Bálint Varga's study of Magyar nationalism and symbolic politics in fin-de-siècle Hungary examines how the Hungarian state beginning in the 1860s implemented a project of cultural assimilation. The state used Millennial celebrations and monuments to glorify the medieval conquest and encourage a unified, national identity. Varga investigates how the historical narrative was used to reframe the identity of Hungarians, especially in light of the tension between urban and rural landscapes as well as between different nationalities. The book is about how the history of Prince Árpád and the conquest—the way it was imagined, told, and memorialized—was received, digested, and conceptualized by different Hungarians in seven provincial localities during the millennial year.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part serves as an introduction and provides historical and historiographical context for the analysis in parts two and three. Varga does an excellent job presenting the conditions in Hungary in the nineteenth century, and how a commemorative culture, which had become popular throughout Europe, reached Hungary in the mid-nineteenth century, initially with an interest in the Catholic cult of St. Stephen. By the late nineteenth century a growing interest in commemorating Árpád—the conqueror and founder of the homeland—was growing. It is this story and how Árpád became one of the most important national heroes in late nineteenth-century Hungary that is the subject of The Monumental Nation.

Before the Millennial celebrations and the building of monuments to the conquest, little was known for certain about either Árpád or the conquest. The twelfth-century Gesta Hungarorum provides a chronicle that explains how Árpád's Magyars conquered the homeland and fought various indigenous groups, but agreement on what this meant was lacking. Some inhabitants of Hungary did not appreciate the emphasis that the ethnic Hungarian leadership alone created the unified Christian state. Catholic leaders also worried about a focus on Árpád—a pagan figure. To present a unified history and to emphasize the goals of the Hungarian nation state that was developing after 1867, the Hungarian government organized large-scale celebrations to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the conquest.

Varga describes these centralized activities, but his real focus is on the various monuments built in seven Hungarian locations in the late nineteenth century. It is worth noting that before Kálmán Thaly proposed these monuments there were no modern national memorials (with one exception, in Arad) in provincial towns. The first location was the Castle of Theben, west of Pressburg. The second monument was erected on Zobor Hill, near Nitra. The Munkács castle was the third location. The Fourth was Cenk Hill near Brassó. The fifth monument was built in Semlin. The sixth was located near the Benedictine Monastery of Pannonhalma. And the seventh monument was built in the Great Plain at the ruins of the Pusztaszer abbey. Thaly had clear reasons for choosing these seven locations: “They represented the borders of Hungary and were meant as a message to the neighboring countries (Theben to Austria, Munkács to Russia, Brassó to Romania, and Semlin to Serbia); they recalled the conquest and the glorious Magyar victories over the indigenous peoples: Pusztaszer reminded people of the ancient constitutional legacy of Hungary; while Pannonhalma was related to the Christian heritage” (36).

Part Two of the book examines the local stories of the towns and cities where these seven monuments were built. In each chapter Varga provides a look at conditions in these locations and how locals supported and opposed the new national myth and the monuments that symbolized it. Varga shows how the local religious, class, and regional identities shaped fin-de-siècle Hungary far more than scholarship had previously emphasized. Part Three continues this local focus by examining how local actors participated in Millennial celebrations in 1896 and how stories concerning Millennial monuments were framed.

The Monumental Nation is a kind of genesis story: how the urban and rural leadership of fin-de-siècle Hungary created a myth of origin, and how that myth and the symbolic politics behind the myth were presented and received in seven different locations throughout the country. Varga successfully alters how we think about Hungarian history and especially how we think about the story of ethnic and national belonging. His book challenges top-down histories that emphasize activities in the capital; instead he provides us with a fascinating study of how local and regional identities reacted to, as well as helped to create, national myths, such as the one concerning the Hungarian conquest.