Austria’s losses in the first world war

It is simply untrue to state that at the end of the first world war Austrian territorial losses were limited to its “overseas territories” (Letters, 13 November). Austria lost territory to Italy, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Its “overseas territories” consisted of a small trading concession in the Chinese city of Tianjin, about 800 metres square. Certainly, the Hungarian half of the Habsburg monarchy lost more. But given the largely non-Magyar character of Hungary’s losses in territory and population, for Hungary to continue to raise this as a grievance is akin to Britain complaining about the loss of India and Pakistan. We don’t do that anymore, do we?
Anne Summers
Honorary research fellow, Birkbeck, University of London

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