The Hungarian defeat to the Ottoman army at the pivotal Battle of Mohács in 1526 led to the division of the Kingdom of Hungary into three parts, altering both the shape and the ethnic composition of Central Europe for centuries to come. Hungary thus became a battleground between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. In this sweeping historical survey, Géza Pálffy takes readers through a crucial period of upheaval and revolution in Hungary, which had been the site of a flowering of economic, cultural, and intellectual progress—but battles with the Ottomans lead to over a century of war and devastation. Pálffy explores Hungary's role as both a borderland and a theater of war through the turn of the 18th century. In this way, Hungary became a crucially important field on which key debates over religion, government, law, and monarchy played out. Reflecting 25 years of archival research and presented here in English for the first time, Hungary between Two Empires 1526–1711 offers a fresh and thorough exploration of this key moment in Hungarian history and, in turn, the creation of a modern Europe.

This unique, comparative description of the Hungarian, Habsburg, and Ottoman military frontiers in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries provides fascinating reading to those interested in military history. It concentrates on the administration, finance, manpower problems, and aspects of the military revolution in the marches.

Surveys Hungary's development from prehistory to the postcommunist era

Based on a professional lifetime of research, teaching and passionate scholarly debates, the author reassesses some of the key events, turning points, concepts, personalities, categories, institutions and legal framework on which Hungary’s constitutional and social progress rested from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

Lavishly illustrated, the book contains seventy five historical maps and colour plates which visualize the historical background of Hungary and introduces its early history to a broader readership. The early history of Hungarians is embedded into the history of Eurasia and special attention is given to the relationship of the Hungarians with the Khazars and the Bulghar-Turks. The first part deals with methods and sources which can be used for elucidating the ancient history of the Hungarians, relying on research into linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and natural history. The second part traces how the Hungarians came into the Carpathian Basin and answers such questions as: who are the Magyars, from where did they come and how did they conquer the land? It reconstructs and examines their early political and social structure, the economy, and religion, and compares the Hungarian medieval process with the ethnogenetic processes of the Germanic, Slavic and Turkic people.