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MagyarizationAfter the Turkish Invasion of Hungary, which resulted in Slovakia becoming the center for Hungarian rule, relations between the Hungarians and Slovaks got worse and worse. When the Habsburg Empire gave way to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the C19th, Hungary suddenly had a more equal footing with its Austrian neighbors. Now that it did not have to directly answer to Vienna, Hungary began to pass new laws the aim of which was to wipe out non-Magyar cultures in Hungary. As the biggest non-Magyar culture in Hungary, the Slovaks suffered the most. Hungarian was the only language taught in schools, only those Slovaks that adopted the Hungarian culture and language could hope to get a decent job. It even got to the extent where Slovak children were taken from their families to be brought up as Hungarians. So blatant were Hungary's efforts to ethnically cleanse Hungary of the Slovak culture and language that a word was given to their actions - Magyarization. During the dark days of the second half of the C19th, many thousands of Slovaks left their homeland to try and build a new life in America. The reason that Magyarization did not succeed, was down to the will of a strongly religious Slovak people, and also to a number of courageous individuals such as Ludovit Stur, who fought for a Slovak language, a separate Slovak identity and ultimately for a separate Slovak sovereign state.
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