Foresters Building Nation: Nationalism in Hungarian Forestry, 1862–1913

Between the 1860s and the outbreak of World War I, professional forestry was linked to nationalism by two issues: the emergence of a Hungarian-speaking professional community, and the development of Hungarian as a professional language as a programme. The confrontation between the local population and the Hungarian state’s programmatic pursuit of modernisation are outlined in the context of the vision of the professionals sent to investigate the flood disasters in the southern region in the 1910s. The chapter then examines the drivers behind these skilled forest engineers’ attitudes towards nationalism, and captures the spectrum of these attitudes by describing the milieu of higher vocational education and the role of the National Forestry Association (OEE).