The first issue of World History (Világtörténet) for 2015 is a thematic issue dedicated to the topic of „Medieval Diplomacy and the Holy See” edited by Renáta Skorka has been published.

The official and documented form of the relationship between states existed already in the Middle Ages. The envoys sent out in order to protect the persons and wealth of subjects, to settle armed conflicts, or to establish formal alliances, and in the meantime collecting news and information, acted in the medieval period upon ad hoc commissions, and their tasks were related not to geographical regions but to actual tasks. The foreign policies of medieval powers were entrusted to such occasional diplomats, prelates, monks, merchants, intellectuals or lay aristocrats, who were naturally expected to be familiar and comply with the legal, traditional, cultural and ceremonial rules of diplomatic protocol. It is far from surprising that in the 13th to 15th centuries the most widespread diplomatic relations were nurtured by the Papal state, which frequently intervened on the behalf of individuals or states as a protector, mediator, arbitrator or intriguer. All of these roles are either exemplified or at least hinted at in the papers which appear in this second medieval issue of the review Világtörténet.

International conference titled War Nationalisms: Nation- and State-Building Efforts in East Central Europe 1914–1918 was held in Budapest, on 23 June 2015, organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Center for the Humanities, Institute of History and the Hungarian Historical Association.

Exactly one hundred years ago in 1915, the Great War entered its second year. This period brought the realization that speedy victories were unrealistic forcing all those involved to consider new strategies. The purpose of this international conference is to further scholarly debates on the subject of nationalism among the nations of East Central Europe by looking at the experiences of the war from their respective positions.

A new issue of The Hungarian Historical Review (www.hunghist.org) has been published entitled "Everyday Collaboration with the Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe". One of the aims of this issue is to develop a new interpretation of ‘collaboration’ with the communist regimes in Eastern Europe by using terms such as ‘cooperation’ and ‘political participation’. The articles focus not only on secret police reports but also on the role of intelligentsia in Eastern Europe, the party bureaucrats, the artists, the Church-state accommodation, and on cooperation between the local citizens and the Soviet troops. The issue seeks to find new directions for a field that is often disrupted by the politically charged atmosphere in which stories of collaboration are revealed. More at www.hunghist.org

On 29–30 May 2015 an international conference will be held in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Center for the Humanities, Institute of History, about the tributary states of the Ottoman Empire. Papers will address the contacts of Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Ragusa, the Crimean Khanate, Cossack Ukraine and Dagestan with the peripheries of the empire: the border provinces, as well as other tributaries. The event is convened with the generous support of the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. The program of the conference can be read here.