E96 Ármin Vámbéry and Hungarian Orientalism ft. Turan Explorer

Gladio Free Europe

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Liam, Russian Sam, and Turan Explorer continue their journey across the vast steppe of Hungarian Turanism in this episode on Ármin Vámbéry, the all-time Orientalist white boy whose remarkable wanderings were fundamental to the development of the Hungarian obsession with the East, and the rise of a political movement that would convince millions of Central Europeans that they were in fact Central Asians deep down.

Coming from the humblest of beginnings in Slovakia, Vámbéry overcame abject poverty, brutal antisemitism, and Hungarian Slovakia entirely due to his remarkable language learning abilities and unyielding perseverance. After being hired as a language tutor at the age of 10, he found friends in the local elite of Hungary, eventually pursuing his dream of visiting the Ottoman Empire as a young man. Quickly becoming a favorite of the Turkish aristocracy, one of the only non-Muslims to be called "Effendi," Vámbéry then traveled even further east while posing as an Islamic Dervish, first to Persia and then to the much more remote lands of Central Asia, to cities like Bukhara and Khiva that had not been visited by any European for centuries.

After his return, Vámbéry was celebrated across Europe as one of the 19th century's most prominent orientalists. His research and memoirs were of great interest to the British and Russian governments, who each had their own imperial designs on the regions he visited. But in his homeland of Austria-Hungary, Vámbéry's research inaugurated a national obsession with Central Asia, believed to be the homeland of the Hungarian people. By the end of his life in 1913, this Turanist movement had become the most powerful force in Hungarian nationalism, and Vámbéry its prophet. Just as theories of white supremacy were taking hold everywhere else in Europe, Hungarian nationalists proclaimed brotherhood with the peoples of Turkey, Uzbekistan, Japan, and many other nations abroad.

After his death, the dismemberment of Hungary following World War One caused a rise of ultra-nationalism throughout the nation, and a subsequent failed revolution led by communist Bela Kun shifted Turanism in a violent anticommunist direction. Turan Explorer covers the ways Turanism adapted to the increasingly antisemitic climate of the 1920s and 1930s, even though many earlier Turanists, including Vámbéry, had been Jewish themselves. Last, Russian Sam explores the ways that Hungarian Jews adopted a form of Turanism as a nationalist mythology specific to their own community. Though now-debunked, the popular Khazar theory envisioned Jewish Hungarians as the blood relatives of their Christian neighbors, and shows how this strange obsession with the East could unite disparate groups as much as divide.

Turan Explorer is on ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Tiktok⁠, and ⁠Youtube⁠. He also has a podcast, available on ⁠Spotify⁠ and other platforms.

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