Abstract
Prior to 1914 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was a persistent and severe critic of the foreign policy pursued by the Monarchy, and of the system for conducting it. He criticized the Austro-German alliance and the behaviour of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.1 He ruthlessly condemned the handling of the South Slav question by the Foreign Minister, Count Aerenthal, and severely censured the series of trials held in this connection. His duel with Aerenthal in the Reichsrat and in the Delegations made him hated by the authorities but famous throughout Europe as a man of courage and integrity, as well as wide knowledge.2 This helped to put Bohemia on the map of Europe and to publicize the Czech question and Czech aspirations towards greater equality and autonomy. By his crusade against Vienna’s international policies Masaryk unwittingly prepared the ground for his struggle for independence during the First World War.
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Notes
O. Butter, ‘Zahraniční politika T. G. Masaryka’, Zahraniční politika, 18, no. 4, 1939, pp. 124–42;
Brief references to Masaryk’s foreign policy views were given in ‘T. G. Masaryk and Karel Kramář, Long Years of Friendship and Rivalry,’ in T. G. Masaryk (1850–1937), I, Thinker and Politician, ed. Stanley B. Winters (London and New York, 1990), chap. 7.
On Czech foreign policy, see Zdeněk Tobolka, Politické dějiny československého národa od r. 1848 až do dnešní doby (Prague, 1936), III, no. 2, pp. 461–76, 611–34.
For outside analysis, see Irwin Abrams, ‘The Austrian Question at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Journal of Central European Affairs, 2 (July 1944), pp. 186–201;
A. J. P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918 (London, 1948), chap. 17.
For Marxist analysis, see Jiři Kořalka, ‘The Czech Question in International Relations at the Beginning of the 20th Century’, Slavonic and East European Review, 48 (1970), pp. 248–60;
Jiři Křížek, ‘Česká buržoasní politika a “česká otázka” v letech 1900–1914’, Československý časopis historický, VI (1958), pp. 621–61;
Some of these were excerpted by J. Kovtun, Slovo má poslanec Masaryk (Munich, 1985);
some were summarized by Ernst Rychnowsky, Masaryk (Prague, 1930, 2nd edn).
Several were published by Masaryk as booklets which sometimes differed in content from the original texts: Tak zvaný velezrádný proces v zahřebě (The So-called Treason Trial in Zagreb), Prague, 1909 (henceforth Tak zvaný),
Masaryk, Česká otázka; Naše nynější krise (first published in 1895) (Prague, 1948, 6th edn), pp. 284–5.
See Adolf Černý, Masaryk a slovanstvo (Prague, 1921) for a detailed outline of Masaryk’s prewar and postwar views.
Masaryk, ‘O novoslavismu’, Čas, 13–15 January 1910.
See, in particular, Paul Vyšný, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs 1898–1914 (London, 1977).
On Slavism in general, see Winters, ‘Austroslavism, Panslavism, and Russophilism in Czech Political Thought, 1870–1900’, in Winters and Joseph Held (eds), Intellectual and Social Developments in the Habsburg Empire from Maria Theresa to World War 1 (New York and London, 1975), pp. 165–202.
Brief references are given by Roland J. Hoffmann, Masaryk und die tschechische Frage (Munich, 1988), pp. 360–68;
Bruce M. Garver, The Young Czech Party 1874–1901 and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, 1978), pp. 12, 273;
see Karel Herman and Zdeněk Sládek, Slovanská politika Karla Kramáře (Prague, 1971)
and more dogmatist in spirit, Vladislav Št’ástný, (ed.), Slovanství v národním životě Čechů a Slováků ((Prague, 1968), espec. chap. IV by Karel Herman, chap. VIII by Š’tastný.
Of interest is the retrospective study by Edvard Beneš, Úvahy o slovanství, Hlavní problémy slovanské politiky (first published in 1925–6) (London, 1944)
and Kramář’s polemical reply, Na obranu slovanské politiky (Prague, 1926).
Of less value is Hugo Hantsch, ‘Pan-Slavism, Austro-Slavism, Neo-Slavism: The All Slav Congresses and the Nationality Problems of Austria-Hungary’, Austrian History Yearbook, 1 (1965), pp. 23–37.
But see Ctíbor Nečas, Balkán a česká politika (Brno, 1972), p. 107.
Milada Paulová, Tomáš G. Masaryk a jihoslované (Prague, 1938), pp. 5–34;
also in M. Weingart, (ed.), Sborník přednášek o T. G. Masarykovi (Prague, 1931), pp. 177–200;
See also Hanus J. Hajek, ed., T. G Masaryk Revisited. A Critical Assessment (Boulder, 1983), pp. 133–44.
E.g in his speech at Strakonice in 1891, given in part in J. B. Kozák (ed.), Masaryková práce (Prague, 1930), pp. 80–5.
also Jan Herben, T. G. Masaryk (Prague, 1926), pp. 118–19.
For contemporary discussion of the trials, see Seton-Watson, The Southern Slav Question and the Habsburg Monarchy, first published in 1911 (New York, 1969);
Henry Wickham Steed, Through Thirty Years, 1892–1922, A Personal Narrative (New York, 1924), p. 313.
For this see well-documented Marxist accounts by Milada Paulová, Balkánské války 1912–1913 a česka lid’, Rozpravy Československé Akademie věd, no. 73, 1963 (Prague, 1963);
Roman Szporluk, The Political Thought of Thomas G. Masaryk (Boulder and New York, 1981), pp. 123–4.
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© 1994 H. Gordon Skilling
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Skilling, H.G. (1994). Arch-Critic of Austro-Hungarian Foreign Policy. In: T. G. Masaryk. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13392-5_9
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