Modernity and identity -- Liberalisms and conservatisms -- Images of the enemy -- Conservatism -- Its definition and types -- Hungarian conservatives : context and dilemmas -- The liberal challenge : nation-building through reforms -- The conservative answer : law, order, and stability -- What to preserve, what to give up, and what to modernize? (1839-1842) -- The figure of the founding father -- The overture to cautious progress : the memorandum -- The first liberal-conservative press debate -- Order-based modernity -- Separation vs. unification (1842-1843) -- Conservative reform -- The Magyar nation and the non-Magyar nationalities -- Us and them : aristocracy vs. democracy -- Law and order : which kind? (1843-1844) -- What is to be done with the counties? -- Conservative arguments against the juries -- The dietal weight of the cities -- Failure of the diet : their interpretations -- Journalists' offensive : issues and arguments (1845-1847) -- Western models and Hungarian conditions -- Constitutionalism -- Toleration : its guarantees -- Aristocracy, nation, and empire -- Two liberal interpretations -- Party programs (1846-1847) -- The program of the conservatives -- The opposition program -- The differences -- Conservative politics in defense (1847-1848) -- The immediate precedent -- Conservative positions and arguments -- The defeat of the conservatives -- Myth in the making -- The conservatives in 1848/49 -- In opposition -- "Outcasts" of the Ausgleich -- The process of mythmaking -- Epilogue -- Symbolic link between three types of conservatives (1927) -- Conservative master narrative (1920, 1933) -- Metamorphoses narrationis (1942, 1947) -- The constant core (1913-1955) -- The ethnicist re-reading of the master narrative (1939) -- Competing visions of national history.