Abstract
NATIONALITY is to serve as an important factor in determining the boundaries of the New Europe. On broad lines the safest guide to the nationality of any populace is the language commonly spoken, usually the mother-tongue. Hence the importance of a map like thatl lately published by Messrs. Stanford. Consider for a moment the political boundaries, both international and national, of Austria-Hungary. Practically nowhere do they coincide with a linguistic boundary. The only people wholly within that empire are the Magyars, who inhabit a compact block of territory bounded on the south by the Drave and the Maros, on the north by the foothills of the Carpathians, on the west by a Jine slightly west of south from Pressburg to the Drave, and on the east by a line north-east from Arad. South-east of the Magyars lie the Rumanians, who extend beyond the Carpathian political boundary; they include islands of Magyar and German settlers, former frontier guards. Along the south and to the south-west the great group of the Yugo-Slavs (Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes) extends beyond the confines of Austria-Hungary. To the west lie the Austrian Germans, -who fill the Danube valley westwards beyond the frontier. North-west are the Slovaks, who link with the Moravians and Czechs as one great “branch of the northern Slavs. These peoples do not reach the Austro-German frontier, since they meet the Germans within the borders of Bohemia, or the Austro-Russian frontier, since they meet the Poles. To the north-east the Magyars adjoin the Ruthenes, or Little Russians, owhose limit is far to the east beyond the Don.
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Linguistic and Political Boundaries in Europe. Nature 100, 27 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100027a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100027a0