledge recounts Hungary's medieval greatness and its defeats at the hands of the Mongols, Turks, and Nazis. He revisits the nation's unsuccessful struggle for independence and the massive deprivations it suffered after the First World War. He also investigates Hungary's disastrous alliance with the Nazis, motivated by a hope for political redress. Cartledge provides startling insight into the experience of Soviet-imposed communism, which culminated in the brutally suppressed revolution of 1956. Exploiting his intimate knowledge of Hungary and its rich archival sources, he explains how a country can lose almost every war it has engaged in and still forge ahead stronger than before.

In 13th century, the Szeklers were granted a territory (Terra Sirulorum) on the eastern border of the kingdom of Hungary. These lands were donated by the king to the community as a whole, in exchange for the armed border guard service. The use of Szekler customary law, based on a military-judicial -- and most likely multi-ethnic – clan structure was confirmed by the Hungarian crown. Based on extensive archival sources from the 13th to 16th centuries, this fascinating book examines how customary law maintains complex structures of clan membership as a condition of access to judicial and military dignities, and how the Szeklers developed rules for land ownership and devolution. These documents recall legal principles in which the clan has pre-eminence over individuals, all free and equal before their laws. In this period, one can observe an evolution towards individual property, a factor of inequality, constantly shaped and limited by the Szeklers' determination to safeguard their freedom. This unique text is vital reading for scholars interested in Hungarian history, medieval law, and clan structures.

Addresses the experience of Jesuit missionaries, teachers and writers along the peripheries of the Habsburg lands, which stretched to Moldavia, Ukraine, Serbia and Wallachia, and which was continually riven with ethnic tensions. The time scale of the study is from the "high tide" of the Society (often labeled "the first multinational corporation") in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century, until its suppression in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV. The book examines several of the communities situated along the periphery and the records that they left behind about their interactions with the local populations. It constructs a vivid picture of Jesuit life on the frontier that is built up in mosaic fashion and livened by compelling anecdotes. The Jesuits of Royal Hungary exercised a baroque expression modeled after the larger western cities of the Habsburg lands, which was a fragile splendor in part defined by the need to defend Catholicism from the hostility of Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, and others.

A ground-breaking reassessment of the status of information in early modern Europe, first published in 2007.

Although much has been written on the aesthetic value of color, there are other values that adhere to it with economic and social values among them. Through case studies of particular colors and colored objects, this volume demonstrates just how complex the history of color is by focusing on the diverse social and cultural meanings of color; the trouble, pain, and suffering behind the production and application of these colors; the difficult technical processes for making and applying color; and the intricacy of commercial exchanges and knowledge transfers as commodities and techniques moved from one region to another. By emphasizing color's materiality, the way in which it was produced, exchanged, and used by artisans, artists, and craftspersons, contributors draw attention to the disjuncture between the beauty of color and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into its production, circulation, and application as well as to the complicated and varied social meanings attached to color within specific historical and social contexts. This book captures color's global history with chapters on indigo plantations in India and the American South, cochineal production in colonial Oaxaca, the taste for brightly colored Chinese objects in Europe, and the thriving trade in vermilion between Europeans and Native Americans. To underscore the complexity of the technical knowledge behind color production, there are chapters on the 'discovery' of Prussian blue, Brazilian feather techn?and wallpaper production. To sound the depths of color's capacity for social and cultural meaning-making, there are chapters that explore the significance of black ink in Shakespeare's sonnets, red threads in women's needlework samplers, blues in Mayan sacred statuary, and greens and yellows in colored glass bracelets that were traded across the Arabian desert in the late Middle Ages. The purpose of this book is to recover color's complex-and sometimes morally troubling-past, and in doing so,