Following the defeat of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848, up to four thousand soldiers and civilians fled the country to escape reprisals; they are referred to as the “Kossuth emigration” (after the leader of the revolution, Lajos Kossuth). Until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, a significant number of emigrants, mainly patriots, students and conscripts, fled to the West to escape the harassment of the imperial police state.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, there were already around 3,000 Hungarians living in the United States, most of whom had left their homeland for political reasons. In Latin America, records show only about 200 Hungarian settlers, mostly former soldiers. Some refugees of the 1868 War of Independence were lured to Australia by the Victoria gold rush, although by 1854, a significant number of Hungarians were living in Sydney and Melbourne.

In the period between 1867 and the start of the First World War, about 1.5 million people emigrated from Hungary, mostly to the United States but also to Australia, Latin America (mainly Brazil and Argentina) and later, to Canada. The emigrants, mainly from agricultural backgrounds, were driven overseas by overpopulation, food shortages, and land shortages.

By the 20th century, a number of populous, prosperous Hungarian “colonies” had sprung up in the New World. Such “Little Hungary” existed, for example, in Cleveland, New Brunswick, Chicago, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Fairfield. They established their own Hungarian schools, churches, newspapers, sports clubs, banks, and self-help societies, as well as Hungarian shops, restaurants, and various clubs and associations.

After 1918, the era of mass emigration from Hungary ended, due to new strict immigration quotas in the U.S. Only a few thousand new Hungarians arrived in the modern “promised land” each year. In fact, for a few years, the Great Depression of 1929-1931 led a significant number of émigrés to return to Hungary from overseas and Western Europe.

The wave of emigration between the two world wars, involved some 200 000, new emigrants leaving the territory of historic Hungary permanently. Destinations included Austria, Weimar Germany, and later France, which hosted millions of migrant workers. Immigrants increasingly chose Canada instead of the U.S. To a lesser extent, Hungarians immigrated to Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and other countries. In this period of economic and political crises, followed by armed conflicts, a new phenomenon emerged: the large-scale migration between countries and continents, both in search of a better life and to flee persecution.

The end of the Second World War in 1945 left some eleven million people far from home, stranded in prison camps, refugee camps and barely liberated death camps across Europe. Among them were more than a million captured Hungarian soldiers, prisoners, civilians, ethnic Germans, and deported Hungarian Jews who now found themselves in Austria and Germany. These stateless populations, displaced by the war from their original places of residence, were classified as Displaced Persons (DPs).

As early as 1946, open conflict broke out among the victorious powers , and the Cold War era began. Stalinist regimes were established by force and terror throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1947, another refugee wave of thousands left Hungary for the West, including the leaders of the democratic parties and many intellectuals.

It is still a controversial question whether the 200,000 refugees who fled after the Hungarian revolution of 1956 can be considered “political emigration”. In fact, this exodus is widely viewed – by the ‘dissidents’ themselves, by the majority of Hungarians who stayed home, by the Party leadership, and by global public opinion - as a ‘vote with their feet’: a mass protest against Soviet-style Communist restoration.

This Hungarian refugee generation of 1956 found a new home in 35 countries on five continents, and their arrival revitalized the Hungarian diaspora in the West. This generation defined its role in terms of commitment to democratic and human rights, and maintaining their heritage while embracing citizenship in their new homelands. Their ideological and cultural contribution still exceeds the achievements of any other Hungarian emigrant generation. This is sadly apparent, too, as members of the 1956 generation are passing away, and along with them, their power to sustain ethnic community life.

In-depth research and analysis of the “post-emigration” era after the regime change of 1989-1990 are not yet complete. The West, including the Hungarian diaspora in the West, is facing new challenges. The last great wave of 1956 refugees arrived more than six decades ago, welcomed with open arms by the Western world as “freedom fighters”. After this exceptionally fortunate historical entrée, the majority of the ‘56ers enjoyed a long period of prosperity, while preserving their language and ethno-cultural identity, in no small part due to the cohesive power of their collective revolutionary experience. For today’s expatriates, the ‘traveling backpack’ is lighter, if somewhat emptier, and they lack a similar shared experience, generational cohesion, and national or political commitment.

On the other hand, there is no ‘iron curtain’ today, and we hope there will never be another one. Thanks to freedom of movement in the European Union, today’s generation can return home at any time, just a few hours’ flight away. Destinations have also changed: while most of the ‘56ers found new homes in Canada, the U.S., South America, South Africa or Australia, today’s expatriates remain largely in Europe.