Nineteenth Century Liberal Master Narratives Revisited: A Comparison of Gyula Szekfuű and Benedetto Croce

Abstract

Fascist Italy and the authoritarian state of Hungary under Regent Admiral Horthy presented themselves as regimes that were based on the radical negation of the liberal ‘cultural hegemony’ (Gramsci) dominating the period before 1918. In both countries, historians now began to question the existing ‘Whig interpretations’ of national history, which were created to legitimize the nationbuilding elites of the nineteenth century. Within this political and intellectual context, Benedetto Croce and Gyula Szekfuű contributed to the revision of the liberal master narratives of their respective countries with seminal books.¹