Amerikai utam. Kivonatok 1862-ki naplómból. Gróf Károlyi Gyula utitársamnak ajánlva.
Pest: Emich Gusztáv, 1863. Illustrated with a map at the beginning of the volume tracing the author’s route through the United States. First edition. Contemporary half cloth, spine lettered in gilt, marbled paper-covered boards, marbled edges. VIII [1] 10–157 [3] p. and 1 plate (map). Corners bumped; occasional light foxing. Otherwise clean and in fine condition.
A Civil War–era European analysis of the United States, notable for presenting both Union and Confederate constitutional texts alongside a rare contemporary argument for the Southern position on economic grounds.
Béla Széchenyi (1837–1908), son of István Széchenyi, a leading figure of Hungarian reform thought, traveled in the United States in 1862, during the Civil War. Published the following year, Amerikai utam presents extracts from his diary, accompanied by a map tracing his route through major American cities.
Though framed as a travel account, the work is essentially a political reflection. Széchenyi uses his observations to analyze the American crisis, interpreting the Civil War not primarily as a moral conflict over slavery, but as the result of economic imbalance, tariff policy, and tensions within the federal system. In this context, he emerges as a rare European observer willing to articulate a measured understanding of the Southern position on economic and constitutional grounds.
His treatment of slavery is correspondingly nuanced: while affirming abolition in principle, he argues that it must be gradual, with consideration for economic realities, including compensation to slaveholders, and warns against the consequences of unprepared emancipation—an approach closely paralleling his father’s views on serf emancipation in Hungary.
The volume further includes observations on American society, notably on Black populations in North and South and on Native Americans, alongside the reproduction of key political documents: the Declaration of Independence, and the constitutions of both the United States and the Confederate States. The latter appears here, to our knowledge, for the first time in Hungarian, reflecting Széchenyi’s aim to present the conflict through its primary texts.
Written with a didactic purpose, the work uses America as a comparative model for Hungarian readers and marks a transition in Hungarian travel writing on the United States, from the Reform Era—focused on political models of democracy—to the later Dualist period, which emphasized American progress and emigration, reflecting a shift from earlier idealized views toward a more critical assessment shaped by civil war.
Reference: Glant, T.: A Hungarian Aristocrat in Civil War America: Count Béla Széchenyi’s 1862 Study Trip to the United States of America, published in Studies in Travel Writing, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 287–301.
Not in Sabin.
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Price: €1,000.00