Živnostenská Banka (Trades Bank) and Its Participation in the Banking Consortia/Syndicates of Interwar Czechoslovakia*

Eduard Kubů and Barbora Štolleová

Charles University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 4 (2024): 533-558 DOI 10.38145/2024.4.533

One of the characteristic features of the development of the Czechoslovak economy in the interwar period was its progressive concentration and increasing organization, whether initiated from above (the persistence of a higher degree of state interventionism) or from below in the sense of voluntary cooperation and clustering across the business environment. In addition to the traditional associations for carrying out business, such as joint-stock companies, public companies, limited liability companies, and others, which were legal entities and were usually established for an unlimited period of time, new instruments of cooperation were becoming more and more common. These were networks of cartels, conventions, gentlemen’s agreements, and syndicates which restricted the free market. The study sheds light on characteristic forms of bank-to-bank cooperation, namely consortia/syndicates, using the example of the largest and most important Czechoslovak bank of the interwar period, Živnostenská Banka pro Čechy a Moravu v Praze (the Trades Bank for Bohemia and Moravia in Prague). It points out the relatively large number of consortia and offers a typology derived from their functions.

Keywords: banking consortium/syndicate, Czechoslovakia, interwar period, Živnostenská Banka (Trades Bank)

Until the end of World War I, the economies of the Bohemian lands and Upper Hungary were firmly embedded in the Danube monarchy. Their development and modernization were closely linked to economic, social, cultural, and, last but not least, political developments. A key milestone was the abolition of serfdom in 1848 and the gradual opening of space for the formation of civil society and entrepreneurial activity. A further impetus to the dynamics of development in the Bohemian lands was given by the Austrian defeat in 1859, which meant the loss of the advanced northern Italian provinces and accelerated the transfer of the industrial core of the monarchy to the Bohemian lands. Hand in hand with this was the move towards the adoption of the February Constitution (1861) and the strengthening of the development of representative institutions of the legal order, both in the field of civil law and the legal regulation of the business environment. Viewed from the perspective of big business, economic modernization was a matter for the national German and, hence, Jewish-German elites. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Czech elites were only just beginning to play a more prominent role.¹

The predominance of the German-speaking business milieu in the Bohemian lands was not only marked in traditional industries but also in industries characterized which were part of the so-called Second Industrial Revolution (the second wave of industrialization). The basis of the capital market in its large business segment developed in the same way. It was characterized both by the establishment of branches of big Viennese banks and by the formation of joint-stock financial institutions linked to private banking. A smaller but later nevertheless extremely important stream of financial institutions in the Bohemian lands was represented by the concentration of the national Czech capital. Its key source was the Schulze-Delitzsch type credit cooperative movement, which gained strength in the 1860s. In 1868, Živnostenská Banka was founded as their central financial institution. In the first decade of the twentieth century, although it still retained its provincial character and headquarters, it was one of the six largest Austrian big banks. In contrast to the Viennese institutions (and this was also true of other Czech national banking institutions), Živnostenská Banka (Trades Bank), despite its generally high turnover, financed mainly medium-sized and smaller businesses. Before the fall of the monarchy, even the nascent Czech national business was, for the most part, dependent for its financing on the Viennese big banks, which had a dense network in the Bohemian lands and were able to offer bigger loans on more favorable terms.

The establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 dramatically changed the nature of the capital market in the Bohemian lands. Rapidly increasing inflation in Austria and Hungary, together with monetary reform in Czechoslovakia which pushed towards deflation, effectively cut domestic large firms off from their traditional financial connections in Vienna and Budapest. At the same time, the domestic capital market was insufficiently linked to the foreign capital markets of Western Europe or markets overseas. The significance of the various types of financial institutions and, above all, the significance of the individual national segments changed dramatically. The national Czech segment, led by Živnostenská Banka, gained the upper hand. The national German segment and the Viennese segment, in particular, were significantly weakened. The latter was partly dissolved in the national Czech environment through the nostrification of companies,² which were partly “transformed” into commercially interesting and relatively strong segment of multinational financial institutions, both mixed (i.e. Czech-German) and financial institutions with foreign participation (mainly British and French capital).³

The redefinition of the capital market in the new republic had major consequences for its functioning. It reduced the power of the financial institutions. The Czechoslovak big banks were incomparably weaker and less experienced than their Viennese predecessors in terms of their potential and also in terms of their management skills. Moreover, in the early years of the republic, they concentrated on building and developing their industrial concerns by making large-scale investments in stock portfolios on their own account, which subsequently limited or even ruined their ability to offer companies credit. A new situation arose for the Czechoslovak industry in the sense that large-scale credit was more difficult to obtain and more expensive. The weakness and undercapitalization of the market became a characteristic attribute of the interwar period, undermining the modernization of industry and business in general.

The Capital Market and the Term Consortium

The transformation of the capital market also led to changes in the business strategies used by banks and the firms they financed. The new conditions generated new problems and in many ways changed the nature of cooperation. On the one hand, the efforts of large financial institutions to build their concerns as an exclusive sphere of influence of the banking institution and to define sharply themselves against the competition were strengthened. On the other hand, the limited amount of capital on the market created conditions for the expansion of existing and the formation of new or until then only infrequently used manners of cooperation, even of a relatively long-term nature. The tendency to establish closer cooperation was also supported by the development of the economic cycle, especially its protracted periods of depression, which was characteristic of most of the interwar period.

A signal of a higher or even new stage of cooperation among banks in the Bohemian lands and then Czechoslovakia was the establishment in 1917 of the Association of Czech Banks, which later became the exclusive professional association of the large joint-stock commercial banks in Czechoslovakia, including the domestic German banks. It was on the basis of this association that coordinated banking procedures concerning credit and other matters were developed, in particular the creation of a Czech and then Czechoslovak banking cartel (analogous to the Austrian cartel of 1907), which determined the conditions of capital and money trade, employment issues, and last but not least consultations on cooperation with the state (internal loans, nostrification of companies, etc.).⁴

One important form of cooperation was the so-called banking consortia. These associations were formed for a “temporary period” to carry out one or more transactions on a “joint account.” The legal regulations varied largely from country to country. In Cisleithania, they were based on the General Commercial Code of December 17, 1862,⁵ which was later incorporated into the legal system of the Czechoslovak Republic. The term “consortium” referred to a non-commercial company governed by commercial law, which wasn’t a legal entity, was not entered in the commercial register and did not necessarily require a written agreement (contract). The established terminology of the time referred to “occasional companies” or partnerships and “a metà” company. The term “syndicate” was also used in the literature of the time.⁶ The reason for entering into consortium agreements was usually the considerable size of the planned transaction and the possibility of distributing the risks associated with a particular deal among several parties.⁷ Consortium deals were often associated with the banking business. The expression “banking cooperative”⁸ or “association of banks”⁹ was also used at the time to describe the function of a banking consortium.

The number of consortium/syndicate-type agreements, which had been common in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy before World War I, grew in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and especially in the 1930s to such an extent that special units were set up in the large banks to manage them and keep separate accounts for these transactions.¹⁰ These units were referred to as consortium/syndicate departments. There were several reasons for their establishment, including perhaps most importantly the sheer number of contracts but also the specifics and complexity of keeping the agenda. This type of business was classified in contemporary manuals and textbooks as “more difficult” from the accounting point of view,¹¹ and it was also demanding in terms of the actual negotiation and conclusion of deals and the calculation of profits and benefits achieved. Moreover, the data on consortium transactions were considered very “sensitive.”¹² Essentially, they were to remain hidden from the staff of other departments of the bank.

Consortia of banks are subjects touched on only marginally in the older and contemporary literature as well.¹³ The discussion below outlines the mechanisms of these agreements and their economic impacts in the specific case of Živnostenská Banka as the most important financial institution in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period. It offers a typology of consortia according to the purposes and functions for which they were established as a starting point for further research. Specifically, it focuses on consortia that were founded (1) with the purpose of establishing a company or taking over and selling off shares, (2) to guarantee and place public loans and bonds of public corporations or the state, (3) to intervene in some fashion in market affairs, (4) to ensure the influence of the group of shareholders in the company (so-called blocking consortia), and (5) to secure business and credit connections of companies (credit). Last but not least, the discussion below also considers the roles of the consortium of banks for state credit operations as a specific consortium of this type. Some questions fall outside the scope of the study, including the banks’ arrangements arising from ordinary banking transactions (i.e. agreements on foreign currency transfers, etc.), as well as “syndicates” in the sense of a higher organizational level of the cartel, which were legal entities (e.g. import and export syndicates, cartel sales offices), and the forced syndication of smaller firms in the 1930s for the purpose of their rational state-directed concentration.

A Typology of Consortia with Participation of Živnostenská Banka
(According to Their Functions and Purpose)

As already indicated, Živnostenská Banka was the leading actor in the Czecho­slo­vak financial sector in the interwar period. In 1919, its share capital amounted to 200 million Czechoslovak crowns (by 1937, it had risen to 240 million), and its reserves amounted to 97 million crowns. The bank formed a concern that included a wide range of diverse Czech/Czechoslovak enterprises, including agriculture, sugar, engineering, textile, chemical, electrotechnical, commercial, and other companies. In principle, the bank aimed for proportional representation of all major sectors of the national economy. Živnostenská Banka benefited from its close ties to the state apparatus, to which many of its senior executives as well as middle-ranking officials moved. In the 1920s, its exponents repeatedly held the post of Czechoslovak economic minister, most often the post of finance minister. At a critical time in the birth of the state, the bank provided financial backing for its administration, direct loans and underwriting/arranging long-term public loans (see below). The extraordinary influence of Živnostenská Banka on state economic policy derived from these facts.

Type 1. Among the most frequent consortium agreements with bank participation in the period under review were consortia to establish a company or to take over and sell off an issue of company shares.¹⁴ The “textbook” examples, manuals, and dictionaries of the time are based on this type of consortium agreement. A 1913 handbook of bank accounting gives the hypothetical example of Živnostenská Banka initiating the formation of a consortium to sell shares of an unnamed company.¹⁵ Two other credit institutions, namely the Česká průmyslová banka (Bohemian Industrial Bank) and Pozemková banka (Land Bank), joined as members of the consortium. Each of the members of the newly formed consortium participated in the project with one-third, with Živnostenská Banka managing the project. The consortium took over the shares of the unnamed company at a predetermined price (216 crowns per share) and subsequently provided for subscription at a price above the acceptance price (230 crowns per share). The project was settled in a joint consortium account held by the gerent (bank in charge), in this case Živnostenská Banka, which included expenses, interest, and commissions. Once the transaction was closed, the profit shares were transferred to the individual consortium members.¹⁶

The importance of consortium agreements in the context of the founding activities of banks before World War I was captured by Czech historian Ctibor Nečas, who analyzed the activities of Czech banks in southeastern Europe. Živnostenská Banka, like some other domestic banks, apparently participated in several agreements established outside the Bohemian lands. It participated, for example, in the consortium for the increase of the share capital of the Trieste steamship company, in the arrangement for the transformation of the Split marble mining company into a joint-stock company, in the consortium for the establishment of the Herceg-Bosna joint-stock insurance company, and in particular in the consortium for the establishment of sugar factories (Osijek, Vrbas, Szolnok).¹⁷ When issuing, buying, or selling shares, the consortium agreements did not always have to be large-scale funding projects. An example of a smaller consortium with the participation of Živnostenská Banka in the Czechoslovak environment (its other members were the Spolek pro chemickou a hutní výrobu or United Chemical and Metallurgical Works Ltd. and “Solo” Czechoslovak United Match and Chemical Works) include the sale consortium of “Solo” shares (“Solo” was both an object and a member of the consortium), which was established in the autumn of 1937 to place only 10,075 Solo shares on the market (i.e. approximately three percent of the company’s capital).¹⁸

In practice, the simple examples presented in the manuals took on different variations, sometimes highly sophisticated, and the agreements could display various asymmetries and specificities. During its existence, the consortium typically had a gerent, either permanent or it was administered on a parity basis, meaning that the participants rotated in leadership positions at set intervals (usually after a year). The shares of securities taken over were not always equal. Each of the participating banking institutions could participate with a predetermined quota. The circumstances of the issue, purchase, or sale of corporate shares could be (and in practice were) linked to other organizational actions of the bank (such as shareholding and financing).

Type 2. Another type of consortium agreement involving banks was consortia to guarantee and place public loans and bonds of public corporations or the state. For example, a consortium of banks could be formed to underwrite municipal loan bonds.¹⁹ An example of wide-ranging cooperation is the agreement of 13 national Czech joint-stock commercial banks (including Živnostenská Banka), four public financial institutions, and one Slovak bank with the Czechoslovak National Committee of November 8, 1918, i.e. only five days after the establishment of the Czechoslovak state. The subject of the arrangement was a state loan of “National Freedom” in the amount of one billion crowns. Based on this loan, debentures were issued bearing interest at four percent and maturing within four years. The loan was of great symbolic significance and the banks waived their usual remuneration and only claimed reimbursement of the costs of securing the loan, in addition to providing the state with an advance of 100 million crowns.²⁰

Type 3. Consortia of banks could be set up to support the price of certain securities on the stock exchange. An example of an intervention consortium is the consortium referred to as “B” in the internal documentation of Živno­stenská Banka. Five leading Czechoslovak joint-stock commercial banks and one private bank agreed to form it in 1920, namely on December 24, 1920. These were the Agrární banka československá (the Czechoslovak Agrarian Bank, or simply the Agrarian Bank), the Česká průmyslová banka (Bohemian Industrial Bank), the Böhmische Eskompte-Bank und Credit-Anstalt (BEBCA), the Pražská úvěrní banka (Prague Credit Bank), and Živnostenská Banka, which were supplemented by the private banking house of Bedřich Fuchs.²¹ The purpose of the consortium was to carry out intervention purchases and sales of securities on the Prague Stock Exchange. For this purpose, each bank deposited three million crowns in the syndicate account and the firm of B. Fuchs deposited two million crowns. A total of 17 million crowns was to be used for the intervention purchases and sales of the thirty companies defined in the agreement. These were companies in which the participating banks had a special interest and which were included in their concerns. Purchases of shares were to be made for shares with a quotation value of up to 1,000 crowns if they had fallen by ten percent, for shares with a quotation value of up to 2,000 crowns if they had fallen by seven percent, and for shares with a quotation value of over 2,000 crowns if they had fallen by five percent compared with the last exchange rate. Other provisions of the consortium agreement specified the aforementioned basic key. The consortium was managed by Prague Credit Bank and the account was held by Živnostenská Banka. The agreement was not limited in time. The members agreed later to terminate it on June 8, 1926. The account had a passive balance of 7.3 million crowns at that time. However, the securities depot in whose favor the intervention was made showed a lot of shares of 13 companies with an exchange rate value of 13.4 million crowns. The result of the consortium was therefore positive.²²

Type 4. In terms of consequences, shareholder consortia or blocking consortia were among the most important. František Špička, the procurer of the Bohemian Industrial Bank and author of a comprehensive manual on bank organization and the technique of bank transactions from 1926, paid considerable attention to consortium agreements in the context of the interpretation of the tasks and activities of the industrial departments of banks, which “were intended to ensure that groups which individually do not have a majority in the company have a decisive influence on the company.”²³ A characteristic attribute of this type of consortium agreement was that it was backed by the holding of an inalienable block of shares by the consortium members. The shares tied by the agreement served as a guarantee of the functionality of the consortium (the principle of exercising voting rights at general meetings of the companies was included in the consortium agreement). The consortium with the participation of banks and also often industrial or commercial capital (mixed consortium) served to ensure medium-term or even long-term influence on the company and was usually signed for five to ten years with an automatic renewal clause. It was also commonly referred to as a “blocking” consortium.²⁴ Its primary function was to create a controlling block of shares, thereby “blocking” the influence of other minority shareholders. It often created its own specific institutional structure, consisting of a negotiating board the function of which was to decide on the course of action within the respective firm. In essence, this was a structure analogous to the organizational structures of individual firms. The consortium was an expression of the concentration of industrial and commercial capital and the concentration of banking power. Groups of banks could seek to influence or control a key group of producers in a particular branch, or in other words, to gain a monopoly or oligopoly advantage.

One example of a blocking consortium with the participation of Živnostenská Banka is the consortium of shareholders of the Akciová společnost pro průmysl mléčný (Dairy Produce Company or simply Radlice Dairy). The agreement was concluded on June 28, 1935 on the basis of 27,587 shares of the company, which at that time represented over 78 percent of its share capital.²⁵ Participating in the agreement were Cukrovary Schoeller a spol, a.s. (Schoeller Sugar Factories and Co., Ltd., with 4,200 shares), the Bohemian Sugar Industry Company (with 4,800 shares), BEBCA (with 5,000 shares), the Ústřední jednota hospodářských družstev (Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, or ÚJHD, with 12,587 shares), and Živnostenská Banka (with 1,000 shares). The management of the consortium consisted of seven representatives, with each member-entity sending one representative and the ÚJHD (given the number of shares contributed) sending three representatives. The most important position within the consortium was held by Živnostenská Banka, despite the fact that it had the lowest stake. It asserted its influence through sugar companies and also through BEBCA. The consortium shares were placed in the custody and administration of Živnostenská Banka and the members committed not to sell or otherwise transfer their ownership rights during the term of the agreement without the express consent of the other members. Ownership transfers “within the consortium” were the exception. The purpose of the consortium was “to secure for its members a permanent influence over the management and administration of the Radlice Dairy, as well as to secure for its members proper representation in all the statutory bodies of the company and to secure the joint action of the members of the syndicate in all matters concerning the Radlice Dairy.”²⁶

The representation of the members of the consortium on the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, and the Board of Auditors of Radlice Dairy was in proportion to the shares bound by agreement, with the position of chair­man belonging to the “group” of Živnostenská Banka and the position of vice-chairman to the ÚJHD. The consortium agreement included a specific arrangement regarding the appointment of the top management of Radlice Dairy. The deliberations within the consortium were conducted by voting in proportion to the shares bound by agreement (with one share being equal to one vote). This was done by majority vote, with matters requiring unanimous approval being explicitly named (pricing strategy, payment of dividends, amendments to the consortium agreement, including the purchase of shares for the consortium, entering into cartel agreements, reducing or increasing share capital). Externally, the members of the consortium committed to exercising voting rights in the statutory bodies of Radlice Dairy in accordance with the consortium’s resolutions. The agreement was non-terminable for five years and was to be automatically renewed for one year each time thereafter unless terminated by a member.²⁷

The blocking consortium could be formed with the participation of domestic and foreign interest groups. This was the case with the Pražská železážská společnost (Prague Ironworks Company, PŽS), which had its main plant in Kladno. The consortium agreement concluded in the 1930s between Živnostenská Banka and the Mannesmann concern, represented by its plants in Chomutov (Mannesmannröhren-Werke), expressed the cooperation between the Reich-German capital group, which primarily sought to secure some influence on the company’s production profile and the supply of materials (ingots) for the Chomutov plant, and Živnostenská Banka group, which expressed the growing share of national Czech capital in the company and, above all, its interest in financing the company. The agreement, backed by 45.6 percent of the capital of PŽS (Mannesmannröhren-Werke providing 25.6 percent and Živnostenská Banka providing 20.21 percent), gave its participants a comfortable voting majority at the general meetings of PŽS.²⁸

The consortium agreement was also adopted as a tool for coordination to regulate relations in the Prague company Philips Ltd. The agreement concluded on February 3, 1937 between the Dutch Philips (N. V. Philips Gloei­lampenfabrieken in Eindhoven), Ringhoffer-Tatra, and Živnostenská Banka bound all the shares of the company (in the ratio 40:35:25) for ten years.²⁹ The shares with a total nominal value of three million c­rowns were deposited in Živnostenská Bank’s depot. The agreement explicitly defined the motivations of the parties involved. The Dutch company was interested in “ensuring that the management of the Prague company bearing its name is in line with the Group’s business and technical principles.”³⁰ Živnostenská Banka pursued the objective of maintaining a banking relationship with the company (specifically, the agreement stipulated a minimum scope of 80 percent financing on the relevant terms of the major banks in Prague). Ringhoffer-Tatra wanted to develop technical cooperation with Philips, and the agreement stipulated that “this effort should be taken into account to the maximum extent possible without disadvantaging Philips.”³¹ Živnostenská Banka and Ringhoffer-Tatra were guaranteed in writing a minimum yield on the shares tied up by the consortium (a net dividend of six percent). The Dutch company or a third party appointed by it was given the option of buying the shares belonging to the other members of the syndicate (within four weeks). A further agreement stipulated, within the same time frame, that the Dutch company would be obliged to take over the shares of Philips Ltd. from Živnostenská Banka and Ringhoffer-Tatra if they were offered to it.

Consortia of shareholders involving banks could in some cases bind blocks of shares in several different companies at the same time. This was true in the case of the shareholders’ agreements of Czechoslovak distilleries signed in the wake of the completion of the process of the so-called repatriation of Austrian capital following the financial collapse of the Österreichische Creditanstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (1931). In 1932, with the participation of the Agrarian Bank, the Družstvo hospodářských lihovarů pro prodej lihu v Praze (Cooperative of Agricultural Distilleries for the Sale of Spirit in Prague), the ÚJHD, and Živnostenská Banka, the Czech distillery consortium was established, the purpose of which was to “ensure a permanent influence on the management and administration” of the six explicitly named Czechoslovak distillery companies and to “ensure a uniform approach by the members of this consortium in all matters.”³² Later, the consortium was extended and included another banking institution (BEBCA) and, temporarily, the Vienna-based A. G. für Spiritusindustrie.³³ The agreement provided for the establishment of a special “consortium leadership” to secure the agreement, to which the consortium members sent two representatives each. Later, detailed rules were drawn up specifying the roles of the “consortium leadership” and the “board of directors” and other mechanisms for the functioning of the syndicate.³⁴

Type 5. Agreements to secure commercial and credit links of companies were also made in the form of consortia. These agreements involved the exclusive provision of the firm’s banking operations, including the direct financing by the consortium banks of capital-intensive operations that were beyond the realistic capacity of a single credit institution, either because of insufficient funds or because the amount of funds committed was so large that it created an increased risk of loss. The agreements on the provisioning of the commercial and credit link were separate contracts, and in cases of the formation of a “blocking consortium,” they could also be a direct part of the agreement.³⁵ An example of banks acting jointly in the provision of credit can be seen in the draft credit agreement between Živnostenská Banka with BEBCA and the Kolin spirit potash factory and refinery from 1937. The banks established a credit framework of four million crowns. The first half could be drawn down without further conditions, while guarantees were required for the second half. For the duration of the agreement (five years), the company was obliged to concentrate all its credit and banking transactions exclusively with the participating financial institutions. The banks were to rotate in charge every year. They also stipulated that they would be the place for the deposit of shares for general meetings and the payout point for dividend coupons, for which they charged a quarter percent commission on the amount paid out. The agreement specified the loan guarantees (insurance). On request, the company was obliged to provide information on the employment of the company and the running of its business, as well as a balance sheet and an account of profits and losses.³⁶

The Consortium Department at Živnostenská Banka had been in existence since January 14, 1921, and on that date, the credit affairs of 17 companies had fallen under it. The number of firms subsequently fluctuated. The department dealt with dozens of firms continuously,³⁷ and in 1938, according to a uniquely preserved inventory, there were 32 firms. The size of credits ranged from hundreds of thousands of crowns to millions of crowns, mainly. Most of the organizational schemes of Živnostenská Banka were preserved after the war, but all indications suggest that the Consortium Department of Živnostenská Banka was organized directly under the General Secretariat of the Bank.³⁸

There were essentially two techniques according to which consortium transactions were conducted. The first is of the type indicated above. The firm’s/subject’s overdraft account was held with only one bank, which handled all the firm’s transactions and at the same time set up share accounts for the other participating banks. “Turnover settlement” was carried out at regular intervals according to agreed quotas. The management of the account could belong to one of the banks for the entire duration of the agreement, or it could be rotated at agreed times. The second way of carrying out credit consortium transactions was for the firm to set up overdraft accounts with all the participating banks, which had the advantage of enabling it to carry out transactions with several institutions and thus benefit from the flexibility of one bank for certain operations. At fixed dates, the banks would then settle the balances between the accounts, bringing the account totals into balance with the agreed quotas. There were also cases when fixed quotas were set for particular types of operations and transactions (foreign exchange operations, etc.).³⁹

If we focus on the specific banks with which Živnostenská Banka cooperated in the area of securing financing between the wars, we can say that the range varied and evolved over time. The preserved records of the consortium department show that Viennese banks were still frequent partners for Živnostenská Banka in the interwar period, especially in the early 1920s. Živnostenská Banka shared its clients in particular with the Österreichische Creditanstalt für Handel und Gewerbe, Bodencreditanstalt, and the Niederösterreichische Escompte Gesellschaft. The counterbalance to these gradually fading links was cooperation between Živnostenská Banka and domestic Czechoslovak banks. The most frequent were the alliances of traditional national Czech banks (Živnostenská Banka, the Agrarian Bank, the Bohemian Industrial Bank, and the Prague Credit Bank) and, less frequently, the cooperation of Živnostenská Banka with domestic German institutions, such as Böhmische Union-Bank and Böhmische Escompte-Bank. Cooperation with the latter German bank grew significantly only after its transformation into BEBCA, when Živnostenská Banka became directly involved in its capital.

Figure 1. Banking consortia providing business and credit connections between companies with the participation of Živnostenská Banka as of 1938 (in percent)
Explanatory note: ŽB = Živnostenská Banka
Source: AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/3959/1, list of consortium companies (undated).

The post-1945 record of how consortium accounts were settled back to 1938 provides evidence of the nature of the cooperation between Živnostenská Banka and other financial institutions at the end of the First Czechoslovak Republic.⁴⁰ For this year, as mentioned above, 32 companies are listed, which may seem like a low number, but the volume of transactions behind it is undeniably large. In most cases, these were profiling entities in their field of business with many dependent companies: PŽS, Explosia, Synthesia, the distillery complex, Poldina huť (Poldihütte/Poldi steel factory), Ringhoffer-Tatra, Vítkovické horní a hutní těžířstvo (Vítkovice Mining and Metallurgical Mining), Králodvorská cementárna (Königshofer Cement Factory), etc. In terms of the technique according to which consortium transactions were made, 17 companies were represented on the principle of a single account with an additional settlement between the participants (in nine cases Živnostenská Banka had the leadership position and in eight cases the leadership rotated). For 11 companies, parallel accounts were held with the participating banks, and the balances were settled according to quotas. For four companies, quotas were specified according to the type of transactions. The consortia in which Živnostenská Banka par­ticipated consisted of two to five banks. In 15 cases, Živnostenská Banka pro­vided services in cooperation with one other banking institution, in 11 cases with two, in four cases with three, and in two cases with four other banking institutions (see Fig. 1). The most frequent partner of Živnostenská Banka in the provision of consortium loans was BEBCA (in 14 cases), in eight cases it was an alliance between Živnostenská Banka, BEBCA, and the Agrarian Bank (e.g. in the financing of distillery enterprises), in four cases Živnostenská Banka participated alongside the Agrarian Bank, the Prague Credit Bank, and the Bohemian Industrial Bank, and in two cases Živnostenská Banka coordinated with BEBCA and the Böhmische Union-Bank. The broad-based coalitions were rather unique and were based on the needs of the specific project. The specific configurations applied are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Formations under banking consortium agreements providing business and credit connections between companies with the participation of Živnostenská Banka as of 1938 (in percent)
Explanatory notes: ŽB = Živnostenská Banka; BEBCA = Böhmische Eskompte-Bank and Credit-Anstalt; AGB = Agrarian Bank; BUB = Böhmische Union-Bank; Anglo-PÚB = Anglo-československá a Pražská úvěrní banka (Anglo-Czechoslovak and Prague Credit Bank);
ČPB = Bohemian Industrial Bank; VDB = Všeobecná družstevní banka (General Cooperative Bank); ÚJHD = Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives
Source: AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/3959/1, list of consortium companies (undated).

A variation in the context of credit consortia was also a consortium that did not directly provide the funds but served as an intermediary and guaranteed credit from third-party entities (including another consortium of banks) with its assets.

Type 6. The consortium of banks for state credit operations was a unique type of banking consortium in interwar Czechoslovakia. This consortium was to act as an advisory body to the Czechoslovak government in financial policy, especially in its lending, either by banks directly or by intermediating loans and purchases on foreign markets. These roles were later supplemented by other roles, such as guaranteeing domestic and foreign loans and providing advances to the state, for example, for the purchase of grain. The consortium operated on the principle of quotas. In the autumn of 1919, the Czechoslovak Minister of Finance and the directors of nine Czechoslovak banks, six banks with Czech-language administration (the Agrarian Bank, the Bohemian Industrial Bank, the Moravian Agrarian and Industrial Bank, the Prague Credit Bank, the Central Bank of Czech Savings Banks, and Živnostenská Banka), two banks with German-language administration (the Böhmische Escompte-Bank and Böhmische Union-Bank), and one bank with Slovak administration (the Slovak Bank in Ružomberok/Rózsahegy), took part in the preparatory work for the establishment of the consortium.⁴¹ The consortium was thus the result of cooperation among a very broad spectrum of Czechoslovak financial institutions which were highly divergent in terms of their objectives and national profiles and fiercely competitive on the capital and money markets. The number of banks in the consortium was increasing, thus the quota of individual institutions decreased. The quota of Živnostenská Banka, which was set at 27.06 percent in the first year of the consortium’s operation, had fallen to 15.9 percent by the mid-1930s. Even so, the role of this banking institution remained exceptional, with by far the highest quota in the group of joint-stock commercial banks (other banks had a quota in the range of 0.4 to 6.6 percent). The most significant increase in the period under review was recorded by the public-law institutions, which negotiated fixed quotas (the highest was Postal Savings Bank with a quota of 20 percent, followed by Land Bank with a quota of 6 percent).⁴²

The Consortium/Syndicate Transactions in the Balance Sheets of Banks and Živnostenská Banka in Particular

Published balance sheets of banks in interwar Czechoslovakia give only an idea of the importance of consortium deals in the context of their other business activities. On the asset side of the balance sheet, there was a separate column/item for “Participation” or “Consortium/Syndicate Participation,” which, according to contemporary interpretations of banking, was supposed to be a cumulative expression of the bank’s consortium/syndicate participations as well as participations in the basic capital of non-joint-stock companies,⁴³ or a column summarizing all “financial participations in companies with which [banks] are linked by granting them credit, reserving influence on management.”⁴⁴ According to data from 1922, this item cumulatively amounted to only 395.7 million crowns for all joint-stock banks in the Bohemian lands and 1.29 percent of their balance sheet total.⁴⁵ In 1929, the item is represented by the amount of 1,054.2 million crowns (see Table 1). This indicates the growing importance of consortium transactions, though compared to other asset items, their share in the bank’s business activities still appears to have been relatively low. The dominant item on the side of officially reported assets for banks in the Bohemian lands was clearly the item “debtors” (65.86 percent of the balance sheet in 1929), followed by the items “bills of exchange” (8.70 percent) and “securities” (8.69 percent).⁴⁶ The latter item also indicated the increasing involvement of banks in industrial and commercial business.

Table 1. Consortium and syndicate participation in the balance sheets of joint-stock banks in the Bohemian lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia) in 1929 (in thousands of crowns)

	Banks with national Czech administration	Banks with national German administration	Banks with national mixed administration	Banks in the Bohemian lands
Consortium/syndicate participation	445,560	158,165	450,437	1,054,162
Total assets	13,930,371	6,276,616	11,138,301	31,345,288
Share of consortium/syndicate participation in total assets	3.20 percent	2.52 percent	4.04 percent	3.36 percent
Source: Statistická příručka republiky Československé. vol. 4, 260.

As mentioned above, consortium agreements were among the types of deals that were considered highly sensitive (even classified). Antonín Pimper, an expert on the development of Czech banking at the time, drew attention to the fact that banks’ shares in industrial and commercial businesses often tend to be weighed differently in accounting and “usually represent secret reserves for the institutions in question.”⁴⁷ In some banks, it has become common for these shares to be balanced at the nominal share value and not at the current rate. The current rate could have been several times higher, but the nominal share value was given instead to reduce the figure shown in the final balance sheet. As a specific case of a bank that proceeded in this manner, he chose Živnostenská Banka, on which we have focused in this study. Under the item of consortium participations in 1928, Živnostenská Banka only showed a round figure of 160 million crowns, and Pimper noted in this context that “it is known to insider circles that the actual figure of Živnostenská Banka’s participation must be disproportionately larger.”⁴⁸ It is archivally documented that Živnostenská Banka maintained double balance sheet, an official one for the public and for review bodies, and a real one (which gave more accurate figures concerning the values of its assets) for internal use.

Table 2. Consortium/syndicate participation in the balance sheet of Živnostenská Banka by year (1921–1937), rounded to the nearest thousand crowns

	Consortium/syndicate participation	Total balance sheet assets	Share of consortium/syndicate participation in total assets
1921	21,790	5,269,744	0.41 percent
1922	26,790	4,845,008	0.55 percent
1923	51,745	4,907,020	1.05 percent
1924	51,758	4,588,810	1.13 percent
1925	50,025	4,597,858	1.09 percent
1926	150,000	4,888,009	3.07 percent
1927	160,000	5,040,327	3.17 percent
1928	190,000	5,296,753	3.59 percent
1929	217,000	5,675,660	3.82 percent
1930	217,000	5,690,956	3.81 percent
1931	217,000	5,174,312	4.19 percent
1932	217,000	4,923,228	4.41 percent
1933	217,000	4,904,853	4.42 percent
1934	217,000	5,039,139	4.31 percent
1935	217,000	5,206,099	4.17 percent
1936	217,000	5,250,292	4.13 percent
1937	217,000	5,362,328	4.05 percent
Source: Compass. Finanzielles Jahrbuch Tschechoslowakei, vol. 1922–1940.

In this sense, the information on consortium/syndicate business in the balance sheet of Živnostenská Banka should be understood as indicative only, or as a “minimum figure.” However, the development trend is indisputable. In the year of establishment of the consortium department (1921), the amount of 21.79 million crowns (i.e. 0.41 percent of the balance sheet total) is stated, which gradually increased in the 1920s. In 1925, consortium/syndicate transactions amounted to 50.03 million crowns. Starting in 1926, the bank began to present a rounded figure, and from 1929, it was a fixed sum of 217 million crowns. In relation to the balance sheet total, this was approximately four percent each year (see Table 2). What the actual share of consortium transactions in the balance sheet was, however, is beyond the scope of this study and requires further research, including a detailed analysis of the bank’s books.

Conclusion

The capital market of interwar Czechoslovakia had weak links to the world market, and it would not be an exaggeration to claim that it was almost entirely isolated. At the same time, it was fragmented and very complicated, both in the segments determined by the typologies of financial institutions and in the segments of big business, where there were necessarily many conflicts of interest between firms and especially between financial institutions. The intense competition in a relatively small market reached a critical stage where competitive tensions in predefined areas were declining in favor of a significant new type of cooperation. This brought cost reductions and greater efficiency. Thus, the crowded market of individual financial institutions led to another specific characteristic phenomenon, a paradox characteristic of Czechoslovakia, namely the formation of an unusually dense network of consortia.

In interwar Czechoslovakia, banking consortia formed one of the organiza­tional components in the network of links and relationships in business. Consortium agreements were used to launch interest groups/partnerships, which were initially related to the issuing activities of banks but were subsequently applied in new contexts, especially in connection with the implementation of projects with large credit frameworks and also with efforts to coordinate the actions of interest groups within a firm or company. This was a win-win instrument for both banks and companies. Consortia allowed banks to participate in operations and transactions that would have been unaffordable or too risky for an individual bank. They were, thus, a tool to bridge market fragmentation. Consortia supported existing close links in the capital market (coalitions of friendly banks) and sometimes acted as a catalyst, opening up possibilities for otherwise unthinkable links (cooperation among domestic German and domestic Czech banks).

In relation to the company, which was the subject of the consortium agreement, the consortium represented a tool for a stronger anchoring or multiplication of banking influence. In exchange for increased bank influence or reduced freedom of strategic decision-making, the firm increased the prospects for placing its shares on the market, gained stability in terms of financing, and, in the case of a consortial credit, achieved the necessary framework for operations and investments. Moreover, the consortium’s recovery of debts was often reported to have been more benevolent than in a bilateral relationship.⁴⁹ The economic scope of consortium agreements in interwar Czechoslovakia, especially from the 1930s onwards, grew to such an extent that it can be said to have been an important market instrument which regulated and sometimes even monopolized entire industries. Each individual consortium agreement was to a large extent specific in its motivations, parameters, and consequences and must therefore be examined on its own. There can be no doubt, however, that the significance of bank consortium agreements cannot be measured by their statistical share in the transactions of each bank alone but rather must be assessed in the context of the growth of its influence in the cartelized sectors of the economy, the increase in trade guarantees, the increase in the volume of transactions, the tighter binding of companies, etc. Consortium transactions were an expression of the gradual modernization of the capital market, including its concentration, unification, and tendencies towards monopolization.

Archival Sources

Archiv České národní banky [Archive of Czech National Bank] Prague (AČNB)

Fund Živnostenská banka [Trades Bank] (ŽB)

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• 1 Jančík and Kubů, Nacionalismus zvaný hospodářský, continuously in the text.

2 The so-called Nostrification Act No. 12/1920 of the Sbírka zákonů a nařízení republiky Československé [Collection of Laws and Regulations of the Czechoslovak Republic] authorized the Ministry of Industry and Trades to order companies with production plants in the Czechoslovak Republic but with their seats outside the Czechoslovak Republic to transfer their seats to the territory of the new republic. The main objective was to avoid tax losses (companies officially registered outside Czechoslovakia paid a share of their taxes to the countries in which they had their seats). However, other motives were also important. First and foremost, the act was intended to ensure the state’s influence on strategic enterprises. Nostrification was seen as one of the means of strengthening the economic independence of the new state. The nostrification process became a welcome opportunity to increase the economic influence of Czechoslovak banks, especially the national Czech banks, which took over the lending of nostrified companies. In total, over 200 large companies were nostrified with state assistance.

3 Kubů and Šouša, “Die Nostrifizierung von Industrie- und Handelsfirmen.”

4 Kubů, “Za sjednocenou nacionálně českou bankovní frontu.”

5 Všeobecný zákonník obchodní, 117–18.

6 Ottův obchodní slovník, vol. 2, 1045; Slovník obchodně-technický, účetní a daňový, vol. 9, 1402–4; Heyd, Repetitorium obchodních bank, 16–17, 127. See also Eichlerová, “Konsorcium.”

7 Pospíšil, “Emisní obchody bank,” 50–51; Růžička, Organisace bank, 100.

8 Ottův slovník naučný, vol. 24, 25.

9 Koloušek, Národní hospodářství, vol. 3, 40.

10 Kunert, “Průmysl a banky,” 137–44.

11 Rosík, Bankovní účetnictví, 248–69. For variations of accounting methods, see in detail Slovník obchodně-technický, účetní a daňový, vol. 9, 522–64. 

12 Rosík, Bankovní účetnictví, 183.

13 Novotný and Šouša, “Změny v bankovním systému,” 245–46.

14 On consortia in the context of banks’ emission operations, see Pospíšil, “Emisní obchody bank,” 50–54; Rosík, Bankovní účetnictví, 263–68; Gruber, Hospodářská organisace úvěru, 26; Fousek, Příručka ku čtení bursovních a obchodních zpráv v denním tisku, 27.

15 Šikýř, Bankovní účetnictví, 58–59.

16 Ibid.

17 Nečas, “Organizační síť a obchodní činnost českých bank”; Tóth, “K počátkům a vývoji cuk­ro­varnického průmyslu.” 

18 AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/154/1, Sale consortium of Solo shares, contract dated October 25.

19 Rosík, Bankovní účetnictví, 263–68; Slovník obchodně-technický, účetní a daňový, vol. 9, 554–64.

20 Kunert, “Cesta ke koruně.”

21 When the consortium agreement was signed, Bedřich Fuchs was the owner of a private banking house and a speculator who had significant influence in the informal background of the Prague Stock Exchange (trading also in less frequently traded stocks), and from this point of view, he was a welcome partner who could help influence the exchange rate. The press of the time referred to him as “the master of the Prague Stock Exchange.” Bull, “O slávě bankéřské.”

22 These included shares in Škoda Works, Česká společnost pro průmysl cukerní (Bohemian Sugar Industry Company), Česká obchodní společnost (Bohemian Trading Company), Rakovnické a poštorenské keramické závody a.s. (ceramic factories in Rakovník and Unter-Themenau, Ltd.), Západočeské továrny kaolinové a šamotové a.s. (West-Bohemian Kaolin and Chamotte Factories, Co. Ltd.), Breitfeld-Daněk (engineering works Breitfeld-Daněk), Českomoravské elektrotechnické závody Fr. Křižík, a. s. (Bohemian-Moravian Electrotechnical Works), Spojené továrny hospodářských strojů Fr. Melichar-Umrath a spol., a.s. (United Factories of Agricultural Machinery Fr. Melichar-Umrath and Co., Ltd.), etc. For detailed documentation on the consortium, see AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/183/2, folder Syndicate “B”.

23 Špička, Organisace bank, 377–79.

24 Karásek et al., Obchodník ve styku s bankou, 89–90; Špička, Organisace bank, 377–78; Preiss, Průmysl a banky, 9–10.

25 AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/178/1, convolut of documents – Radlická mlékárna syndicate.

26 Ibid., syndicate agreement of June 28, 1935.

27 Ibid.

28 Balcar, Tanky pro Hitlera, 38–39; Teichová, Mezinárodní kapitál a Československo, 89.

29 AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/ 49-10, convolut of documents (Philips syndicate).

30 Ibid., Gedenkprotokoll aufgenommen am 3. Februar 1937 in den Lokalitäten der Živnostenská Banka in Prag über den Abschluss eines Syndikatsvertrages. 

31 Ibid.

32 For a transcript of the agreement, see AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/665/2, syndicate agreement “Czech Distillery Syndicate” of December 15, 1932 with amendments of October 23, 1936. 

33 Pátek, “Československo-rakouské kapitálové a kartelové vztahy,” 137–40; Novotný et al., “Úsilí českého finančního kapitálu.”

34 For a collection of documents on the activities of the distillery consortium, see AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/32/1, Rules of Procedure for Companies Included in the Action Distillery Syndicate; Organizational Rules for Companies Controlled by the Action Distillery Syndicate.

35 In the case of the aforementioned Radlice consortium, previously concluded parameters regarding the business and credit connections were addressed in the agreement. AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/178/1, syndicate agreement of June 28, 1935. 

36 AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/150/1, draft agreement (1937).

37 Ibid., sign. ŽB/3959/1, list of consortium companies (undated).

38 Ibid., sign. ŽB/398/1, undated scheme of the structure of Živnostenská Banka.

39 For a detailed explanation, see ibid., sign. ŽB/3959/1, Technique of conducting consortium transactions (undated typescript). 

40 Ibid., list of consortium companies (undated). 

41 AČNB, fund ŽB, sign. ŽB/103/1, minutes of the meeting on November 7, 1919.

42 For a detailed overview of the participation key, see Novotný and Šouša, “Změny v bankovním systému,” 248. 

43 Rosík, Bankovní účetnictví, 206–9, 213, 218.

44 Klier, Veřejné peněžnictví, 218–19. 

45 Československé banky v roce 1922, 94.

46 Statistická příručka republiky Československé, vol. 4, 260. 

47 Pimper, České obchodní banky, 459–60.

48 Ibid., 460.

49 Novotný and Šouša, “Změny v bankovním systému,” 245–46.

* The study was carried out under the Cooperatio program, provided by Charles University, History, at the Faculty of Arts. The text is a revised version of the chapter “V napětí konkurence a spolupráce. Bankovní konsorcia/syndikáty v meziválečném Československu (angažmá Živnostenské banky)” [In the tension of competition and cooperation. Banking consortia/syndicates in interwar Czechoslovakia (Engagement of Živnostenská Banka)] published in the collective monograph Miloš Hořejš, Eduard Kubů, Barbora Štolleová, eds., Podnikatel versus kapitál – kapitál versus podnikatel. Dvě tváře jednoho vztahu ve střední Evropě 19. a 20. století [Entrepreneur versus capital – Capital versus entrepreneur. In the tensions of competition and cooperation], Prague: NTM, 2023, 100–14.

The Incomes and Expenditures of Agrarian Family Enterprises in Interwar Hungary*

Róbert Bagdi
University of Debrecen
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 471-508 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.471

Hungarian statistics in the era of the Dualism and the Interwar period did not go below the settlement level and did not provide any information on the number of livestock and the income from them. Therefore, we do not have exact data on the main problem of the period – whether the large estates or the smallholding showed better yield/ha values, and on the minimum viable size of small farms. Although the movement of ethnographic writers has depicted a dark overview of many settlements, in most cases these do not provide quantifiable data. The surveys organised by the OMGE or the agricultural schools provided statistically relevant quantitative data on certain layers of the peasantry, but the poorest, daily wage-earners remained under-represented in the studies. Therefore, sources that record the incomes and expenditures of these strata in detail (which is the focus of agricultural economists), together with their living conditions (which is the focus of the village researchers’ movement), is particularly valuable. At the University of Debrecen, under the supervision of Rezső Milleker, professor of geography, dozens of theses were written on this topic - though not all of them were conducted according to the professors’ pre-written guidance. In this paper, we try to shed light on the distribution of income and expenditure of the smallholder-peasant class, which was also hit by the recession of the Great Depression, by analysing one of the best, but unpublished work. Beside revenue sources, strategies of survival, techniques of tax-evasion, the profits compared to loan interests are also discussed.

Keywords: smallholders, farm profitability, tax, loans, peasant account books, Interwar Hungary, demographic conditions

Introduction

The events of 1848 can be considered milestones in the development of the Hungarian economy and Hungarian society. Though the war of independence had failed, but dramatic transformations in the legal environment and social relations could no longer be hindered. In the Dualist Era after the Compromise of 1867, the process of modernization accelerated. The transformations also affected the circumstances of those living off agriculture. Serfdom had been abolished, which was a progressive development, but at the same time, the tenants lost most of their leased lands and resources shared with the landlord (common pastures, forests), which fell into the hands of old landlords according to the new laws. The implementation of land redemption in 1848 allowed peasants to become the owners only of their urbarial plots. As a result of this, the multitude of peasants, including those who had not necessarily been poor before, were threatened by impoverishment. Meanwhile, despite general modernization, those who made their living in agriculture continued to live according to the traditional way of life, in some cases even until the mid-twentieth century. As sociologist and former Hungarian Minister of Interior Erdei Ferenc put it, “the peasant social forms remained intact even when the overall structure of society was built on a different principle.”1 According to Erdei, peasants did not adapt to the new market economy in Hungary, because “a peasant farm is not at all a business enterprise designed with commercial rationality, but rather a traditional household farm that operates within traditional frameworks and produces goods. Ultimately, it is incapable of providing surplus for the producer to be sold at the market.”2 This was generally true, though there were exceptions. In the second part of the discussion below, I offer examples of farmers who took the challenges of the new era into account and tried to adapt to a modern (marked-oriented) economy.

On the eve of World War I, most people in Hungary still worked in agriculture. According to István Szabó, based on the data from the 1910 census (recalculated to the postwar area of Hungary), 56 percent were engaged in small-scale farming, including landless agrarian wage laborers and peasants who owned plots of land.3 Due to the polarized estate structure, i.e. the dominance of large estates, the majority of Hungarian society had hardly any land. This threatened the self-subsistence of agrarian families, which had to face the challenge caused by further estate fragmentation.4 These difficulties had accumulated over the decades, and social tensions had intensified. The agrarian movements at the turn of the century, emigration to the United States, and the very limited land reform after World War I were (unsuccessful) responses to these challenges.

The land issue was not resolved between in the interwar period, leaving many questions unanswered. The censuses done by the state and the data gathered in 1941 clearly illustrate the situation of the impoverished who made their living off agriculture. The proportion of those living off agriculture decreased slowly during the interwar period. In 1920, it constituted 55.7 percent of the population. It was still 50 percent in 1940,5 but in absolute terms, the number people working in agriculture had increased.6 In 1930, Hungary’s population density was 93.4 people per km,² making it the eighth most densely populated country in the world at the time.7

According to the censuses, in 1920, 1,212,000 people8 in Hungary lived off agricultural wage labor (meaning that they did not own their own land), and two decades later, their number was still nearly one million (979,000). Considering the general decrease in the number of those living off agriculture, their number as a proportion of the agrarian population did not decrease significantly. Including family members and dependents, this group accounted for nearly two million people. Those with a few hectares of land (a maximum of five hectares, which was the minimum necessary for self-subsistence) were not in a much better position either, and they accounted for nearly one million people.

Another sharp dividing line was drawn between those who owned some amount of land but not enough to subsist on, thus compelling them to search for extra income. In the second half of the twentieth century, historians tried to determine how much land was needed for a family to subsist (this in fact was a key question with political consequences after 1945, when land reforms were initiated to provide plots of a minimum size but still adequate to ensure self-subsistence. Based on Péter Gunst’s work, 9 Gábor Gyáni concluded that a family estate capable of self-sufficiency typically ranged from a minimum of five to ten cadastral acres, depending on the region, crops, and the role of husbandry, and could extend to a maximum of ten to 20 cadastral acres.10 In censuses, however, tracking and defining this thin line between self-subsistence and wage labor is difficult. In the census of 1920, for example, those with ten or fewer cadastral acres were all classified as agricultural laborers, while by 1930, they were referred to as smallholders (likely indicating that they could sustain themselves off their land).11

The work organization of the self-sufficient peasant families fundamentally differed from “wage labor-based capitalist enterprises,”12 as the former’s primary goal was simply to ensure a livelihood. According to Chayanov’s theory of labor-consumption balance,13 the value of the work done by the “self-employed” in self-subsisting peasant economies cannot be expressed in monetary terms, as the results of their productive labor do not enter the market. The peasants only undertook more work when their economic conditions worsened, thus increasing their “self-exploitation” to make a living.14

If we look at the macroeconomic environment, during the interwar period, agriculture accounted for about 40 percent of the national income in Hungary.15 At the same time, the difficulties following World War I are well illustrated by the fact that the domestic market consumed only 50–60 percent of agricultural production.16 The rest had to be marketed to foreign countries, which were adopting protectionist tariff policies after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian common market. In the early 1920s, the agricultural sector ran a debt of 1.3 billion Golden Crowns, which could be estimated at 15 percent of the capital stock. This debt was eliminated with the introduction of the pengő, but in the following years, it reemerged because “the market adaptability of Hungarian agriculture was minimal.”17 The interest rates on loans available to the agricultural sector were around 10 percent, but since “here, the profitability of agriculture only reaches five percent of the invested capital in very exceptional cases, under such circumstances, taking out loans for agriculture can only be unprofitable.”18 The structure of production had hardly changed, as evidenced by the fact that in Hungary, the average yield of wheat had stagnated around 13.8 quintals per hectare even at the outbreak of World War II, while in Germany, there was a 55 percent increase over the course of these two decades.19

Engagement with the “agricultural issue” among experts as well as engage­ment with marketing problems affecting agriculture began in 1927, when Lajos Juhos20 emphasized in a presentation at the beginning of the year that there was a need for statistical data to formulate future development plans. From December 12, 1927, the National Hungarian Economic Association (Országos Mezőgazdasági Egyesület, OMGE) organized “Farmers’ Days,” when several issues affecting the agricultural sector, generally referred to as the “agricultural crisis,”21 were identified. The decision was made to involve, alongside the Hungarian Royal Central Statistical Office (Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, KSH), the National Hungarian Economic Association and the National Agricultural Business Institute in the collection of agricultural-related data.22 Simultaneously, the examination of peasant farming began along several paths.

At the end of 1927, the OMGE Economic Section was asked to organize data collection. The representative research resulted in a dataset collected from 392 agricultural enterprises, the aggregated results of which were published under the title “The Crisis of Our Agriculture” in 1929 and then reissued in 1930.23 In the 1930s, data collection24 continued, although due to the Great Economic Crisis, the findings were not published for some years.25 I do not provide a detailed overview of the information published by the OMGE regarding the operation of peasant farms. As a single example, let me note that in 1932, the national economic income per cadastral acre on the Hungarian Great Plain for small farms was 85.85 pengő. After deducting labor costs and public charges, a net yield of 9.11 pengő per cadastral acre remained, based on the data from the enterprises examined.26

In 1929, the Keszthely Economic Academy was established. The Department of Business Studies of this academy also collected data on “small enterprises.” Of the 126 farms they examined, 60 percent were unprofitable during the crisis years 1931–1932. They could not even cover their operating costs.27 At the Deb­re­cen Economic Academy, Lajos Kesztyűs Sarkadi (1890–1957) prepared detailed statistics concerning the economic results of 100 mainly landowners from the Trans-Tisza region. In in 1931, data from 15 farms (with a size of 50–200 cadastral acres) were processed, while in 1932, data from eight farms were analyzed. In 1931, the focus was on farms with sizes between 50 and 100 cadastral acres, where the rounded net income of 40 pengős corresponded to an interest rate of 3.13 percent. Compared to a bank interest rate of five percent, the interest loss was 1.87 percent. In 1932, typically half of the estates between 100 and 200 cadastral acres ended the year with a net loss based on their operational costs.28 He also noted regarding the farming of smallholders that their average yield of cereals was about two quintals per hectare lower compared to those with 100-200 acres, because they lacked expertise and their soil preparation was weaker. The small landowners were usually mentioned only from a statistical perspective (instead of offering solutions to help them raise yields), which simply meant that those with one or two cadastral acres had very low average yields which negatively impacted the averages of those with less than 100 cadastral acres.29

As a result of the emerging economic crisis, the market positions of agriculture deteriorated. If we consider the price index in 1929 as 100, by 1933, it had decreased to 62.30 In the case of wheat, which was the most important cereal crop, the price index fell from 100 units in 1913 to 77 in 1932, and by 1934, it had dropped to 41 units.31 By 1932, 49 percent of farms and 36 percent of land was indebted, with a debt service consuming 60 percent of revenue.32 In 1931, for properties up to five cadastral acres, the value of debt per acre was 45 pengő.33 Thus, the costs of servicing consumed 88 percent of the profits.34

Ultimately, in the interwar period, the standard of living of the agrarian population stagnated compared to 1913, while during the years of the economic crisis, it declined.35

Research Objectives, Sources, and the Framework of the Investigation

The aim of this study is to illustrate, based on the examples of small farms on the outskirts of Törökszentmiklós during the crisis years of the 1930s, how the economies of smallholder families developed, with particular attention to their financial situation. Relevant sources are scarce, as the census data from the Dualist era did no go below settlement-level to inquire into the financial circumstances of families.36 The aforementioned István Szabó was referring to the decades preceding World War I when he wrote that “based on written sources, it is easier to follow and understand the economic management of a serf from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than, for example, that of a peasant landowner from the 1860s–80s.”37 We can consider his findings valid for the poor peasant layer in interwar Hungary too, as research focusing on the circumstances of the history of the peasants has hardly dealt with quantitative data at a finer resolution than the settlement level.38 The peasant way of living usually did not include a detailed family “account book” over the course of a year, and statistical data were still not available below settlement level (however, the categorization of land size became more sophisticated).

In the country of “three million beggars” (as interwar Hungary has been called), beside the official statistics and abovementioned institutions and as­sociations, the so-called village research movement also tried to portray the everyday lives of the common people in their numerous publications, but the active members of this movement did so in a qualitative rather than a quantitative way. The ethnographer Edit Fél attempted to use such sources to illustrate the everyday life of an extended family consisting of 14 people in Marcelháza (now in Slovakia), but incomes were not expressed in strictly financial terms.39 None of the village researchers relied on detailed income data or expenditures in their published works when mentioning the problems of village life.

Alongside the well-known works of Géza Féja, Zoltán Szabó, and Imre Kovács, a special yet largely unevaluated series of investigations was initiated by Professor Rezső Milleker (1887–1945),40 the founder of the Geography Institute at the University of Debrecen.41 He encouraged his students “to go into the field” (usually to their birthplaces) to record the circumstances of “typical” families, including financial data and material aspects. For the students’ benefit, a questionnaire was even created, yet despite this, the essays written by the students to complete their degrees had very heterogeneous structures.42 Several of them did not provide any numerical data at all, while others focused on ethnographic or physical and geographical descriptions or merely presented descriptions of the circumstances and lifestyle of a single family. Among the remaining essays, the one that most closely followed Milleker’s written instructions was the work titled “The Types of Economic Farms of Pusztaszakállas” by Károly Molnár, who completed his university studies in 1933.43 After graduation, Molnár taught for a few years (1936–1939) in his native village at the local boys’ school.44 In 1937, a printed version of his speech titled “The Good Student and the Good Pupil” was published in the local school bulletin.

Pusztaszakállas lies on the outskirts of Törökszentmiklós. In 1930, the town had an area of 53,000 cadastral acres, including several outlying inhabited areas (so-called “tanyák” or farmsteads),45 including Pusztaszakállas. The population of Törökszentmiklós in 1930 was 28,503, 12,371 of whom lived on the outskirts, accounting for 43.4 percent of the town’s population.46 According to Molnár, around 1930, Pusztaszakállas47 had a population of only 250 and covered a total area of 3,000 cadastral acres, but half of this was marshlands and swamps along the Tisza River, while the other half consisted of fertile black soil where only potatoes did not thrive.48 In the early 1930s, the settlement consisted of 42 houses (plus a school and a community center) in which 52 families lived.49 The area of the settlement given in cadastral acres was distributed among only 19 landowner families who owned 17 acres, 3.5 acres, 5 acres, 20 acres, 4 acres, 2 acres, 14 acres, 8 acres, 1.5 acres, 4 acres, 2 acres, 13 acres, 30 acres, 6 acres, 1 acres, 5 acres, 1.5 acres, 23 acres, and 180 acres.50 Nine families made a living off fishing, and one person lived in the village as a retired gendarme. A blacksmith, two masons, and three cobblers also lived there, but they too could not make a living solely from their work, so, during the harvest season, they had to take on agricultural wage work.

Land consolidation was not executed in the area. There were no vineyards or orchards at all, and the 750 cadastral acres of pasture was private property and not communal land. In terms of landownership, there was one estate exceeding 500 cadastral acres in Pusztaszakállas, while an additional four individuals owned between 100 and 500 cadastral acres, four individuals had between 50 and 100 cadastral acres, 35 individuals owned between ten and 50 cadastral acres, and 21 individuals had land holdings of less than ten cadastral acres.51

In Törökszentmiklós as a whole, five-sixths of the land was in the hands of large landowners, while “medium and small landowners52 made up a significant portion of the population, but it was rare to find a farmer with 100 acres. The number of veterans’ new plots was five, with 20 acres of land per person.”53 The leader­ship of Törökszentmiklós consisted of a “representative body made up of 20 large landowners, as well as affluent middle and small landowners and wealthy intellectuals.”54 It is also important to note that Törökszentmiklós had a debt of 1.1 million pengő in the mid-1930s, which significantly affected both sides of the budget.55 In order to balance the municipality’s budget, a 21 percent municipal surtax56 and a three percent emergency surtax were imposed in 1932, and by 1933, the rate of the municipal surtax had risen to 49 percent.57

According to Zsolt Szilágyi’s calculations, Törökszentmiklós was considered a “market sub-center” in the interwar period, as it remained in the “shadow” of Szolnok. In practice, this meant that the town was unable to attract residents from other settlements beyond its own population.58 Lajos Tímár defined the settlement as a “rural market town.”59

Family Types in Pusztaszakállas

1932, the year in which Molnár pursued his research year, represented the economic low point of the ten years between 1929 and 1938.60 In his unpublished thesis, Molnár identified six different family types in Pusztaszakállas, but he did not clarify the criteria he used to select the families presented, thus depriving future generations of the opportunity to determine through further research whether the selected six families represent the local society correctly. It seems that the size of the family, the amount of land they owned (even if only a small amount), their ages, and their farming practices all played a significant role in his classifications.

The families from Pusztaszakállas included by Molnár in his discussion owned a certain amount of land. The average size of the lands owned by the 19 families was 17.9 cadastral acres. If one excludes the landowner with the ‘extreme’ 180 ca­das­tral acres (none of the six different types presented could have owned this much land), the average size decreases to 8.9 cadastral acres. Based on Molnár’s descriptions, we do not need to consider anyone with a landholding larger than ten cadastral acres (when they owned more land than this, farmers tended to employ agricultural labor, at least during the agricultural “high season,” but there is no indication of this in the descriptions). This leaves us with only twelve small landowners, whose average property size was merely 3.6 cadastral acres. The six families under discussion constituted 50 percent of them and thus represent this subgroup.

Demographers evaluate the “developmental cycle” of a family as a process of continuous change, since along with advancing age, births, deaths, and migrations also modify the structure of the family.61 A key factor in Chayanov’s theory regarding peasant economies is the number and composition of the members of a household. He calculated that in the case of marriages, a child reaching adulthood was born every three years, resulting in increasingly deteriorating living conditions during the first 14 years. From the age of 15, the firstborn child could be considered an asset as someone who could be part of the household workforce. Thus, the ratio of dependents began to decrease.62 Molnár very was probably not familiar with this theory, but he did take age into consideration, as he introduced, for example, “young married couples” who were just starting their careers, as well as couples over 70 years of age.

If children who had reached adulthood married but remained on the same property as their father, then multiple generations lived together. It was possible to increase the amount and intensity of labor without employing servants, while young people, on the other hand, did not immediately have to face the full burden of independent life.63 If we consider the long-term changes in household structure, there was a national trend indicating that in the nineteenth century, household sizes increased, followed by a rapid decline starting in the early twentieth century.64 Molnár’s research also confirms Faragó’s general statistical observation that large families were also disappearing in Pusztaszakállas.

A Large Family with a Small Estate (Type I)

Molnár did not provide any supporting points or other references regarding the family he referred to as Type I, nor did he clarify the basis for its classification. Based on the narrative description, it seems that (using Laslett’s typology) the two-generation extended family was the decisive factor here. The 54-year-old farmer had seven children, three of whom were already married when the data was collected. Among them, his 28-year-old son lived with his wife in the same household as his father. Their house had a thatched roof and two rooms and a kitchen, but Molnár was unable to provide the exact floor area of the house. One of the rooms was 6 × 4.5 × 3 meters in size. Five people slept in this room. During the summer, the farmer and his two younger sons slept in the barn. With regards to the buildings used for farm work, there was a stable, a pigsty, a barn, and a beehive. According to Molnár, however, the farmer did not understand beekeeping.65

The family had six cadastral acres of land and one cadastral acre of meadow. The most complex “budget” was provided in this case, so I have organized the data in tables. Molnár paid attention in his essay to high taxes in the case of each family type examined. In the case of the first type, however, even the taxes levied under different titles were given in detail (Table 3).

The family had 46 fruit trees (which bore apples, plums, and walnuts), and they consumed the fruit themselves. Their meals were not regular. They ate what they could produce, typically potatoes. One of their winter dinners, for example, consisted of bread and onions, which they salted or dipped in vinegar. They didn’t engage much with culture. Their “library” consisted of a psalm-book and a calendar, while the source of information (even concerning public affairs) was not newspapers, but rather their neighbor.66

Table 1. Annual incomes of a large family with small holdings in 1932 pengő

I. Growth	Crop		Amount		Unit price (P)		Total (P)
	wheat		15 quintals (q)		18		270
	barley		6 q		11		66
	cob of corn		15 q		767		105
	straw		32 q		0,45		14,4
	crushed straw		20 q		0,5		10
	scene		29 q		6,5		188,5
	carrot		50 q		1		50
	potato		4 q		8		32
	Total						735,9
II. Vegetables	common bean		15 kg		0,3		4,5
	pea		5 kg		0,32		1,6
	ground sweet peppers		4 kg		3,1		12,4
	vegetable (cabbage)		10 kg		0,15		1,5
	cucumber		10 kg		0,2		3
	onion		104 kg		0,28		29,12
	garlic		2,5 kg		0,5		1,25
	poppy seeds		3 kg		0,8		2,4
	white cabbage		40 heads		0,01		0,4
	Total						56,17
III. Livestock	Animal		Individuals		Unit price (P)		Total
	pork		2		40		80
	goose		17		7		119
	chicken		48		1,8		76,8
	Total						275,8
IV. Wage	Work-related	Subject		Unit price (P)		Total
	harvest	9,8 q wheat		18		176,4
	harvest	0,85 q barley		11		9,35
	harvest	2 carts of straw		6		12
	Total					197,75
V. Casual work	Work-related		Person		Occasion		Total
	harvesting potatoes		3		12 days		36
	harvesting onions		3		5 days		12
	fish transportation		3		12 times		96
	Total						144
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

The family could not make ends meet solely by cultivating their own land, so the head of the family, along with his two oldest sons, took on day labor jobs, which included assisting in the harvesting of onions and potatoes. In total, they earned 144 pengő from the harvest, receiving a daily income of one pengő for potato68 picking, while for onion picking, they were paid only 80 fillér (one-hundredth of a pengő) per person for one day (Table 1). Based on the data, fish transportation was the most profitable, as it provided a daily allowance of three pengő per person. The published data, however, do not indicate what the weight of the fish that had to be carried was. During the harvest, members of the family also took on work for other farmers, but they were paid in kind,69 receiving nearly ten quintals of grain and two carts of straw, which Molnár valued at a total of 197.5 pengő.70 The value of the crops they produced themselves, from wheat to potatoes, amounted to a total of 735.9 pengő, while the garden vegetables represented only 56.17 pengő. The family gained significant income from the livestock, as they were able to sell geese, chickens, and pigs for a total value of 275.8 pengő71 (Table 1). Geese were the most economically viable animals to raise, as they were able to find food in the wet habitats around them. (Half of the territory of Pusztaszakállas was wetland.) According to the figures pro­vided by Molnár, the family’s total income was 1409.62 pengő in the year under consideration, of which 29.8 percent was made in cash (419.8 P), while the rest was in kind.

The goods necessary for the family’s livelihood could be valued at 713.75 pengő, although this was not all spent as cash because they consumed items that they themselves produced (the data are therefore estimates). The amount spent on animal fodder was practically produced by them, but to reach the 300 bundles of corn stalks, it was necessary to purchase 100 bundles.

Table 2. Daily consumption of a large family with smallholdings and expenses necessary for the operation of a farm in 1932 (in pengő)

I. Consumption	Product	Amount	Unit price	Total (P)
	flour	1,050 kg	0.4	420
	meat	60 kg	1.3	78
	bacon	20 kg	1.8	36
	fat	25 kg	1.8	45
	sausage	5 kg	1.8	9
	white sausage	5 kg	1	5
	chicken	30 pieces	1.6	48
	fish	10 kg	0.8	8
	egg	100 units	0.08	8
	kitchen garden produce			56.17
	Total			713.17
II. Livestock	Product	Amount	Unit price	Total
	scene	29 q	6.5	188.5
	corn	15 q	7	105
	carrot	50 q	1	50
	miller’s bran	3.45 q	13	44.85
	crushed straw	20 q	0.5	10
	corn stalk	300 bundles	0.06	18
	Total			416.35
III. Economic expenditures				Value
	blacksmith work			25
	bogging work			15
	2 large ropes			8
	1 chain of links			2
	chimney sweeping			6
	40 kg of slaked lime			4
	pasture rent			46
	40 kg of wheat for the herdsman			7.2
	to the shepherd			3.5
	Food for the shepherd for 15 days			15
	vaccination			2
	Total			133.7
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

Their animals were let out to the village’s herd and pigsty, so the herdsman and the swineherd looking after them had to be paid (a total of 25.7 pengő) (Table 2). Several items appeared as expenses for which cash had to be paid, such as sugar, salt, coffee, etc. The salt (Table 3) was not only for meals but also for preserving meat and supplying the livestock’s salt demands. A total of 300 pengő was paid for clothing and footwear. The total amount due for the entire year was 279.58 pengő. The largest item was the tax and loan arrears from the previous year, amounting to 116.56 pengő (41.7 percent), which indicates that tax payments had not been made even in the previous year, and it can be assumed that the figures increased year by year (at least considering the rate of the aforementioned surtax). The land and house tax amounted to 85.39 pengő in 1932 (30.5 percent), while the church tax and the value of public works were both reported as 24 pengő each. This last tax was imposed by the municipality of Törökszentmiklós to finance public works.72

Table 3. Family expenses of a large family with smallholdings in 1932 (in pengő)

At Grocer’s	Product	Quantity	Unit price	Amount
	sugar	10 kg	1.4	14
	coffee	2 kg	7	14
	salt	63 kg	0.4	25.2
	pepper	1.5 kg	9	4.5
	acetic acid	10 liter	0.4	4
	lamp glass	4 pieces	0.25	1
	shoe polish	4 pieces	0.48	1.92
	comb	1 piece	0.7	0.7
	kerosene	26 liter	0.36	9.36
	matches	52 boxes	0.06	3.12
	Total			77.8
Clothes	Product			Total
	1 men clothing			32
	2 pairs men boot			54
	3 pairs women clothing			30
	5 pairs women shoes			75
	2 hats			12
	1 winter hat			7
	6 pair men underwear			36
	6 pair women underwear			12
Clothes	Product			Total
	4 pair silk stockings			12
	4 nightgowns			7.2
	6 ? scarf?			15
	12 textile handkerchiefs			6
	shoes repairs			2.5
	Total			300.7
Taxes	Type of taxes			Amount
	land and property tax			85.39
	disability tax			0.45
	income tax			19
	road tax			3.1
	local tax			2.1
	healthcare tax			4.98
	public work			24
	last year’s arrears			116.56
	church tax			24
	Total			279.58
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

Despite the apparent abundance of data, the information available is probably not complete, making it impossible to determine the balance between revenue and expenses accurately. We can assume that the cash actually earned for daily labor and some marketable goods could be used to cover the expenses that had to be paid in cash (e.g. taxes). From the sale of sheep, there was an income of 144 pengő, and the sale of pigs, chickens, and geese generated 275.8 pengő income for the family, totaling 419.8 pengő (Table 1). On the expenditure side, the amount left at the spice shop was 77.8 pengő, and the total spent on clothing was 300.7 pengő, making a combined total of 377.7 pengő. Taxes had to be paid in cash, but their total amount (279.58 pengő) was much higher than the difference between revenues and expenditures, which was just over 40 pengő. This contradiction cannot be definitively resolved based on the available data. The list of agricultural goods produced cannot be considered complete either. The family kept a cow and its calf, but it doesn’t seem likely that they were not able to consume any dairy products over the course of the entire year. The value of the chickens appears in our tables with two different amounts. Those sold were successfully sold at a price of 1.6 pengő each, while for personal consumption their value was determined to be 1.8 pengő. From a consumption perspective, the more than one ton of (reported) flour used annually for baking bread came to less than a half a kilogram of bread per person per day for the eight-member family. This is not much. A hundred eggs per year (i.e. two eggs per family per week), the annual 20 kg of bacon rounded to 7 grams per day, and 8.5 grams of fat were allocated daily per person. Meanwhile, the men spent the summer harvesting and doing other physical work, which required a high daily calory intake. Finally, 63 kg of salt seems excessive for preserving 60 kg of meat. Indeed, it would have been too much for salting the meat, bacon, or the five kg of sausage in the pantry preserved for later consumption. No matter how modest the circumstances of the family were, these low values still seem contradictory or simply implausible.

A Couple without Land (Type II)

It is worth beginning with the summary assessment written by Molnár about an individual classified as Type II: “He does not care much about the past: he did not enjoy better times before, nor will he in the future.” This individual, Molnár implies, lives only for today, and for him, the most important thing is spirits [meaning not holy water but brandy]. He had, at least according to Molnár, neither principles nor culture: “They are the most extreme people in the village and the most uncultured people.”73

A 64-year-old fisherman lived with his wife in their own house, which measured 10 × 3.5 × 2 meters and consisted of three rooms (a living room, a kitchen, and a pantry). The man used a fur coat as a blanket. He did not have an outbuilding for his livestock, so he kept his pig in his room, along with the trough. According to Molnár, the “hygiene was primitive,” as they never bathed and practically never washed themselves and changed their underwear only once a month. Their income situation could be summarized with the simple principle that “[only] God knows what you will live off today and tomorrow,”74 so they ate irregularly and ate whatever they happened to receive or find in the natural world around them. They had few work opportunities. In winter, for example, they sometimes patched socks and repaired shoes for others. Of the labor they performed over the course of the year, only the work they did during the harvest seasons could be quantified, as the man worked 252 hours alongside the threshing machine. However, the time spent on fishing could not be precisely determined. In light of the this, their cash income was low. The largest amount, 128 pengő, came from fishing, but half of the revenue from this had to be paid as a fishing fee. In a year, the man consumed food worth 108 pengő, but this can only be considered a theoretical, calculated value, as he received, exchanged, or “found” most of the products listed here. For food, over the course of the year,75 he paid cash (1.8 pengő) for three kg of mutton. At the spice shop, he spent 11.92 pengő in a year, for example, 3.2 pengő for eight kg of salt, 0.27 pengő a lampshade, and 7.04 pengő for 22 liters of kerosene. He also paid 1.44 pengő for 24 boxes of matches. He carried a debt to the shop of a few pengő all year round. He only spent money on clothing when a given garment was completely worn out. He replaced his shoes every six to seven years, and even then, he only wore them in winter. Thus, over the course of the year, he spent only 10.5 pengő on a total of four pieces of clothing.76

His total income was 123.9 pengő, which he earned from the slaughter and sale of pigs (47.4 P), the sale of 15 chickens (7.5 pengő), patching (5 pengő), and fishing (64 pengő). In total, 116.76 pengő was spent over the year, including rye at 20.9 pengő (17.9 percent), tobacco at 8.84 pengő (7.6 percent), and pálinka (fruit brandy) at 72.8 pengő (62.4 percent), in addition to the items mentioned in the previous paragraph.77

According to the balance published by Molnár, there should have been some pengő left in the farmer’s pocket, but this was not the case in practice, because if he earned any income from patching (which amounted to a total of 5 pengő per year), he immediately bought a larger quantity of fruit brandy. His tax liability amounted to 27.3 pengő, which he tried to manage by paying a third of his annual tax, but he never intended to pay the remaining two-thirds. He did this simply to avoid being harassed by the authorities.

If we want to determine the balance of the revenues and expenditures with scientific rigor, we also encounter contradictions. For example, Molnár did not specify how much the farmer earned from his 252 hours of work next to the threshing machine. We must also assume a lack of information regarding the pig slaughter, as the text mentions an animal weighting 110 kilograms. In the case of pigs, it is necessary to consider that slightly less than half of the live weight should be accounted for as meat. If the owner sold nine kg of bacon, ten kg of fat, and 15 kg of meat, then there must have been at least 30 kg of meat left, which he probably consumed himself with his wife. Thus, he ate not only what he claimed to have found, exchanged, etc. We must assume that the use of eight kg of salt bought from the shop was necessary for the preservation of this amount of meat.

Molnár finally noted that “there are five or six such families with the difference that they are young and have one or two children.”78 The number of children and their ages were not considered decisive factors in determining this type based on this remark. In this context, while the activities of the landowner were listed, the size of the landholding was not mentioned, which is why I consider this couple a possible representative of the class of landless day laborers, even though they were no longer active in the labor market due to their age.

A Couple with a Small Landholding (Type III)

The third type was represented by a 76-year-old farmer regarding whom Molnár remarked that “there are seven families of this type in the village, with the exception that they have children who have already left home.”79 The presence and number of children were therefore not primary factors in the identification of this type. This farmer had five acres of farmland, but he rented them out to someone for half of the harvests, probably due to his age. (The average price of such a smallholding was 853 pengő in the 1930s.)80

The couple lived in a house that was 18 meters long and four meters wide with a ceiling four meters in height. It was built half of stone and half of adobe, with a tiled roof. Several of the surrounding farming buildings were also covered with tiles. Molnár referred to their bathing habits as “rural,” which meant that they washed themselves in cold water every day, while on Sundays they used warm water.81 In terms of their meals, Molnár highlighted caraway seed soup as a frequent item during the day and bread with bacon for dinner. Between 15 and 20 liters of wine were consumed annually, along with an additional five liters of brandy, while tobacco was consumed at a rate of one pack per day, valued at 0.11 pengő per package.

The farmer’s 65-year-old wife cultivated some corn and also kept a vegetable garden measuring a square rod. Molnár was unable to determine the necessary work hours afterwards, but the couple worked on some land for 310 days of the year (but not all day).

Since they did not have children,82 they did not want to adopt a new lifestyle. In terms of their income, the goods obtained from the natural world around them played a significant role.

Table 4. The annual income in pengő in 1932 of a 76-year-old smallholder with five cadastral acres who was no longer actively working

Land leased for the half of the products					Land leased for the third of the products
Crop	Amount	Unit price (pengő)	Value (pengő)		Crop	Amount	Unit price (pengő)	Value (pengő)
wheat	8.1 q	15	121.5		corn	8 q	4.0	32
barley	4.8 q	7	33.6		pumpkin	24 q	0.5	12
straw	30.0 q	1	30.0		Total			44
Total			185.1
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

The couple kept poultry (20 hens and 3 roosters) and managed to sell some of the brood and the eggs they produced: 100 chicks for 50 pengő, 70 larger chickens for 74 pengő, and 100 eggs for 28 pengő, for a total of 152 pengő.83 The vegetables grown in the garden were valued at 12.66 pengő, of which only the red onions were sold (two quintals for a total of nine pengő). The cash income was further increased by a calf which the farmer bought and sold on the same day, which generated a profit of 45 pengő.

During the year, items produced by and consumed within the household as internal consumption (flour, meat, bacon, fat, sausage, chicken, eggs) amounted to a total of 352.66 pengő, while at the grocery store, a total of 52.12 pengő was spent on spices, sugar, coffee, salt, pepper, kerosene, etc. Molnár reported a total of 72.2 pengő for clothing expenses, but noted in his list that certain items, such as suits, boots, and hats, were purchased only every two years.84 The clothes were worn until they became unusable, so some pieces of clothing were six or seven years old. For the maintenance of the house, the farmer spent ten pengő in the year examined (three pengő for chimney sweeping, five pengő for plastering and whitewashing, and two pengő for 20 kg of lime)85 (Table 5).

The farmer’s tax book was not available when Molnár visited the community, so the tax amount listed as 20.6 pengő was written into the “accounting records” from memory, but Molnár found the estimated amount to be low. The total cost of pig farming for the entire year was 83.68 pengő for two piglets (their purchase price was 20 pengő, and the rest was spent on feeding them, such as five quintals of barley for 33.6 pengő). Both animals were slaughtered, and their total value was determined to be 140 pengő, although it was not revealed how many kilograms they weighed.86 For the poultry, a cost of 20 pengő was calculated for feeding, while the total value of the day-old chicks, larger chickens, and eggs that were sold was 152 pengő. For personal use, a value of 53 pengő was accounted for from the poultry yard. From the harvested fruit, the farmer was able to sell one and a half hundredweight of apples and plums, which brought in revenue of twelve pengő.

On the income side of the annual revenue, we find 222.76 pengő earned from cultivating the land (185.1 pengő from the farmer’s own land, 34 pengő from a third of the corn, and 3.66 pengő from the vegetable garden). In cash, the actual revenue amounted to 370 pengős (152 pengő from poultry sales; the price of the cow was 140 pengő, “trading” brought in 45 pengő, and the sale of onions, pumpkins, and fruits brought in a total of 33 pengő), which represented 62.4 percent of the total annual revenue.

On the expenditure side, 225.07 pengő were recorded, of which clothing accounted for 72.2 pengő, the total amount spent on purchased tobacco and wine was 46.15 pengő, and taxes were listed as 20.6 pengő87 (Table 5).

Table 5. The balance of annual cash flow in 1932 in pengő for a 76-year-old smallholder with five cadastral acres who was no longer actively working

Income	Value (pengő)	Rate (percent)		Expenses	Value (pengő)	Rate ( percent)
Animal husbandry	292	78.9		Clothing	72.20	32.1
Crop production	33	8.9		Spices	56.12	24.9
Trade	45	12.2		Beverages, for amusement	46.15	20.5
Total	370	100		Taxes	20.6	9.2
				Animal purchase	20.0	8.9
				Economic expenditures	10.0	4.4
				Total	225.07	100
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

Considering the balance, 144.93 pengő constituted the “remainder.” Behind the seemingly positive balance was the fact that the farmer was saving the money he had brought in by selling the cow because he wanted to buy a new one. Regarding the profit generated by “being the middleman” in the sale of the calf, Molnár noted that the farmer could not make such profits in an average year.

Older Members of Cohabiting Couples from two Generations (“Grandparents”) (Type IV)

Molnár classified a small landowner with four cadastral acres and seven grown children as a member of the fourth type of family. This landowner lived with his wife, and according to “tradition,” the youngest son and his wife lived with him in the same household.88 Molnár provided no textual references that would allow for the identification of other classification criteria. The family members described as type IV lived in a house with a tiled roof measuring 14 × 8 × 3 meters, and they had several outbuildings on their property. We cannot determine the age of the farmer from Molnár’s essay. He probably belonged to an older age group, as his sons were the ones who cultivated the fields.89 He consumed 25 liters of wine at home each year, and he drank about four liters in the pub annually.

The value of the goods produced on their land amounted to a total of 314 pengő. Of the crops, wheat was produced in the largest quantity, 15 quintals valued at 17 pengő each, amounting to a total value of 225 pengő (71.7 percent), of which six quintals were sold (104 pengő). In comparison, the garden vegetables represented a low amount, with the total for vegetables such as green beans, dry beans, peas, cucumbers, red onions, and garlic amounting to 6.05 pengő, and this produce was used by the landowner in the household.

The landowner was only engaged in fishing on a piecework basis. According to Molnár, he devoted 864 hours a year to fishing, which Molnár valued at 140 pengő, calculating it based on 70 days at a rate of 2 pengő per day.90 The family’s total income was 586 pengő, of which 53.6 percent was the value of goods produced in kind, and 46.4 percent was the amount received in cash.

Food items produced and consumed within the household (wheat, corn, fish, potatoes, chicken, eggs and pork) amounted to a value of 297.65 pengő, of which wheat accounted for 119 pengő (40 percent). The landowner spent 27.27 pengő at the spice shop over the course of the year, for example, 4.2 pengő for sugar and twelve pengő for 30 kg of salt. In the list of expenses, Molnár noted that the farmer did not allocate much for clothing, which amounted to the purchase of only two new garments per year: a shirt worth 3.5 pengő and a winter coat worth 70 pengő.91 Among the other costs, taxes were also highlighted, but only the church tax was specifically mentioned, valued at 8.2 pengő, while all other taxes amounted to a total of 80 pengő.92 The landlord owed 150 pengő to the local savings cooperative, which required him to pay 18 pengő annually as “interest.”

In the end, regarding the revenues received in cash, it was possible to report 272 pengő (144 pengő from fishing; 104 pengő from wheat; 24 pengő from poultry), while on the expenditure side, the final amount was similar, 276.44 pengő. Among the cash expenses, the two largest items were taxes, amounting to 95.7 pengő altogether (34.6 percent), and the aforementioned money spent on clothing, which totaled 73.5 pengő (26.6 percent)93 (Table 6).

Table 6. The balance of household cash flow of the older members (“grandparents”) of two-generation cohabiting couples in 1932

Revenues	Value (pengő)	Rate (percent)		Expenses	Value (pengő)	Rate (percent)
Income from fishing	144	52.9		Clothing	73.50	29.8
Plant cultivation	104	38.3		Taxes	95.70	38.9
Animal husbandry	24	8.8		Spice shop	24.24	9.8
Total	272	100		Buying a pig	23.00	9.3
				Interest on debt	180	7.3
				Radio fee	120	4.9
				Total	246.44	100
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

Nuclear Families Formed by Young Married Couples (Type V)

Type V was represented by a 20-year-old farmer who had two daughters. The farmer was the son of a man described as belonging to the type IV family. Molnár referred to the young age of the farmer twice, so we may assume this was the main aspect of classification.94 He lived with his family in a room measuring 5 × 4 × 2.5 meters, where there was a bed, a mess, and a sofa, but there was no room left for a chair. Molnár noted that their way of life was characterized by “satisfactory hygiene,” as they bathed every day, and in the summer, they swam in the Tisza River. Molnár noted that “they change their underwear weekly.”95 In summer, they ate three times a day, in winter, twice, having some kind of cooked food at noon and bread with bacon in the evening for dinner. They rarely ate fruit. If they did so, it was watermelon that made its way to the table in the summer. The farmer consumed 22 liters of wine in the tavern over the course of the year, along with two liters of brandy. He smoked two packs (at a cost of 0.11 pengő per pack) of tobacco a week. Culture was absent from their lives because “they did not read books or newspapers.”96

In terms of the annual number of hours spent working, the farmer spent 183 hours harvesting, 1200 hours fishing, and 370 hours pressing straw, totaling 1,753 hours of work.97 Molnár specifically noted that from November to March, he engaged in fishing for 112 days and in straw threshing for 42 days, from which he earned 132.8 pengő and 25.2 pengő, respectively. For the work done during the harvest, payment was made in kind, amounting to 5.3 quintals of wheat (valued at 90.1 pengő), 0.24 quintals of barley (3.84 pengő), eight quintals of corn (112 pengő), and 1.5 quintals of potatoes (27 pengő), totaling 232.94 pengő in cash.98 The quantity of cereals was not sufficient for the family, as the farmer had to ask his father-in-law for an additional 270 kilograms of wheat before the harvest. Molnár distinguished the “revenue from livestock” section, where he recorded 30 chickens valued at 60 pengő. Although two lines earlier he noted that some 80–90 chicks had hatched, he only recorded the value in cash for 30. (The remainder were probably consumed by the household). The price was listed as 215 eggs (17.2 pengő), and an additional 300 eggs were used in the household.

The cash income from animal husbandry was 77.2 pengő (the total from selling 215 eggs and 30 chickens at a price of two pengő each). From the garden vegetables (from beans to lettuce), a total value of 23.03 pengő was produced, of which the largest item was one and a half quintals of potatoes, worth 12 pengő.99 A value of 407.83 pengő (for food, such as flour, fat, eggs, bacon, etc.) was consumed (everything was produced on the farm, and he received only 12 kg of fish as a gift). The cost of the feed for the livestock was assessed at 68.88 pengő. In the case of the data provided by Molnár, I would like to point out that the difference between the value of the harvesting wage (232.94 pengő) received in kind and the value of items produced and consumed within the household (407.83 pengő) is represented by the vegetables produced in the garden worth 23.03 pengő, as well as the chicken and eggs consumed, which were worth 141.44 pengő.

In the end, there was a cash income of 248.4 pengő (77.2 pengő from poultry farming; 13.2 pengő from two carts of pumpkins; 132.8 pengő from fishing; and 25.2 pengő from straw pressing). On the expenditure side, a total of 239.2 pengő was spent on spices, clothing, tobacco (13.52 pengő), wine, brandy, and the purchase of a pig (Table 7). At the spice shop, 65.64 pengő was spent, the largest item of which was 30 liters of kerosene, valued at 10.86 pengő.100 The clothing cost a total of 110 pengő in 1931.

Table 7. Annual cash flow of a young married couple (pengő).

Revenues	Value (pengő)	Rate (percent)		Expenses	Value (pengő)	Rate (percent)
Daily wage	158.0	63.6		Clothing	110.0.	45.9
Animal husbandry	77.2	31.1		Spice shop	65.64	27.4
Plant cultivation	13.2	5.3		Buying a pig	31.00	13.0
Total	248.4	100		Other	32.72	13.7
				Total	239.36	100
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

The apparent positive balance is overshadowed by the fact that the farmer owed money to the church (because of the church tax), the amount of which was not even specified. It can be suspected that this amount was higher than the difference between the expenditure and revenue sides of the balance sheet. Despite this, the biggest burden for him was the borrowed wheat he had requested from his father-in-law. As Molnár wrote, “he would want to work more, but job opportunities are quite scarce. … He is generally in a better position than the other poor people in the village, because he knows about fishing and earns quite a bit with it!”101 But Molnár still included the following sobering observation: “They live on a tight budget and rely on parental support.”102

Modern Nuclear Family, Produce Made for the Market (Type VI)

We do not know the age of the farmer described as type VI, only that he participated in World War I and that his son was 18 years old. Molnár stated that he “follows the modern trend,” meaning his goal was to “produce as much as possible in a small space.”103 He began his gardening activities by renting a three-acre floodplain, which he intended to use to grow melons, while planting red onions along the roadside. In the end, it was the onions that brought him profit, which is why he turned to gardening. He was able to start his horticultural business in 1929 by renting eight cadastral acres, and by 1932, he was growing peppers, winter radishes, cabbage, vegetables, and spring onions in hotbeds, where he also implemented motorized irrigation. The family lived a dual life, with the father and son on the land rented on the banks of the Tisza River (in a building they themselves had constructed from clay with a thatched roof), while the female members of the family lived six kilometers away in the village. In Pusztaszakállas, they were essentially the only smallholder family making a profit from farming. According to Molnár, they managed their annual budget data related to horticulture almost perfectly, and this data indicate that they were able to achieve a profit of nearly 2,000 pengő104 (Table 8).

Table 8. The budget of a vegetable producer in Pusztaszakállas in 1932 (pengő)

Expenses				Income
Item	Unit price	Amount		Item	Unit price	Amount
8 cad. acres lease	68	544		80 q onion	5.3	424
irrigation machine		800		10 carts of cabbage	15.0	150
glass jars (hotbeds)		154		1 cart of radishes		80
100 litters of gasoline	0.24	42		1 cart of vegetables		35
8 allocations	6	48		85 carts of peppers	45.0	3,825
80 kg onion	0.5	40		Total		4,514
seedlings		22
105 transportation	3	315
700 casual work	0.8	560
Total		2,525
Source: Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái.”

Reviewing the cash flow of the family farm, Molnár noted the costs of transportation (which he estimates to be nearly 400 pengő) and found them high based on the farmer’s account. The irrigation machine represented a greater financial burden, but it was noted that he had three years to pay back the 2,400 pengő expense; and it is likely that this amount had already been paid in the months preceding the data collection. The lease of the land (544 pengő) and the wages of the day laborers also represented significant costs. As a fee, the family paid 0.8 pengő per day. Molnár described this work an easy task that even young girls could handle.105

They made transportation cost-effective by purchasing two horses and transporting their goods to the train station by cart, from where the paprika was sent to Budapest. The vehicle used for transportation was impossible to modify, so they could not even measure how much a shipment weighed. Molnár put it at roughly ten quintals. The family’s success in gardening inspired others in the village, so three people started growing red onions, even though among the vegetable products mentioned so far, onions were the most problematic (for example, harvesting them was considered slow).

The gardener involved in the investigation did not believe that he had to fulfil all his tax obligations, even though he had an annual profit of 2,000 pengő. He chose to declare his activity as arable farming instead of gardening to lower the tax rate.

Summary

How accurate were the data presented by Molnár in his essay? In the 1930s, sociologist Mihály Kerék also dealt with the living conditions of the Hungarian agrarian population. Based on the 96 families living in twelve predominantly lowland working communities he examined in 1932, he found that it was very difficult to make precise determinations concerning their financial situations. The debts were mostly kept track of by the housewives, who were ashamed to declare everything, especially the smaller debts, such as the claims from the grocers. Generally, in the case of occasional jobs as well as for the purchase or sale of smaller items (such as eggs), by the end of the year, they no longer remembered the exact quantities that had been spent.106

Molnár mentions numerous goods (and their monetary values), of which only the price of salt was the same for every family (0.4 pengő per kg). For certain agricultural produce, such as wheat, nearly identical values have been reported (15–18 pengő per quintal). However, there were a few crops or produce items for which the price differences were greater. Barley was valued at 11 pengő per quintal for the Type I family, 7 pengő per quintal for the Type III family, and 16 pengő per quintal for the Type V family. These values were likely determined based on the memories/assessments of the affected families, or there may have been other factors unknown to us. We cannot prove the reasons, but in the case of the mentioned figures, it seems that if someone received half or a third of the crop, its price appears to be low (the mentioned price of barley is 7 pengő per quintal), while the price of the crop received for labour during the harvest seems higher (16 pengő per quintal for barley). For the head of the Type V family, every crop was considered at a high price when he received his payment in kind for his harvesting work: the ear corn was charged at a price of 14 pengő per quintal, and the potatoes at 18 pengő per quintal (the latter, for example, should have cost between five and ten pengő). So there was a great discrepancy between nominal prices and real prices. The difference in the price of red onions is striking: the Type VI family, which produced for the market, received just over 0.05 pengő for each kilogram (this was the wholesale market price, as they were able to sell 80 quintals), while in the case of the Type I family, the more than one quintal produced for personal use was valued at 0.28 pengő per kg (estimated price).

Figure 1. Incomes of different family types in Pusztaszakállas in 1932, as a percentage

In the case of Type I–V families, according to the data, a significant portion of the goods produced was consumed, essentially serving as an example of the independent peasant economy described by Chayanov. If the family’s financial situation required it, they also took on day labor for wages or for a share of the harvest. In the case of the vegetable gardener presented as a Type VI family, there was no mention of the garden vegetables that might have been grown by the family within the area of the settlement, nor was there any mention of what animals they might have kept. For a farm or farmstead producing for the markets, the value of bacon or fat consumed is likely irrelevant. Accordingly, only the costs necessary for the production of vegetables sold at the market have been included on the expenditure side too. The revenue mentioned also included the income made from the sale of vegetables. It is also true that they did not calculate the depreciation of machines and equipment when they calculated profits.

Figure 2. Expenses of different family types in Pusztaszakállas in 1932, as a percentage (in kind and in cash expenditures merged)

The families presented differed not only according to Laslett’s typology but also according to the sources of income, despite the similarity in field size. Two families earned wages as the main source of income, but there were also differences between them, whether in-kind or cash revenues dominated. In two other types of families (one multi-generational, the other with an elderly head of household), the work outside the farm played a subordinate role. Here, income from livestock or revenues from public goods (fishing) accounted for 30 percent of total income, indicating a major deficit in Hungarian statistics (the general lack of livestock censuses at the settlement level before 1930). The share of income from arable land (whether cash or in-kind) varied between 20 and 60 percent.

The expenditure side (both monetary expenditure and consumption in kind) showed less diversity. Despite the obvious tax evasion (and the significant tax arrears), taxes fluctuated between twelve and 20 percent of expenditures (and income), clothing accounted for a stable ten to 15 percent, while expenditure in grocery shops remained below ten percent, as did economic investments (building maintenance, livestock or land purchase). Self-catering accounted for half of expenditures. This, together with livestock, reached 60 percent for all four families (with complete data sets). Cash income (i.e. the value of products sold) did not exceed 33 percent of the income, and cash expenditure (items bought in addition to consumption produced by the peasant economy) accounted for 38 percent of expenditures. In general, the cash needs of self-sustaining farms not producing for the markets were higher than the annual cash income actually available, often due to rolling tax arrears or loan repayments.

The description of demographic aspects and characteristics in Molnár’s unpublished thesis, which proved significant factors in defining different types of families, has somewhat taken a back seat (unlike in the writings by other villager researchers). The descriptions of the financial circumstances of the families, although not discussed with the depth of public economics (finance-accounting), sought to avoid omitting even a single item (income, expenses, consumption goods produced within the framework of self-sufficiency, and even gifts), assigning a monetary value to each of them. If we look at his work through the lens of economics, then in comparison, the economist-statistician Mátyás Matolcsy considered the same factors as Molnár when determining Hungary’s national income in the 1930s, with one exception: Matolcsy tried to express the value of household work as well, ultimately calculating a total of 350 million workdays nationwide per year.107

The families introduced lived in modest, simple circumstances. Even the expenses of the sixth family presented did not reflect the high annual profit of 2,000 pengő. It is likely that the families presented by Molnár were in a better situation than the 96 families of the lowland working-class community examined by Kerék. The families presented by Kerék had an average of one or two cadastral acres of smallholdings, but Kerék considered the declining presence of pig farming as a sign of material “deterioration,” as only about one-fifth of the households were involved in raising pigs.108 In Pusztaszakállas, however, every family was engaged in pig farming.

Molnár dealt with taxes in the case of each family, whether as their highest expense to cover in cash or an amount they owed in arrears. Among the taxes, the church tax was a matter of customary law (there was no written law regarding it), but the local population accepted it. In Törökszentmiklós, the church and the local leadership agreed that the local apparatus would collect this tax for a five percent commission, but this amount was left in the hands of the church as a donation.109

In the interwar period, taxes had to be paid based on numerous bases. There were about nine types of state direct taxes (such as the land tax and the house tax), which, on country average, could have accounted for approximately 60 percent of the total tax burden, while local taxes and surtaxes made up the remaining 40 percent.110 According to calculations done at the end of the 1930s, out of the annual direct tax burden of 513 million pengő, approximately 192.5 million pengő (37.5 percent) was allocated to agriculture, which amounted to roughly twelve pengő per cadastral acre.111 However, local conditions could have significantly altered this value. The payable taxes increased further if a municipality raised the burden with an additional surtax in order to increase its revenues for the sake of budgetary balance. We previously mentioned that Törökszentmiklós had a debt of more than a year’s revenue in the 1930s (debt was over one million pengő), so it is no coincidence that supplementary taxes began to rise as well.

Table 9. The theoretical tax burden of smallholders with five cadastral acres in the 1930s (pengő)

	Type of tax	Above five cadastral acres
	Average landowner net income (gold crown/landowner acre)	13.5
	Total net income of all categories (gold crown)	67.5
	Total net income (pengő)	78.3
1	Land tax (20 percent)	15.66
2	Householder tax (14 percent)	10.00
3	Income tax (1–1,2 percent)	0.00
4	Wealth tax (1‰)	0.00
5	Extra allowance	0.00
6	Disability support tax	0.51
7	Public sick leave and childcare allowance supplementary tax	4.11
8	Road tax (10 percent)	2.57
9	Public work redemption	3.70
10	Agricultural Chamber fee	1.03
11	Water regulation fee	2.00
12	County supplementary tax (32 percent)	8.21
13	Municipal supplementary tax (75 percent)	19.25
14	Dog tax	2.00
15	Mix tax	6.06
16	Church tax (10 percent)	2.57
	Total	77.67
	Land tax reimbursement	-15.66
	Net tax burden	62.01
	A gross tax per cadastal acre (pengő)	15.53
	Net tax burden as a percentage of the net income of the cadastral acres ( percent)	79.20
Source: My compilation of data provided by Béla Bojkó.112

Béla Bojkó calculated his data on the share of tax from total incomes for several estate sizes, but he noted that he considered minimum values. If we compare the theoretical values of smallholders who owned five hectares of land (Table 9) with the tax burdens of families classified in Type I by Molnár (Table 3), it can be stated that the actual tax burden was higher in Törökszentmiklós.113 The land tax and house tax together amounted to 85 pengő, rounded off, while Bojkó’s calculations only came to roughly 25 pengő. The church tax was also much higher than the theoretical value in the case of the family in Pusztaszakállas (2.5 pengő versus 24 pengő), which may have been due to the higher number of children. In the case of the family in Pusztaszakállas, the amount to be paid for the exemption from public work was also higher. (3.7 pengő versus 24 pengő). The income tax indicated by Molnár for the Type I family in Pusztaszakállas was 19 pengő, while Bojkó did not take such an item into account at all.

If the result of a “sampling” is that five out of six families had trouble paying their taxes and the sixth, although it was in a much more favorable situation than the others, intentionally reported an incorrect tax base for the sake of more favorable taxation, then this can hardly been seen as a coincidence. According to Lajos Juhos, the problem with agriculture in the interwar period was that a farmer received loans at an interest rate of around ten percent, while the maximum profit that could be made in agriculture was about five percent. The outcome was indebtedness.114 The simplest method of compensating for this was tax evasion. If the farmer did not take out a loan, then an opportunity for modernization was missed, and the farm was self-sufficient at best. In the existing financial condition, it was not obvious for the average farmer that it was worth investing or even possible to invest in modernization.

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Vármegyei Levéltár [Hungarian National Archives Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County Archives] (MNL JNSZVML)

IV.407. Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Vármegye alispánjának iratai

Kéziratok gyűjteménye Sz./25.

Szakál, Károlyné. “Törökszentmiklós története 1932-től 1938-ig.” MA thesis, n.d.

Debreceni Egyetem [University of Debrecen], Faculty of Humanities, Dean’s Office

Hallgatói anyakönyvek [Student registers of the Faculty of Humanities, Languages, and History of István Tisza University from 1914 to 1949]

Molnár, Károly. “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái” [The economic forms of Puszta­szakállas]. Geography Thesis, University of Debrecen, 1933.

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1. 1 Erdei, A magyar paraszttársadalom, 34–35.

2. 2 Ibid., 55.

3. 3 Szabó, Jobbágyok, parasztok, 364.

4. 4 At the time of the land tenure reform in 1767, two-thirds of the peasantry were landholders with an average landholding of 0.41 units (sessio), but by the time of the peasant emancipation in 1848, only one-third remained, and the average plot size had decreased to less than 0.35. Glósz, “Zsellérek és töredéktelkes jobbágyok,” 176.

5. 5 Gunst, “A mezőgazdaság fejlődésének megrekedése,” 286.

6. 6 Tóth T., A magyar mezőgazdaság struktúrája az 1930-as években, 19.

7. 7 Gunst, “A mezőgazdaság fejlődésének megrekedése,” 286.

8. 8 Gyáni, “Magyarország társadalomtörténete a Horthy-korban,” 321.

9. 9 Gunst, A paraszti társadalom Magyarországon a két világháború között, 17–18.

10. 10 Gyáni, “Magyarország társadalomtörténete a Horthy-korban,” 307.

11. 11 Ibid., 306.

12. 12 Pozsgai, “Paraszti háztartás és munkaszervezet,” 344.

13. 13 Chayanov, On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems, 5. Regarding the historical backdrop against which this theory emerged and receptiveness to it in Russia, see Kövér, “A. V. Csajanov orosz gyökerei,” 89–92.

14. 14 Pozsgai, “Paraszti háztartás és munkaszervezet,” 346–47.

15. 15 Wheat contributed to the agrarian income by 11.3 percent in 1931–1932, while the most significant sector was livestock slaughtering, at 17.5 percent. Matolcsy and Varga, Magyarország nemzeti jövedelme, 65 and 71; Gunst, “A mezőgazdaság fejlődésének megrekedése,” 379.

16. 16 Tóth T., A Magyar mezőgazdaság struktúrája az 1930-as években, 32.

17. 17 Ibid., 47.

18. 18 Bernát, “A mezőgazdasági termelés jövedelmezőségéhez,” 373.

19. 19 Tóth T., A Magyar mezőgazdaság struktúrája az 1930-as években, 33.

20. 20 Lajos Juhos (1879–1940) was an agricultural vocational educator in Debrecen, Mosonmagyaróvár, and Keszthely. He introduced the German Laurer system of agricultural smallholder bookkeeping in Hungary. Between 1935 and1937, he was the director of the Economic Academy in Debrecen-Pallag. Mudrák, “Egyetemi és kari vezetői névsorok,” 554.

21. 21 For the text of the resolution formulated by the participants in the conference, see OMGE, Mezőgazdaságunk válsága számokban, 8–9.

22. 22 Sipos, “A termelői és fogyasztói árak vizsgálata Magyarországon,” 10.

23. 23 Tóth T., A Magyar mezőgazdaság struktúrája az 1930-as években, 18.

24. 24 From the collected data, several derived figures were also calculated, such as total raw yield, net income, and efficiency. Five decades later, Tibor Tóth sought deeper connections through factor analysis from the data. Tóth T., A dunántúli kisüzemek termelése és gazdálkodása az 1930-as években, 52 and 55–137.

25. 25 Contemporaries also used these raw data for scientific research. There was generally a positive correlation between livestock, capital, labor costs, and profitability based on various aspects. Éber, “A föld­árak és földhaszonbérek alakulása tíz év alatt,” 799–804.

26. 26 Mezőgazdaságunk üzemi eredményei 1933. évben, 67.

27. 27 Juhos, “Dunántúli kisgazdaságok jövedelmi helyzete,” 289.

28. 28 Sarkadi Kesztyűs, “A vagyonleltár értékelése,” 225.

29. 29 Sarkadi Kesztyűs, A magyar mezőgazdasági politika feladatai, 10.

30. 30 Tóth T., A magyar mezőgazdaság struktúrája az 1930-as években, 33.

31. 31 Ibid., 37.

32. 32 Ibid., 47.

33. 33 Ibid., 49.

34. 34 Ibid.

35. 35 Gunst, “A mezőgazdaság fejlődésének megrekedése,” 391.

36. 36 István Szabó summarized the obstacles to historical research on peasant life. Szabó, Jobbágyok, parasztok, 351–61. Source of the quote, ibid., 359.

37. 37 Ibid.,358.

38. 38 Ibid.

39. 39 The result of Edit Fél’s research was first published in Érsekújvár in 1944. Her data collection included quantifications of annual consumption, but wherever possible, she combined human and animal consumption; for example, in a large family, 50 to 60 quintals of potatoes were consumed. No monetary values were assigned to these items. Fél, “Egy kisalföldi nagycsalád társadalom-gazdasági vázlata.”

40. 40 Bagdi, “Statisztikai módszerekkel mért fejlettség és szociográfiai valóság,” 199–227.

41. 41 Süli-Zakar, Milleker Rezső professzor élete és debreceni munkássága, 2–4.

42. 42 Some papers have also been published in print, and even Mihály Kerék referred to the thesis work of Károly Szalánczi published in 1932. Kerék, “A mezőgazdasági munkás anyagi helyzete,” 24.

43. 43 According to the university records, Károly Molnár attended from the first semester of the 1929/30 academic year until the end of the 1932/33 academic year. Hallgatói anyakönyvek.

44. 44 Deák, Polgári iskolai író-tanárok élete és munkái, 318. As a history and geography teacher, he taught German, history, agriculture, and practical farming to his students. A Törökszentmiklósi, 1937, 6–7, A Törökszentmiklósi, 1939, 12.

45. 45 In 1926, there were six state rural elementary schools operating with six classrooms and nine teachers. Botka, Adatok Szolnok megye történetéből. 767.

46. 46 Az 1930. évi népszámlálás, 416–17.

47. 47 According to the official census of 1930, 640 people lived in Pusztaszakállas. Az 1930. évi népszámlálás, 416–17.

48. 48 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 2.

49. 49 On average, five individuals made up a family.

50. 50 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 4.

51. 51 MNL JNSZML IV.407. Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Vármegye alispánjának iratai. 14530/1939. tanyai iratok. Adatgyűjtő-ív [é.n.] (1930?) 4.

52. 52 The redistribution of land was completed in 1929. The number of people who acquired plots was 2,000. However, during the Great Economic Crisis, 700 beneficiaries of the land reform lost their lands because of indebtedness, and their arrears had be collected from the remainder community of beneficiaries. Szakál, “Törökszentmiklós története 1932-től 1938-ig,” 9.

53. 53 Ibid., 7.

54. 54 Ibid., 14.

55. 55 The annual revenue of Törökszentmiklós was around 700,000 pengő. This debt was incurred due to the implementation of various construction projects, thus loans had to be taken for the district court (320,000 P), the boys’ civil school (340,000 P), the public slaughterhouse (140,000 P), and the establishment of the water supply system and the organization of the market (416,000 P). The annual interest exceeded 100,000 pengő (15 percent of the yearly budget). MNL JNSZML IV.407. Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Vármegye alispánjának iratai. 14530/1939. tanyai iratok Kivonat Törökszentmiklós község képviselő testületének 1930. évi december hó 19. napján tartott rendes közgyűlés jegyzőkönyvéből. 4–5; Kivonat Szajol község képviselőtestületének 1930. október 18-án megtartott közgyűlésén készült jegyzőkönyvből, 1–2.

56. 56 This means an additional 21 percent, considering the state taxes levied to the city as 100 percent, and this surtax was collected and used by the municipal government directly.

57. 57 The municipal surtax rate kept increasing in the following years, finally reaching 63 percent in 1937. Szakál, “Törökszentmiklós története 1932-től 1938-ig,” 7.

58. 58 Several towns near Törökszentmiklós attracted the people of the town to their markets. Szilágyi, Ismeretlen Alföld, 151.

59. 59 The basis for the qualification was that in Törökszentmiklós, the proportion of earners working in public service and self-employed individuals in the field of commerce and credit was 9.4 percent altogether. Timár, “A szociológia és geográfia pörlekedésének egy lezártalan fejezete,” 91–92.

60. 60 Éber, “A földárak és földhaszonbérek alakulása tíz év alatt,” 298.

61. 61 For more details, see Faragó, “Nemek, nemzedék, rokonság,” 467.

62. 62 A firstborn child was regarded as suitable for work once he had turned 15. Thus, the number of dependents began to decrease. Pozsgai, “Paraszti háztartás és munkaszervezet,” 348.

63. 63 Heilig, “Háztartások és gazdaságok,” 214.

64. 64 Faragó, “Nemek, nemzedék, rokonság,” 466–69.

65. 65 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 6.

66. 66 Ibid., 7.

67. 67 In 1932, the average price of corn was 11.49 pengő per quintal, and the price of an ear of corn had to be lower than that. Sipos, “A termelői és fogyasztói árak vizsgálata Magyarországon,” 16.

68. 68 Molnár calculated the price of potatoes at 8 pengő per hundredweight. The numbers he provided may not have been entirely accurate. According to Sándor Sipos’s data, the producer price of potatoes in 1932 was 5.28 pengő per quintal, while the consumer price was 17.6 pengő. On the other hand, Matolcsy provided the data for the “winter semester,” thus giving the price of potatoes for 1931/1932, which he categorized according to five varieties. The most expensive variety was the “Korai rózsa” [Early Rose] at 9.33 pengő per quintal, while the cheapest was the Wohltmann at 4.85 pengő per quintal. Ultimately, the type, size, quality of the potatoes, and the timing of the sale may have influenced the prices, so we cannot verify Molnár’s data. Sipos, “A termelői és fogyasztói árak vizsgálata Magyarországon,” 12; Matolcsy and Varga, Magyarország nemzeti jövedelme, 25.

69. 69 In a contemporary study, Kerék determined the wages of harvesters to be one-tenth or one-eleventh of the actual amount of grain harvested, which was supplemented only by flour and bacon as food. Kerék, “Adatok a magyar mezőgazdasági munkáscsaládok,” 596.

70. 70 In 1932, the producer price of wheat was 17.95 pengő per quintal, so it can be assumed that the family in question fared better than they would have if they had received their dues in cash, but the essay did not reveal how many days the two boys worked for the nearly ten quintals of wheat. Sipos, “A termelői és fogyasztói árak vizsgálata Magyarországon,” 12.

71. 71 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 10.

72. 72 In 1931, the government made it mandatory for municipalities to take care of the poor living in the settlement. For more details, see Gyáni, “Közmunka a Horthy-korban,” 30–33.

73. 73 They could only write down their names. Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 19 and 25.

74. 74 Ibid., 19.

75. 75 He had 150 kg of corn throughout the year, but it can also be classified as laborer’s wages, because the farmers allowed him to collect the smaller cobs that were not gathered after the corn was harvested.

76. 76 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 23.

77. 77 Ibid., 24.

78. 78 Ibid., 25.

79. 79 Ibid., 33.

80. 80 Éber, “A földárak és földhaszonbérek alakulása tíz év alatt,” 304.

81. 81 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 26.

82. 82 They had an adopted daughter, but it was not revealed how old she was, when they started raising her or until what age they did so. She had married by 1932 and lived in a separate household.

83. 83 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 28.

84. 84 Ibid., 30.

85. 85 Ibid., 31.

86. 86 Ibid., 31.

87. 87 Ibid., 32.

88. 88 In the discussion of the next group, it did become clear that the younger couple had two children. Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 40.

89. 89 Ibid., 35.

90. 90 Ibid., 36.

91. 91 Ibid., 37.

92. 92 They also calculated the house insurance at 4.5 pengő and the chimney sweeping fee at a value of three pengő.

93. 93 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 38.

94. 94 “This almost child-like person type is the most common in the village.” Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 45.

95. 95 Ibid., 40.

96. 96 Ibid., 41.

97. 97 Ibid.

98. 98 Ibid.

99. 99 Ibid., 42.

100. 100 Ibid., 43.

101. 101 Ibid., 45.

102. 102 Ibid.

103. 103 Ibid., 46.

104. 104 The data were collected in January 1933.

105. 105 Molnár, “Pusztaszakállas gazdaság-formái,” 49.

106. 106 Kerék, “Adatok a magyar mezőgazdasági munkáscsaládok,”593–94.

107. 107 In the case of dependent married women, half a day was considered daily, for employed married women, at most a quarter of a day, while for household employees, a full day was taken into account. Household work accounted for 5.49 percent of the national income. Among modern economic indicators, GDP is similar to Károly Molnár’s method of calculation, as it does not take into account household work. Matolcsy and Varga, Magyarország nemzeti jövedelme, 52–53 and 64.

108. 108 Kerék, “Adatok a magyar mezőgazdasági munkáscsaládok,”609.

109. 109 Szakál, “Törökszentmiklós története 1932-től 1938-ig,” 17.

110. 110 Bojkó, Magyar adórendszer és adópolitika, 26–27.

111. 111 Ibid., 27.

112. 112 Ibid., 45.

113. 113 The Type I family owned six cadastral acres of land.

114. 114 Juhos, “Dunántúli kisgazdaságok jövedelmi helyzete,” 285.

* This study was supported by and realized within the frames of the HAS RCH Lendület "Ten Genera­tions" research project.

The Export Potential of Hungarian Agriculture and the Issue of Added Value between the two World Wars

András Schlett
Pázmány Péter Catholic University
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 446-470 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.446

This study presents developments concerning Hungarian agricultural exports during a period when the production structure changed significantly and the international agricultural market changed fundamentally. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, the market and logistic networks developed over the previous centuries had changed significantly, and new actors came to play increasingly prominent roles in trade relations in the Danubian Basin. Hungary, with its small consumer market but significant agricultural potential, had been fundamentally dependent on the value of its agriculture produce on foreign markets. However, the reorganization of the international market quickly brought to the surface the contradictions and structural imbalances of Hungary’s massive agricultural production. Analyses of the agricultural history of the past century repeatedly revealed the problematic nature of the low value-added production of Hungarian agriculture.

Keywords: Hungary, agriculture, trade, export potential, added value

Introduction

The evolution of a country’s export activity is mainly determined by two broad sets of factors. The first is the country’s internal economic conditions, and the second is the country’s interactions with the world around it. By analyzing developments involving Hungarian agricultural exports between 1929 and 1937, Miklós Siegescu shows in detail how domestic economic factors, such as production surpluses and price levels, and international economic conditions influenced Hungarian agricultural exports. His study also discusses the development of Hungarian foreign trade relations, especially with Austria, Germany, Italy, and Czechoslovakia and the effects of trade policy measures. It also provides detailed statistical data on the evolution of Hungarian foreign trade and agricultural exports, with emphasis on the role of the world market and international trade policy in the economic outcomes.¹The interwar period bore witness to major changes in both areas.

Based on these considerations, the present study examines the challenges faced by Hungary in its trade policy and the results of its attempts to respond to these challenges. The situation in Hungary was aggravated by the fact that nearby East European countries also produced massive agricultural exports, and West European industrial states granted significant advantages to overseas agricultural products compared to Hungarian goods. These factors made Hungary’s export markets unstable and difficult to predict.

Against a backdrop of restructuring and a fundamental lack of confidence in Hungary among its trade partners (in part since Hungary had been an enemy country for many of them during the war), the country had to seize every opportunity to find external markets for its agricultural products. Thus, the interwar period bore witness to an intensive search for foreign markets from the postwar crisis through an economic boom (peaking in 1929) and the Great Depression (1930–1934) to a new phase of prosperity (from 1935) marked by an economic policy of continuously increasingly military investments.

Hungary needed to increase its exports and achieve a positive trade balance to secure enough gold standard currencies to finance its massive prewar and postwar foreign debts. However, the demand for Hungarian export goods (mainly low added-value products which were easily found elsewhere) was volatile, and the prices of agricultural produce were generally going down. This resulted in a usually passive balance of trade and increasing financial (and political) indebtedness.

In the discussion below, I examine the evolution of the structure of Hungarian agricultural exports, with particular emphasis on the proportions of lower and higher value-added products and attempts at diversification.

Agriculture after the Treaty of Trianon

Agricultural lands in Trianon Hungary were put to various uses in proportions that differed significantly from the ways in which they had been used when the country had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While the share (but not net amount) of arable land significantly expanded (from 43.9 percent to 60.3 percent), the forested area drastically decreased, from 27 percent to 12 percent. Only a fraction of the gardens (25.2 percent), meadows (25.2 percent), and pastures (30.6 percent) and a larger share of vineyards (68.9 percent) that had been within the borders of the country when it had been part of the Dual Monarchy remained within the new borders.²

In the new national territory, the distribution of land ownership showed a different structure compared to the pre-Trianon situation. Due to the land reforms, the imbalance in land distribution slightly decreased. The proportion of small and large estates changed, reflecting the distinct characteristics of the areas which had been made part of the neighboring states and the territory which remained to Hungary, rather than a worsening of the overall imbalance.

The proportion of small farms decreased, and many peasants found it increasingly difficult to live off their land. While 70.1 percent of farms over 1,000 cadastral yokes (1 yoke equals 0.58 hectares) remained within the new boundaries, the country lost 70 percent of small farms under 10 yokes. Additionally, Hungary retained 40.1 percent of farms between 10 and 50 yokes, 46.1 percent of those between 50 and 100 yokes, 46.7 percent of farms between 100 and 200 yokes, and 57.8 percent of farms between 200 and 500 yokes.³

The proportion of large landholdings did not change drastically. In terms of land ownership, before Trianon, 30 percent of the arable land was owned by large landholders with more than 1,000 cadastral yokes. In the new borders, this figure increased to 44 percent. However, it is important to distinguish between landholdings and landholders when analyzing these figures.

As a result of the territorial changes, the structure of the agricultural labor force differed in post-Trianon Hungary. The ratio of agricultural wage laborers to smallholders increased.If we consider smallholders with less than five cadastral holds of land as part of the agrarian proletariat, the proportion of the population involved was significant. However, these proportions depend on how ownership is defined. Different approaches to measuring land ownership, either through occupational classification or cadastral records, lead to varying results. For example, some agricultural laborers owned small plots of land, while others, who leased land, did not appear as owners in the statistics. The labor market situation was somewhat alleviated by the loss of regions such as Upper Hungary, which traditionally employed large numbers of seasonal workers, thus reducing the pressure on Hungary’s agricultural workforce.⁴

Table 1. Different types of agricultural producers (as a percentage)

	Before Trianon	After Trianon
Owner and tenant	35.2	31.4
Other independent	0.5	0.7
Family worker (unpaid)	31.1	21.9
Administrative manager (gazdasági tisztviselő)	0.2	0.3
Farm hand (cseléd)	9.9	14.7
Agricultural laborer	23.1	31
Source: “A háború előtti Magyarország,” 292–93.

Exposure to External Markets

As a consequence of the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary became heavily dependent on foreign trade. The country lost the secure markets it had had access to under the Monarchy. The former single market was replaced by countries with independent economic policies, new customs borders, tariffs, and independent currency zones. Distrust among the successor states contributed to the strengthening of exclusionary policies, as many of the newly emerging states interpreted the post-Trianon situation as requiring a restructuring of old economic relations and a partial or complete reorganization of traditional market and capital relations.⁵ However, the economic interdependence of the countries in the region is well illustrated by the fact some 20 years later, the Little Entente had not been able to eliminate export-import trade with Hungary. In fact, a significant share of the trade in goods among the states of the Little Entente was routed through Hungary by rail and water. Almost only arms shipments avoided Hungary.

Before 1918, most of Hungary’s agricultural exports did not go beyond the borders of the Monarchy, i.e. agricultural produce was exported to a protected market of 52 million people, where prices were significantly higher than on the global market. Hungary had been in a customs and monetary union with the Austrian hereditary provinces for centuries and with Bosnia and Herzegovina for decades. Austria was able to absorb Hungarian agricultural produce, thus protecting the prices. With the breakup of the Monarchy, Hungary lost this advantage. The limited domestic market made agricultural exports especially vital, but the opportunities to sell products and produce became increasingly limited.⁶ The country could only sell its surpluses at world market prices and was vulnerable to external market and political changes.⁷ Moreover, this happened at a time when Hungarian agriculture, which had high costs, could only achieve low export prices. Whereas before 1918 Hungarian agriculture had benefited from the protection of high tariffs, it now faced open competition on the world market.⁸

In 1920, many of the territories that were ceded were heavily dependent on agricultural imports, as their own agricultural production had not been sufficient to meet the needs of their population even before 1919. Since the remaining territory had already produced the largest share of agricultural surpluses, the relative surplus of agricultural production increased significantly after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. There was no demand within the country for a significant portion of the agricultural produce, so this surplus had to be sold on foreign markets. Between 1924 and 1938, 55–70 percent of the agricultural produce brought to market was sold abroad, as was 55 percent of cereals, 38–40 percent of sugar and sugar beet production, 25–30 percent of tobacco, and 20 percent of the potato crops. And this list includes only the items that were exported in large quantities during the period in question. One could add to it to include items that were only occasionally exported in large quantities.⁹

The division of labor that had developed over the course of centuries in the Carpathian Basin and the forms of cooperation among specialized areas of production and consumption that had been consolidated under the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy were greatly hindered by the new postwar frontiers, and this was only aggravated by the political rivalry and nation-building programs initiated by the successor states, including the creation of unified, protected national markets. No state in the region was an exception. Hungary, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes all focused on industrial development, while Austria and Czechoslovakia strove for agricultural self-sufficiency. These tendencies put the theory and practice of comparative advantage into a kind of parenthesis, and, in a spirit of mutual mistrust, the states of the region strove to build complex national economies, i.e. economies that provided strategic security. All this created an economic structure in the Danube basin in which several parallel capacities operated at an unnecessarily high cost but which, in the event of war, was less economically vulnerable to the need to import items of strategic importance. Economic cooperation among the nations of the former Monarchy was thus hampered not only by higher tariffs but increasingly by politically motivated economic policies, leading in the longer term to a decline in foreign trade relations. In the years following the war, however, autarchic ambitions were less prevalent for a time, and traditional specialization and cooperation continued for a while.¹⁰

This economic cooperation was encouraged by Article 205 of the Treaty of Trianon (identical to article 222 of the Austrian peace treaty), which called for a regional customs agreement among Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia within five years of the signing of the treaty. However, these states were unable to conclude such a treaty and instead maintained the obsolete tariff system inherited from the Monarchy, supplemented by special provisions and import restrictions. Hungary, however, paid considerable attention to promoting foreign trade relations through bilateral and multilateral trade treaties and the application of the so-called most-favored-nation principle. Hungary needed these advantages because its relatively costly agricultural sector and less developed industry were the only way to compete on export markets.

In the early 1920s, in the absence of a general customs agreement, the region’s foreign trade relations were facilitated by bilateral treaties. An important consideration in the setting of tariffs was to blunt the differences between the producer groups involved in agricultural exports and the industrialists wishing to protect domestic industry. Agricultural import tariffs were therefore set at low levels, since they posed little threat to domestic sales, while the high import tariffs on industrial products were used both to protect the nascent industrial sector in Hungary and to provide indirect support for the marketing of agricultural produce, in so far as promises to reduce industrial import duties could be used to obtain more favorable terms in trade agreements.

These tariffs and agreements alone could hardly have affected the structure of Hungarian exports and imports. In Trianon Hungary, agricultural surplus production was a fundamental characteristic due to the higher proportion of land suitable for cereal production. After 1920, the country was dependent on the income brought in through agricultural exports, mainly of grain and flour. Whereas immediately before the war, in years of particularly poor harvests, Hungary had had hardly any surpluses crossing customs borders, after the war, economic prosperity depended mainly on these agricultural exports.

Austria and Czechoslovakia remained important partners, but the Hungarian agricultural sector faced unprecedented difficulties in the face of general international oversupply and competition in transport and tariffs, as well as world market prices. Its low productivity and relatively high production costs made sales difficult, even though Hungary had a vital need for export earnings. It had to meet its international payment obligations, make up for an increasingly pressing shortage of capital, and cover the large costs of imports of raw materials and consumer goods by Hungarian industry. Hungarian agriculture was unable to meet these demands as part of the new international constellation, and the trade balance showed a significant deficit until the end of the 1920s.¹¹

Gyula Balkányi paints a vivid picture of the loss of markets and its effects in Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review):

Today’s generation grew up in a nursery, used to an economic milieu where the “market” was the internal consumption of a large economic area in a customs union with our country. “Our market,” as we remember it, is an area to which producers from competing countries do not have equal access. The market for Hungarian grain, flour, cattle, pigs, fat, bacon, fruit, and wine was, as we remember it, Austria. Not in the way that we were allowed to export goods there. But in the way that others were not allowed to export there. The market, in this exclusive sense, was lost to us. (…) While we were in Greater Hungary and in a customs union with Austria, we did not have to worry about competition from overseas countries. Our goods were known in Austria, our production was adapted to this market. And if there was a threat to our markets—competition by Italian or Spanish wines, frozen meat from Argentina—we could always help by raising customs duties or banning imports. (…) Now, however, we are on a market where our competitors also operate, where we must strictly align our prices with the pricing demands of our rivals, and where we must strive to offer the quality that consumers’ desire. If we provide a better product than our competitors, we must use the most extensive promotion to convince buyers of the superiority and excellence of our prices. The notion that even such a market can be ours must become deeply ingrained in the mindset of today’s generation.¹²

The Collapse of Agro-Vertical Integration

Following the Treaty of Trianon, there was a serious imbalance between agri­cultural raw material resources and processing capacity. It soon became apparent that the highly productive milling, sugar, beer, and leather industries which had previously been designed to supply the Monarchy were unable to utilize their existing capacities. While a significant proportion of the raw material base, including the most important grain-producing areas (South Bačka, Banat, Grosse Schütt), was detached from Hungary, the processing capacities of the Budapest mills were concentrated in the remaining territory of the country.¹³

The situation in the timber industry was similar after Hungary’s loss of most of its forestlands to the neighboring countries. The redundancies were soon followed by factory closures: mills became warehouses and breweries became chocolate and sugar factories and textile mills.

The milling industry was hit hardest, losing a significant proportion of its natural raw material base and a significant part of its upstream markets along the River Danube. Budapest mills also lost Serbian and Romanian wheat as the milling trade ceased.¹⁴ Previously, the milling industry in Budapest sourced 50–60 per­cent of its raw materials from the detached territories. The mills were able to grind 64.5 million quintals of grain, whereas the country’s grain production in the early 1920s averaged 24.2 million quintals. In 1913, 13 mills were working in Budapest, compared with only 9 in 1921. The rest were idle. The mills were also operating at a reduced capacity.¹⁵

The situation was made critical by the customs policy pursued by Austria and Czechoslovakia, the only countries of the one-time Monarchy which still imported substantial quantities of Hungarian flour in the 1920s. Both countries were keen to support their own milling industries and therefore preferred grain imports to flour imports. The autonomous Austrian agricultural tariffs of 1925 and the Czechoslovak agricultural tariffs of 1926 greatly reduced Hungarian flour exports and increased grain exports. As a result, Hungarian mills were able to use only 20-25 percent of their capacity, and thus the production costs were far higher than the costs incurred by their competitors. This led to a crisis in the milling industry.¹⁶

By the end of the decade, the circumstances had improved, and the domestic milling industry was functioning at about 40 percent of its prewar capacity. This improvement was due to the increased demand for Hungarian flour, which can be partly explained by the stabilization of the international economic situation and the restoration of trade relations. Still, the importance of the milling industry after Trianon is shown by the fact that it accounted for 13–15 percent of the total industrial output in the 1930s, topping all other branches/categories except for textiles and the iron and metal industries.

As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, twelve of the 30 sugar factories in operation at that time remained in Hungary, accounting for 41 percent of the beet processing capacity in 1914. The neighboring countries acquired 48.1 percent of the territories which had been used for sugar beet production.

The remaining factories represented 43 percent of the beet processing capacity in 1912. The industry had to cope with serious external and internal problems. As with the milling industry, it had lost part of its natural raw material base (especially to Czechoslovakia) and a significant part of its upstream markets. The decline in sugar exports is illustrated by the fact that, whereas in 1913 they amounted to 68.9 million gold crowns, in 1926 they were only 23.9 million. Underutilization of capacity and low production volumes due to low domestic consumption resulted in higher unit costs.¹⁷

By 1923, sugar production was already covering domestic consumption, and exports also began. By 1928–29, production reached 82 percent of the prewar (proportional to territory) production level. As a result of the 1929 crisis, production significantly declined, and at the lowest point of the crisis in 1932–33, it fell to 42 percent of the pre-crisis level. The 60 percent share of exports in 1929 had fallen to 4 percent by 1938 as a result of the fall in international sugar prices. Even with cheap exports at dumped prices of eight to ten pengős (1.4–1.75 dollars) per quintal, sugar factories were still making minimal profits, but they were threatened by financial collapse. They asked the Government to reduce the high taxes on sugar (sugar tax, treasury share, sales tax), amounting to 52 percent of the 1.27 pengő (0.22 dollar) retail price, but in vain.¹⁸

The New Customs System

With the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the previous customs system became obsolete, and establishing the country’s economic independence became a pressing task. The creation of a new customs tariff system was an essential means with which to strengthen the Hungarian economy. However, the rapid introduction of the new tariffs was made more difficult both by certain clauses of the peace treaty (which required most-favored-nation concessions for the Allied and Associated Powers) and by the conflicting interests of the domestic industrial and agricultural lobbies. According to the those working in agriculture, the reestablishment of free trade within the former Monarchy would be the ideal solution when building new regional trade relations, while those in industry favored the creation of a strong system of protective tariffs. The former did not reckon with the fact that Austria and the Czech Republic how already begun to pursue policies designed to protect and support the farms created by the postwar land distribution and that autarkic agricultural policies were being strengthened on the former export markets. This made it impossible for a reciprocal trade policy to develop, and the surplus production of cereals in the early 1920s also provided these industrialized countries with cheaper import opportunities. Contemporaries realized that the war had shattered the quasi-equilibrium on the agricultural market of the previous decades. The increase in demand for food and raw materials and the drastic drop in production in some areas (or the drop in exports due to the war) encouraged the United States and other countries less affected by the war (e.g. South American countries) to increase their output in agriculture and food products. During the postwar economic recovery, when production began to reach prewar levels anyway, these surpluses resulted in a significant oversupply and caused a drop in world prices (Fig. 1). Austria bought one-third of its cereals from the United States, and Czechoslovakia bought half of its flour from the United States.¹⁹ This was an awkward consequence of the foreign trade struggles and regional “self-isolation” policies among the small states of Central Europe.

 

Figure 1. The average annual price of wheat between 1914 and 1934 (Pengő per 100 kilograms). The low prices from 1915 to 1921 for all grains (wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn) were government-regulated maximum prices aimed at curbing speculation and inflation.

Source: Rege, “Magyarország búzatermelésének,” 463, 471, 474; Szőnyi, “Gabonaárak,” 204.

Customs policy debates were most heated over the 1923 tariff bill, which was strongly protective of industry and was intended to further rapid and far-reaching industrialization. Critics emphasized that Hungary, as an agricultural country, should be cautious when offering strong protections to industry as a means of developing the national economy. The new tariffs would foster industrial development only if they did not endanger the interests of the agricultural sector and consumers.²⁰

Finally, the new customs regime introduced in January 1925 included more and higher import tariffs (30 percent on average). While tariffs on light industry products reached 50 percent, certain agricultural equipment and major raw materials were allowed to enter the domestic market duty-free. The new system also fueled the hope that a reduction in certain tariffs based on reciprocity could serve as a basis for negotiating easier placement of Hungarian agricultural exports.

Foreign Trade Agreements

In the interwar period, every small Central European country sought to protect its domestic market from foreign competition while also aiming to secure export opportunities for its domestic producers. However, this dual objective posed significant challenges during international trade negotiations, as protectionist tariff policies and efforts to promote exports often represented conflicting interests. As a result, the formation of customs and trade agreements between various countries was often prolonged and required compromises.

In the period between 1925 and 1929, the main objective of Hungarian trade policy was the negotiation and adoption of bilateral agreements. The principal aim was to secure favorable conditions, especially low tariffs, for Hungarian agricultural and food exports. The strategic importance of this is also shown by the fact that agriculture provided 60 to 65 percent of Hungary’s total exports throughout the period. In order to minimize the deficit in the foreign trade balance, every effort had to be made to ensure that agricultural products could reach the markets of potential importing countries.

The most important trade partner, of course, was Austria. Its share of Hungary’s exports declined significantly in the 1920s, from 60 percent before the war to 34 percent by the end of the decade, but it still remained Hungary’s most important trade partner. The central issue of the Austro-Hungarian negotiations was the level of Austrian tariffs on Hungarian agricultural goods and Hungarian tariffs on Austrian industrial goods. After lengthy negotiations lasting some 14 months, the treaty regulating trade between the two countries and the supplementary tariff agreement were concluded on May 9, 1926.

Significantly, the reduction of import duties on wine and flour was the most contentious issue in the Hungarian proposals and the one on which the Austrians were least willing to make concessions. In the end, the agreement was concluded, which was regarded in economic circles as the first significant step toward boosting foreign trade. However, the protectionist spirit that prevailed was illustrated by the fact that in December 1926, a Christian Socialist representative, speaking for the agricultural representatives, called for a review of the recent agreement and an increase in the tariff rate for agricultural products.

In the end, the agreement was concluded. In economic circles, it was regarded as the first significant step towards boosting foreign trade.

In the spring of 1927, a similar treaty was concluded between Hungary and Czechoslovakia after difficult diplomatic negotiations. This treaty was all the more important, because a previous agreement between the two countries, reached in 1923, had not contained a tariff section and had not specified the meaning of the “particularly favorable treatment” that the two parties had pledged to accord each other. Thus, the 1923 agreement did not substantially further the expansion of Hungarian agricultural exports to Czechoslovakia, and it also did not prevent Czechoslovak agricultural protectionist measures. From time to time, the Prague Government issued bans on the import of Hungarian flour and increased tariffs on certain agricultural products.

Thus, following the political disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, previous trade relations also began to deteriorate. Although Czechoslovak industrialists and Hungarian landowners would have been interested in establishing relations, both had lost political influence in their respective domestic contexts.

In Hungary, the lobbying power of industrial capitalists increased, while in Czechoslovakia, those involved in agriculture gained influence, and they were op­posed to any compromise. Although negotiations for a trade treaty were under­way, they progressed very slowly and the establishment of relations on a new basis was hampered by political differences. Finally, the introduction of new Hungarian tariffs made it imperative to normalize trade relations. A trade agree­ment was concluded on May 5, 1927, based on the principles of most-favored-nation treatment and parity.

The agreement reflected stronger agricultural protectionism in Hungary and industrial protectionism in Czechoslovakia. When the agreement was reached, trade between the two countries was already in decline, and the decrease was particularly marked in exports from Czechoslovakia to Hungary. Imports of raw materials from Czechoslovakia continued to increase, but textile imports fell, very much in line with the intentions of Hungarian industrial policy. While in 1924 textiles still accounted for half of Czechoslovak exports to Hungary, in 1929 they accounted for just over a third. The Czechoslovak government, however, welcomed the decline in Hungarian agricultural exports and intensified its trade relations, if only for political reasons, with the two other Little Entente states.²¹

The Great Depression

The global economic crisis immediately disrupted the slowly developing trade relations and significantly worsened the sales position of Hungarian agriculture. In addition to the decline in export volume, the price drop of export goods also had a detrimental effect on Hungary’s foreign trade balance. The fall of agricultural prices alone between 1929 and 1931 caused a 100 million pengő (17.4 million dollars) drop in Hungary’s trade balance. The dramatic fall of the ratio of agricultural prices to industrial prices dealt a particularly strong blow to the trade balance, since Hungary exported mainly agricultural produce and imported mainly industrial goods. As a result, in 1932 imports fell by 39.1 percent and exports by 41.4 percent.²²

Figure 2. Changes in exports between 1920 and 1939 (thousand pengő)

Source: Based on the data from the MSK, New Series, vols. 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 95, 98, 101, 106, 109, 111.

As countries sought to balance their trade, they responded to the crisis by strengthening their protectionism. The culmination of this process was Czecho­slovakia’s withdrawal from the trade agreement with Hungary in 1930. Czecho­slovakia intended to strengthen its economic ties with the other two Little Entente states by significantly reducing trade with Hungary. In the non-treaty situation, as of 1930, Hungary’s exports to Czechoslovakia fell from 16.8 percent of total exports to 4.2 percent the following year. Between 1929 and 1931, Hungary’s total exports fell by 45.1, while exports to Czechoslovakia fell by 86 percent. As a result of the crisis, Hungarian agricultural exports fell sharply both in volume and especially in price. The maximum agricultural export of 626 million pengős in 1929 fell to a minimum of 195 million pengős in 1932.²³

Hungarian agricultural policy reacted with the introduction of the boletta system (July 1930) and the price premium system (July 1931) as an immediacy measure for the sale of agricultural produce, as well as intervention buying. Long-term solutions also had to be introduced without sacrificing the farmers’ free choice of production. Károly Ihrig, a prominent agricultural economist of the era, saw the key to expanding sales opportunities in improving the marketability of products and establishing cooperatives that would ensure greater organization and profitability for small farms.²⁴ Kálmán Ruffy-Varga was of a similar opinion, stressing the need for official certificates issued by the state for each type of Hungarian wheat in response to the quality requirements of foreign countries, which allowed only the highest quality wheat to be exported.²⁵

Foreign Trade Agreements in the 1930s

For Hungary, finding the way out of the struggles it faced with agricultural exports was facilitated by the opening of the German, Italian, and Austrian markets. In the 1930s, the agreements made with these countries became the foundation of Hungary’s foreign trade. Under an agreement concluded in Rome in May 1934, Italy and Austria undertook to purchase Hungary’s surplus wheat at a profitable price. By this time, Germany had also realized that it was a mistake to use agricultural tariffs to hinder agricultural imports from countries in which Germany also sought to sell its industrial products.

From the onset of the economic crisis, German foreign trade policy increasingly reflected the effort to make concessions to the agricultural exports of the countries in Central and Southeastern Europe to secure markets for German industrial goods. Through bilateral trade agreements, Germany committed to purchasing agricultural products from Hungary.²⁶

This was influenced by the realization that the Südostraum, “abandoned” by the Western powers, could easily be tied to Germany by bilateral trade agreements which would serve long-term German geopolitical aims. However, there was also a simple economic and financial reason to open towards the markets to the east. Germany had lost its previous overseas sources of raw materials due to currency difficulties. Furthermore, the German agricultural market could provide a solution to the most serious problems faced by the countries of this region, especially Hungary, after the breakup of the Monarchy: the permanent crisis of overproduction caused by the loss of agricultural export markets. In 1934, a bilateral agreement was reached between the two countries, a supplement to the 1931 trade treaty, allowing Hungary to sell substantial quantities of grain, livestock, fat, meat, and bacon in Germany. Within one year (in 1934), Germany’s share in Hungary’s exports doubled (from 11.2 to 22.2 percent) and then continued to increase until 1938, when, because of the Anschluss, Hungarian exports to Germany nearly doubled again (from 24.0 to 45.7 percent). Meanwhile, Hungarian imports from Germany rose from 14.9 percent (in 1933) to 24.9 percent (in 1937) and then to 43.9 percent in the year of the Anschluss. By the mid-1930’s Germany had become Hungary’s most important foreign trade partner, and by the end of the decade, half of Hungary’s foreign trade was directed to and received from Germany.

Figure 3. Changes in export between 1930 and 1939

Source: Based on the data from the MSK, New Series, vols. 81, 82, 84, 85, 95, 98, 101, 106, 109, and 111.

One of the consequences of the boom in exports to Germany, however, was that the Hungarian agricultural sector became a major creditor to the German economy due to the surplus in foreign trade caused by Germany’s reluctance to balance the clearing bill and, in fact, to pay its debts. The clearing imbalance was due to the fact that Germany significantly limited its exports of raw materials, as domestic demand increased in preparation for the war. While its share of Hungarian imports of raw materials and semi-finished goods averaged 26 percent between 1927 and 1933, it was only 12.9 percent in 1937.²⁷

The “missing” German products had to be imported from countries with freely transferrable currencies. This prevented exports to countries that would not have paid with hard currency. The Hungarian Governmentordered export companies to sell their products amounting to at least 20 percent of the value of their exports towards Germany in countries which made their payments in gold or hard, freely transferrable currencies. In order to achieve this aim, the government also provided proportional export subsidies to these companies. Export earnings had to be transferred to the Hungarian National Bank, which paid the companies the equivalent in pengős at the official exchange rate, while the Treasury added different premiums (according to each country and product), thus providing a considerable incentive for exporting companies. In 1935, premiums were set at 38 percent for “franc” exports (Belgium, France, Switzerland) and 50 percent for exports in a convertible foreign currency, irrespective of the nature of the products.

In 1936, the Price Compensation Fund (Árkiegyenlítő Alap) was created to support agricultural exports, and in its first year, 1.75 million pengős (306 thousand dollars) were allocated from the state budget and a further 1.228.315 pengős (215 thousand dollars) were made available thanks to the extra revenues from the high prices of exports to Germany. This enabled foreign exchange earnings of 10,891,504 pengős (1.9 million dollars) in 1936. This scheme also helped increase Hungarian exports to Great Britain and the United States in the second half of the 1930s.²⁸ Exports to the United States increased in both 1936 and 1937 but then declined, while exports to Great Britain only rose until 1936, after which they started to decrease, with a dramatic drop by 1939.²⁹

In the case of Hungary, the importance of agricultural exports in exchange for hard currency stemmed from the desire to reach an equilibrium in the balance of trade but even more so from the indebted country’s need to produce enough hard currency to finance the regular repayments of capital and interest. It is hardly a mere coincidence that the intentions of creditor countries began to appear behind the increase of sterling and dollar-based Hungarian exports. Thus, from the beginning of the Great Depression until the outbreak of World War II, important agricultural trade relations were established with countries that had previously functioned not as agricultural markets but as creditors for the Hungarian economy. Thus, Hungarian agricultural products with low added value could also help improve the country’s unstable financial situation (Fig. 6).³⁰

When analyzing the changes in agricultural exports, one should note that after the sharp decline during the economic crisis, the country was able to increase its agricultural exports significantly, but there was a significant concentration of the markets, which led to increased dependence on the German Empire.

The decreasing diversification of the destination of Hungarian agricultural exports is reflected in the drastic decline of trade with the Little Ententecountries. In addition, the balance of Hungarian foreign trade with these countries ran deficits almost every year.

The Issue of Added Value

Another key explanation for the specificities of Hungarian exports lies in the product structure. If we look at the distribution of external trade by economic sector and by the degree of processing of goods,³¹ it is striking that between 1935 and 1939 the share of raw materials in Hungarian imports declined significantly (from 47.7 to 35.5 percent), while the share of finished goods continued to rise (from 25.5 to 35.4 percent).³²

In the second half of the 1930s, the proportion of raw agricultural products in agricultural exports continued to rise from an already high level, while the share of processed food products declined (see Fig. 9). Exports of cereals and livestock increased, whereas higher value-added products, such as meat and meat products, as well as dairy products, experienced stagnation or decline.³³

The changes in agricultural trade are even more noticeable when we break down the volume of exports by product group according to the degree of processing. The most important products in total exports were wheat and wheat flour.

One of the most striking changes in the 1930s was the sharp downward trend in flour exports. It also shows the profound changes that had taken place in international agricultural trade. These adverse changes cannot be attributed solely to the failings of Hungarian agricultural policy, as they also reflected the aspirations of the traditionally agricultural importing countries of the period. Namely, in an uncertain international environment, importing countries, motivated by growing protectionism, sought to reduce absolute exposure to strategic commodities by limiting their imports to the most profitable form possible. Thus, of course, they also secured the economic benefits of processing for their own country.

Figure 8. The distribution of foreign trade according to the degree of processing of the products (as a percentage)

Source: Based on Kereskedelmünk és iparunk az 1939. évben, 34.

Figure 9. Ratio of agricultural raw materials and manufactured goods in exports (as a percentage)

Source: MSK, New Series, vol. 81, 417; 82, MSK, New Series, vol. 81, 417; vol. 82, 406; vol. 84, 376; vol. 85, 374; vol. 95, 377; vol. 98, 371; vol. 101, 360; vol. 106, 305; vol. 109, 301; vol. 111, 291.

Figure 10. Development of wheat and wheat flour exports (in thousands of quintals)

Source: Own compilation based on Siegescu, “A magyar mezőgazdasági kiviteli tevékenység,” 551.

Summary

With the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the traditional markets for Hungarian agricultural produce became less accessible. This in turn triggered a transformation in Hungarian trade policy. The disintegration of the single customs area, the lack of competitiveness, and the political tensions among the countries of the Danube Basin created permanent difficulties for Hungary in its efforts to bring its agricultural produce to international markets. Meanwhile, Hungary’s more industrialized neighbors, Austria and Czechoslovakia, fulfilled their import demands with lower-cost goods from overseas. In this period, the Hungarian milling industry, which in 1910 was still the second largest supplier of flour to the world market after the United States, had to dismantle much of its infrastructure because of market losses and underutilization.

These structural problems did not end until Germany, which had previously satisfied its immense demand for agricultural and food products with cheaper American goods, opened its vastly expanding markets to Hungarian agricultural products for economic and geopolitical reasons. However, due to clearing settlements, Germany’s increasing military preparedness, and the dominant party’s ability to assert its interests, Hungary, with its agricultural trade surplus, increasingly became a financial backer of the German Reich. Meanwhile, the financial pressure of repaying and servicing loans taken out in the 1920s, primarily from sources in Great Britain and the United States made agricultural exports to creditor countries necessary due to the lack of foreign currency. As a result, the role of agricultural exports in this trade relationship also became more significant, as creditors were eager to recover the funds they had previously lent their debtors. The government was ready to pay export premiums, which also contributed to maintaining the balance of Hungary’s payment situation.

The most important lesson of the period is that export-driven agriculture faced increasingly shifting and unpredictable demands. After the Great Depression this led to the realization that foreign market expansion could only be achieved within “imperial” relationships. It was the (geo)political (imperial) rationality of Germany on one hand and the financial rationality of Hungary’s creditors on the other which were able to provide an adequate market for Hungarian agricultural produce.

Bibliography

Primary sources

“A háború előtti Magyarország statisztikai adatai a megmaradt és elvesztett területek szerint részletezve” [Statistical data of pre-war Hungary broken down by remaining and lost territories]. Magyar Statisztikai Szemle,no. 7–8 (1923): 288–306.

Bende, István, ed. Magyar külkereskedelmi zsebkönyv [Hungarian foreign trade handbook], IV. Budapest: A M. Kir. Külkereskedelmi hivatal, 1938.

Kereskedelmünk és iparunk az 1939. évben [Hungarian trade and industry in 1939]. Budapest: Budapesti Kereskedelmi és Iparkamara, 1940.

Közgazdasági Értesítő, March 7, 1929.

Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv. Új folyam 44, 1936[Hungarian statistical yearbook. New series 44. 1936]. Budapest: Athenaeum, 1937.

Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv. Új folyam 47, 1939 [Hungarian statistical yearbook. New series 47. 1939]. Budapest: Athenaeum, 1940.

Mike, Gyula, ed. Magyar statisztikai zsebkönyv. VIII. évfolyam [Hungarian statistical handbook]. Budapest: A M. Kir. Külkereskedelmi hivatal, 1939.

MSK = Magyar Statisztikai Közlemények. Új sorozat [Hungarian Statistical Bulletin. New Series]. Budapest: Magyar Királyi Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, 1902—1942.

Secondary literature

Balkányi, Béla. “Magyarország mezőgazdasági kivitele” [Agricultural exports from Hungary]. Közgazdasági Szemle 7, no. 2 (1928): 134–57.

Buday, László. Magyarország küzdelmes évei [Hungary’s years of struggle]. Published privately. Budapest, 1923.

Buzás, József. Magyarország külkereskedelme 1919–1945 [Hungary’s foreign trade, 1919–1938]. Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1961.

Eckhart, Ferenc. A magyar közgazdaság száz éve 1841–1941 [One hundred years of Hungarian economics, 1841–1941]. Budapest, 1941.

Fejes, Judit. “A magyar–német gazdasági és politikai kapcsolatok kérdéséhez az 1920-as–1930-as évek fordulóján” [Hungarian-German economic and political relations at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s]. Történelmi Szemle 19, no. 3 (1976): 361–84.

Föglein, Gizella. “Tradíció és modernizáció a magyar mezőgazdaság utóbbi másfél évszázadában” [Tradition and modernization in the last 150 years of Hungarian Agriculture]. Múltunk 49, no. 3 (2004): 256–63.

Gunst, Péter. “A magyar mezőgazdaság piacviszonyai és a német piac az 1920–30-as években” [Market relations of Hungarian agriculture and the German market in the 1920s and 1930s]. Századok 118, no. 3 (1984): 513–30.

Gunst, Péter. Magyarország gazdaságtörténete (1914–1989) [An economic history of Hungary, 1914–1989]. Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, 1996.

Ihrig, Károly. Szövetkezetek a közgazdaságban [Cooperatives in economics]. Budapest, 1937.

Klement, Judit. “Budapest és a malmok, 1841–2008” [Budapest and the mills]. Történelmi Szemle 65, no. 1 (2023): 155–67.

Matlekovits, Sándor. Vámpolitika és vámtarifa [Customs policy and customs tariffs]. Budapest, 1923.

Mózes, Mihály. Agrárfejlődés Erdélyben, 1867–1918. Eger: Eszterházy Károly Főiskola Líceum Kiadó, 2009.

[Niederhauser, Emil.] “A Magyar–Csehszlovák Történész Vegyesbizottság tudományos ülésszaka” [Report on the scientific session of the Hungarian-Czechoslovak Joint Committee of Historians]. Századok 110, no. 6 (1970): 1106–20.

Orosz, István. “A modernizációs kísérletek főbb szakaszai a magyar mezőgazdaságban a XIX–XX. században” [The main phases of modernization experiments in Hungarian agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries]. Múltunk 48, no. 2 (2003): 231–58.

Pál, György, and István Salánki. “A cukoripar fejlődése” [The development of the sugar industry]. Élelmezési Ipar 40, no. 9 (1986): 327–33.

Rege, Károly. “Magyarország búzatermelésének 100 éves áralakulása és termelési költsége” [100-year price evolution and the costs of production of wheat in Hungary]. Magyar Statisztikai Szemle no. 6 (1934): 460–78.

Siegescu, Miklós. “A magyar mezőgazdasági kiviteli tevékenység az 1929–1937. években” [Hungarian agricultural exports in 1929–1937]. Magyar Gazdák Szemléje 43, no. 12 (1938): 539–52.

Schlett, András. “Agrár-közgazdaságtan a két világháború között” [Agricultural economics in the interwar period]. Heller Farkas Füzetek 1, no. 1 (2003): 17–28.

Schlett, András. “Megkésettség – nyitottság – kettős erőtér: Közgazdászok az agrárpolitika szolgálatában a két világháború közötti Magyarországon” [Belatedness – Openness – Converging Influences: Economists in the service of agricultural policy in interwar Hungary]. Agrártörténeti Szemle 50, no. 1–4 (2009): 217–30.

Szegő, Sándor. “A magyar cukoripar gazdaságtörténetéből VII.” [The economic history of the Hungarian sugar industry]. Cukoripar 28, no. 1 (1975): 31–33.

Szőnyi, Gyula. “Gabonaárak a XVIII. század vége óta” [Cereal prices since the end of the eighteenth century]. Magyar Statisztikai Szemle, no. 3 (1935): 123–54.

Szuhay, Miklós. Állami beavatkozás és a magyar mezőgazdaság az 1930-as években [State intervention and Hungarian agriculture in the 1930s]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1962.

Vajda, Ödön. “Cukoripar” [The sugar industry]. Magyar Statisztikai Szemle 17, no. 6(1939): 667–71.

Zeidler, Miklós. “Társadalom és gazdaság Trianon után” [Society and economy after Trianon]. Limes – Tudományos Szemle 15, no. 2 (2002): 5–25.

---

1 Siegescu, “A magyar mezőgazdasági kiviteli,” 538.

2 Buday, Magyarország küzdelmes évei, 12.

3 Based on the data from MSK, New Series, vol. 56.

4 Zeidler, “Társadalom és gazdaság,” 11; Gunst, Magyarország gazdaságtörténete, 40.

5 Mózes, Agrárfejlődés, 185.

6 Föglein, “Tradíció és modernizáció,” 259.

7 Schlett, “Agrár-közgazdaságtan,” 18–19.

8 Orosz, “A modernizációs kísérletek,” 248.

9 Gunst, “A magyar mezőgazdaság piacviszonyai,” 517–18.

10 Zeidler, “Társadalom és gazdaság,” 13–14.

11 Ibid.

12 Balkányi, “Magyarország mezőgazdasági kivitele,” 138–39.

13 See Klement, “Budapest és a malmok.”

14 The milling trade in the milling industry refers to the practice where mills process foreign raw materials, such as grain imported from abroad, and then export the resulting flour or other processed products. This process was common in Central Europe, particularly in countries like Hungary, where the milling industry played a significant role in the economy. One of the main advantages of the milling trade is that it allows the country to export processed products with greater added value instead of raw grain. This practice previously contributed to the development of the milling industry, and also played an important role in international trade.

¹⁵ Közgazdasági Értesítő, March 7, 1929, 2–3.

16 Eckhart, A magyar közgazdaság száz éve, 274.

17 Szegő, “A magyar cukoripar,” 31; Vajda, “Cukoripar,” 667.

18 Pál and Salánki, “A cukoripar fejlődése,” 328.

19 Buzás, “Magyarország külkereskedelme,” 148.

20 Matlekovits, Vámpolitika és vámtarifa, 51.

21 “A Magyar–Csehszlovák Vegyesbizottság,” 1107.

22 MSK, New Series, vol. 84, 21.

23 MSK, New Series, vol. 82, 51.

24 Ihrig, A szövetkezetek, part 4, chapter 4.

25 Schlett, “Megkésettség,” 219.

26 Fejes, “A magyar–német gazdasági,” 370–71.

27 Bende, Magyar Külkereskedelmi Zsebkönyv, 1938, 72.

28 Szuhay, Állami beavatkozás.

29 Based on the data from MSK, New Series, vols. 85, 95, 98, 101, 106, 109, and 111.

30 Siegescu, “A magyar mezőgazdasági kiviteli,” 548.

31 It is important to note that the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) applies two different approaches in classifying raw materials, semi-finished products, and finished goods: one based on production and the other on usage. In this article, I follow the production-based approach and categorize the products accordingly.

32 Kereskedelmünk és iparunk az 1939. évben, 34.

33 Bede, Magyar Külkereskedelmi Zsebkönyv, 1938, 26, 32–33.

Agricultural Productivity in the Western Borderlands of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania (Second Half of the Sixteenth Century)

Maciej Kwiatkowski

University of Bialystok

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ORCID: 0000–0001–8889–8086

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 431-445 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.431

The purpose of this article is to determine the grain yields in the royal manors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries. The manorial system in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania appeared with the land reform in the mid-16th century (Volok Reform), when the three-field system was introduced here. However, there were far fewer manor farms in Lithuania than in Poland, but they were very large. Most of them produced grain for export based on peasant labor force. The inventories of the royal estates give account on the seed demand and yields of the most important cereals: rye, oats and wheat. The analysis of more than a dozen manors showed varying yields in Lithuanian estates (Grodno Starosty, Brest Ekonomy and Kobrin Ekonomy), which were due to natural environmental conditions, as well as elemental disasters or human activity.

Keywords: grain yield, productivity, 16–17th-century Lithuania, volok reform, manors

Introduction: State of Research

Studies on crop yields in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth have a deep tradition. The most extensive analysis of the productivity of peasant and manorial farms was done by Alina Wawrzyńczyk1 and Leonid Żytkowicz2 over 50 years ago, focusing mainly on royal and church estates in early modern Poland. Other prominent scholars of the economy of early modern Poland have also paid attention to agricultural productivity, including Jerzy Topolski, Andrzej Wyczański, and Stefan Cackowski.3 Piotr Guzowski and Monika Kozłowska-Szyc are also currently pursuing research on the subject.4 The conditions of the agricultural economy in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have also long remained at the center of research by historians. Most of the scholarship has been devoted to the period of the Volok Reform5 in the second half of the sixteenth century, in particular to the layout of manors and the lists of the duties of serfs.6 Several works also dealt with the efficiency of agriculture in medieval Lithuania. The economics of the Roch demesne (Novogrudok province) and the Trotsinski estate (Brest–Lithuanian province) were analyzed by Rożycka-Glassowa.7 Jozef Ochmanski wrote about the efficiency of the grand ducal economy in the Kobrin ducal estate.8 Also, Stanislaw Kosciałkowski examined the significance of Lithuanian yields, supported by yield estimates made by Antoni Żabko-Potopowicz in selected grand ducal estates in the eighteenth century.9 Thus, the scholarship on the agricultural economy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its efficiency are for the most part several decades old. A recent summary of the research was presented by Alina Czapiuk in the 1990s,10 but this research and the various works of secondary literature mentioned by Czapiuk are in need of an update, urging for some comparative focus on similar questions in other regions.

Case Studies: Selection of the Analyzed Area

Though numerous shorter works of secondary literature have been published on the subject, there is still a lack of a more complete work focused on the study of the functioning of the agricultural economy in the second half of the sixteenth century. I neither intend nor claim, in the discussion below, to discuss all aspects of the productivity of Lithuanian agriculture in the Renaissance. I present my findings primarily with the aim of furthering a more nuanced interpretation of the findings of research focusing on regions to the east of the (quite thoroughly studied) Kingdom of Poland. This will make it possible to include further areas in the analysis of the manorial system.

In order to discuss agricultural production in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the perspectives of total yield and quality, I focused on three estates as case studies: the Grodno royal estates (1578),11 the Brest royal estates(1588), and the Kobrin royal estates(1597). This selection was not random. In accordance with the 1588 Privilege of Counties on the Table of His Majesty the King, some of the Lithuanian royal (state) properties were transformed into ekonomias, or in other words, they put under the control of the monarch and generated a significant share of the income of the court treasury.12 The existence of Lithuanian ekonomias was confirmed in 1589, and in 1590, in accordance with legislation passed by the parliament the royal table estates in Poland were also separated.13 Ekonomias were usually large estates which included several towns, several manors, and dozens or even hundreds of villages. Sejm acts mention 11 ekonomias. Five of them (Tczew, Malbork, Rogozin, Sandomierz, and Sambor) belonged to Poland, as did the Cracow grand-government and a number of regalia. Another six ekonomias (Brest, Grodno, Kobrin, Mogilev, Olitsa, and Šiauliai) were within Lithuania. Our goal, therefore, was to select relatively extensive areas for the study of relationships on the landlords’ estates.

Map 1. Location of farms in the Grodno Starosty (1578), Brest ekonomia (1588),
and Kobrin ekonomia (1597)

Source: Own compilation based on, AGAD, AK, sign. I/10, pp. 23, 97, 127, 171, 194, 238, 266, 296–297; AGAD, ASK LVI, sign. 11, k. 16, 21v, 24–24v, 28v, 32v–35v; AGAD,
The so-called Lithuanian Metryka, sign. 29, pp. 28, 34–36, 51–52, 71–73, 89–90, 101.

Characteristics of the Sources

Most of the court estates have well-preserved treasury sources from the second half of the sixteenth century. The documents which were drawn up during the period of the Volok Reform, are widely known among scholars.14 The documents offer detailed descriptions of the land, the boundaries of the manors, towns, and villages, and the duties of the serfs, but they reveal little concerning the extent of production on the grand ducal farms. Only inventories from the 1570s and 1590s make it possible to analyze the productivity of manorial farms, in addition to examining a number of duties of the populations living on the estates. The inventories of the Brest and Grodno estates were compiled after the deaths of the previous possessors.15 This is not true in the case of the source on Kobrin’s ekonomia, which was created at the express order of King Sigismund III Vasa, who did not give any specific reason for his command.16 The estates included in this study were found in the western stretches of Lithuania, in Grodno and Brest-Litovsk Counties.

The Crop Yields

There are two basic methods for examining a farmer’s harvest. The first method involves taking the number of threshed crops and dividing the harvest by the size of the previously sown crop (which gives the yield ratio). Thus, we talk about the ratio of one seed sown to one grain harvested. The methodology requires following rules:

1. The study of the proportion of seeds sown to grain harvested must be limited to individual crop species. Thus, we do not deal with the combined yields of rye and wheat unless, for example, we are interested in the yield of winter cereals, which, however, requires appropriate separation of the data.

2. Analysis must be based on standardized units of bulk measures. If a source only offers information concerning seeds sown counted in threescores17 and information about the harvest as measured in barrels, we are not able to give the yield of a particular crop. However, if we were to break this data down (for instance, to arrive at an approximation of the number of grains in a barrel), then the source might contain useful information concerning the yield per threescore.

The above method has been widely used in historical and contemporary scholarship on agriculture in the Polish and Lithuanian lands. Certainly, one of the great advantages of this methodology is its comparative simplicity, assuming we have reliable data in consistent units of measurement.

Another strategy is to indicate crop yields by presenting yield efficiencies in terms of the number of quintals per hectare. This method forces the historian to calculate older units of bulk and area measurements into modern ones. It is thus more time-consuming, as it requires knowledge of several conversion factors. Unfortunately, it is sometimes completely unreliable if the sources do not indicate the size of a given farm. The aforementioned method is used by scientists analyzing agriculture in Western Europe (for instance), but Polish researchers also do not shy away from using the method of estimating yields in quintals per single hectare.18 Due to the difficulty of determining the acreage of old manor farms, we chose the first method of analysis, showing the yields as a ration of seeds down to grains harvested.

For the analysis, we chose all the manors on each estate: ten on the Grodno Starosty, five on the Brest estate, and six on the Kobrin ekonomia. In the sources provided precise data on crops sown, harvests counted in threescores, and threescore efficiency rates. In accordance with the Volok Law regulating relations on the grand ducal estates, all estates used the system of a barrel of brine, equal to four Cracow bushels.19

Table 1. Average crop values on the Grodno Starosty, Brest and Kobrin ekonomias (1578–97) (yield measured to sown seed)

Property	Winter rye	Spring rye	Winter wheat	Spring wheat	Barley	Oats	Peas	Buckwheat
Grodno Starosty	2.7	1.2	2.5	4.6	2.8	1.9	2.6	2.0
Brest Ekonomia	3.9	2.6	4.6	2.9	2.8	2.5	3	1.8
Kobrin Ekonomia	2.5	1.6	1.2	0.3	2.7	2.1	2.6	2.5
Source: Own compilation based on, AGAD, AK, sign. I/10, pp. 23, 97, 127, 171, 194, 238, 266, 296–297; AGAD, ASK LVI, sign. 11, k. 16, 21v, 24–24v, 28v, 32v–35v; AGAD, The so-called Lithuanian Metryka, sign. 29, pp. 28, 34–36, 51–52, 71–73, 89–90, 101.

The Table 1 shows the arithmetic average yield on the Grodno Starosty and the manors on the Brest and Kobrin estates in the second half of the sixteenth century. The data suggests that spring wheat was one of the most successful crops on the Grodno estate. In practice, however, this crop was grown on only one grange of the Grodno estate, which in principle excludes the sense of including data on average yields. The data for winter wheat on the Brest estate were identical, although this crop was only grown the farms belonging to three landlords. Quite good values were generated by winter rye on the Brest ekonomia, which usually boasted the best indicators of manor management efficiency. The weakest yield parameters were obtained by spring rye and oats, the average figures for which, as a ratio of grains harvested to seeds sown, ranged from 1.2 to 2.6 and from 1.9 to 2.5, respectively. A comparison of average yield values on these estates to average yields shows that in most cases the Lithuanian estates were not nearly as productive or efficient as the estates in Poland, for example, where the corresponding figures were 3.2–5 for rye, 4.3–7.6 for wheat, 4.5–8 for barley and 1.8–7 for oat.. The averages for the harvests on the grand ducal estates better resemble the yields obtained in Ducal Prussia (rye: 3.5; wheat: 5; barley: 4; oats: 2.8). 20 In comparison with Poland and Prussia, wheat did not fare nearly as well, achieving a similar average only on the Brest economy. Yields were much lower on the other estates, reaching just over one to about 2.5 grains per seed sown.

 

Figure 1. Variability of yields of winter rye, winter wheat, barley, and oats on the Grodno Starosty, Brest ekonomia and Kobrin ekonomia (1578–97)

Source: Own compilation based on, AGAD, AK, sign. I/10, pp. 23, 97, 127, 171, 194, 238, 266, 296–297; AGAD, ASK LVI, sign. 11, k. 16, 21v, 24–24v, 28v, 32v–35v; AGAD,
The so-called Lithuanian Metryka, sign. 29, pp. 28, 34–36, 51–52, 71–73, 89–90, 101.

In addition to indicating the average yield, it would be worth considering the variety of parameters obtained. To this end, one could approach the issue from a comparative discussion of data concerning the yields of four of the most important crops: winter rye, winter wheat, barley, and oats. The focus on these four crops is dictated by two factors: they achieved the highest yields among grains and these regularly appeared in the farm accounts.

Figure 2. Productivity of crops on the farms of Grodno Starosty and the Brest and Kobrin ekonomias (1578–97) in barrels/threescore. Average values are indicated by a solid line, and the standard deviation by a dashed line.

Source: Own compilation based on, AGAD, AK, sign. I/10, pp. 23, 97, 127, 171, 194, 238, 266, 296–297; AGAD, ASK LVI, sign. 11, k. 16, 21v, 24–24v, 28v, 32v–35v; AGAD,
The so-called Lithuanian Metryka, sign. 29, pp. 28, 34–36, 51–52, 71–73, 89–90, 101.

Fluctuations in yields are evident throughout the study of any selected crops. Only some manors achieved similar yield values, which clearly escape us when focusing only on average grain yields. We see the greatest differences in yields in the case of the manors of Grodno Starosty, which could be due to the larger number of farms owned by lords and not the king. The condition of crops on some of the grand ducal farms presents a remarkably unfavorable picture. This is evident in the case of particularly poor yields of spring and winter wheat, where the yields sometimes approached the lower limit of profitability.

The reasons for the unevenness of the harvest are quite well explained by an analysis of the treasury sources. In 1578, the Grodno Starosty was plagued by hailstorms and fires in selected villages. It is likely that the recorded drought was indirectly responsible for the fires, such under such circumstances, a moment of carelessness with fire would have been enough for buildings to start burning quite quickly.21 The mention in the records of uprooted garden crops also suggest drought conditions (though it is not known whether these crops were uprooted as a result of human activity), but there are other direct references to the disastrous yields too. Usually, lower yields occurred on manors where the records also indicate unfavourable weather events (Horodnica, Mosty).22

Let us take a look at how the efficiency of a single, threshed threescore of crops presented itself. As with the first chart, the target of the analysis will be winter varieties of rye, wheat, barley, and oats.

As the survey of the west-Lithuanian estates indicates, the maximum results were obtained for winter rye and oat crops. If we look at the average yield of a single mound of individual crops, it becomes clear that the highest yields were obtained on the Grodno estate. Simultaneously, the Grodno estate had the most varied crop threshing parameters. The average threshing rates per threescore oscillated around one barrel of brine. The crop yields were smaller on the Brest and Kobrin ekonomias. Barley and oat yields were similar. On average, barley and oat yields were noticeably better ion the Grodno estates and worse on the other estates. The threescore yield on the Brest ekonomia showed variation only in the case of oats. The poor values of threescore of wheat are confirmed in the source dedicated to the Kobrin property, where a very bad wheat yield is mentioned.23 The accounts of the Kobrin ekonomia were also inaccurately kept, since in the case of the Horodec manor we have no data at all on the threshing or yields of rye or oats.24

The agricultural conditions on the estates under discussion were certainly also influenced by the number of livestock. Livestock breeding made it possible not only to obtain meat, hides, and dairy products. Livestock were also used in the fields, for instance in ploughing. In addition, livestock produced a certain amount of fertilizer, which made it possible to achieve higher yields of grain crops. As the sources do not always give a precise record of all the animals on a given manor, I consider only the presence of cows, as the records concerning cows on the estates are more precise.

Table 2. Number of milking cows and heifers on the farms of Grodno Starosty and the Brest and Kobrin ekonomias (1578–96)

Estate	Manor farm	Number of cows	Number of cows per Lithuanian volok of the farm25
Grodno Starosty	Horodnica	6	0.6
	Nowy Dwór	12	0.3
	Kotra	11	2.7
	Odelsk	0	0.0
	Skidel	0	0.0
	Łabno	6	0.2
	Jeziory	4	0.3
	Sałaty	0	0.0
	Mosty	5	0.3
	Wiercieliszki	18	1.5
	Milkowszczyzna	0	0.0
	Krynki	0	0.0
	Świsłocz	16	1.7
Brestekonomia	Woin (Wohyń)	0	026
	Kodeniec	0	027
	Połowce	–	–
	Kijowiec	11	0.9
	Rzeczyca	–	–
Kobrinekonomia	Kobryń	5	1.0
	Czerwaczyce	13	2.3
	Wieżece (Wieżki)	6	0.2
	Prużany	16	0.5
	Czachec	–	–
	Horodec	5	1.6
Source: Own work on the basis of AGAD, AK, sygn. I/10, 22, 51, 94, 170, 193, 237, 264, 294, 297; AGAD, ASK LVI, sign. 11, 16, 27; AGAD, Metryka Litewska, sign. 29, 28, 33–36, 50–53, 70, 73, 89–90, 101.

The recommendations of the Volok Law of 1557, which regulated relations on the estates surveyed, said that each manor should have at least 20 cows. If a lord’s farm did not have that many animals, he was ordered to obtain more by purchase.28 The sources indicate that already by the late 1570s the Grand Duke of Lithuania’s instructions were not being followed. A survey of estates with a certain number of cattle shows that the Grodno estate had an average of 8.5, the Brest ekonomia 3.6, and the Kobrin ekonomia 9 mature cows per farm (Table 2). We should approach the above data with a great deal of caution. The Milkovshchyna, Odelsk, and Skidel manors, which were on the Grodno estate and were leased by the widow of the late Grodno starost and the Vilna voivode, were not included in the survey.29 This certainly contributed to lower average numbers of livestock in the records. Similarly, we should not trust the information from the Brest ekonomia, where we know the number of livestock for only one lord’s farm. However, the number of livestock on the Lithuanian estates was much lower than, for example, on the estates in the neighboring Knyszyn Starosty (Podlasie), where there was an average of 41 cows (milking and barren) per single manor.30 Recalculation of the number of milking and barren cows per Lithuanian volok shows considerable diversity in cattle. Values varied the most on the Grodno Starosty, but because of the single census of the cowshed in the Brest ekonomia, we cannot make a full comparison of livestock on the estates under study.

Conclusion

The above observations call attention to the differences in the crop yields on the farms of the Grodno Starosty and the Brest and Kobrin ekonomias. The best yields were generated by the crops of the Brest property, which usually had better agricultural conditions. Typically, Kobrin’s ekonomia had the least productive harvests. This was probably related to the generally inferior conditions of the estate, as evidenced by the few mentions of wheat fertility or the poor condition of agriculture in 1597. The Grodno Starosty was also plagued by unfavorable natural events that reduced the quality of manor crops. However, there is no need to overestimate the negative effects of weather phenomena that periodically afflicted societies in modern Europe. In the case of some estates, it is likely that crop yields were only recorded in the wake of adverse weather events. However, the results of the study show primarily the inferior efficiency of the manor economy on the estates of Western Lithuania, which clearly differed from the situation in the neighboring Kingdom of Poland. The comparatively low crop yields on the estates discussed above were certainly affected by the low numbers of livestock, resulting not only from robberies suffered by the nobility during the interregnum, but probably also from real shortages in the number of livestock. It would certainly be worthwhile to undertake further research on the efficiency of agriculture on the Grodno Starosty and the Brest and Kobrin ekonomias, as this research would show (at least, the discussion above suggests so) that the farms owned by the landlords continued to produce comparatively poor crop yields.

Archival Sources

Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie [Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw] (AGAD)

Archiwum Kameralne [Chamber Archive] (AK)

Archiwum Skarbu Koronnego [Crown Treasury Archive] (ASK)

Inwentarze starostw [Starost inventories]

Metryka Litewska [Lithuanian Metryka]

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Żytkowicz, Leonid. “Plony zbóż w Polsce, Czechach, Na Węgrzech i Słowacji w XI–XVIII w.” [Cereal yields in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia in the 11th–18th centuries]. Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej 18 (1970): 227–53.

Żytkowicz, Leonid. Studia nad wydajnością gospodarstwa wiejskiego na Mazowszu w XVII wieku [Studies on rural farm productivity in Mazovia in the 17th century]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1969.

The Share of Tithe Paid to Parish Priests in Sixteenth-Century Transylvania: A Topographical Approach*

Géza Hegyi

Transylvanian Museum Society; HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 403-430 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.403

The most important source of income for the medieval Latin Church, the tithes paid by lay people from their crops and livestock, was divided between several levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The set of beneficiaries varied from one country or diocese to another, while the proportions essentially from one locality to another. In the Transylvanian diocese, the bishop (or the chapter) got the substantial part of the tithe (half to three quarters), while the archdeacon, as regional magistrate, uniformly received a quarter. Despite the canon law standards, in many cases only a fraction of the quarta remained to supply the parish priest. On the other hand, the parish priests from the deaneries of royal Saxons (i. e. German settlers) could usually keep the full tithe.

The aim of my research is to reconstruct the share of tithe of the Transylvanian parish clergy by locality, to map it and to analyze the spatial inequalities thus revealed. Due to the unilateral source endowments, we have only a few direct data on this, so I calculated indirectly the size and proportion of the priestly share, based on the data of a list from 1589, which only gives the local rents of the bishops and the archdeacons’ share of tithe. According to my results, the inhabitants of 1239 localities paid tithes in mid-sixteenth century Transylvania. For 457 settlements (mostly in the Székely Land) we do not know the share of the priest. In the known cases, the three most common distributions were when the local priest received no tithe (35%), a quarter of the tithe (36%) or the whole tithe (25%). The spatial distribution of the parishes with quarta was not uniform, but rather concentrated in some small areas due to various historical reasons. The level of priestly share correlated with secular and ecclesiastical privileges, the ethnicity of the population that paid the tithe, and the person of the landlord.

These results can provide important aspects for the interpretation of sources based on priestly income, such as the papal tithe register of 1332–1336, fundamental to the history of medieval Transylvania.

Keywords: Transylvania, tithe, parish priest, distribution, quarta, Saxons

Introduction

As any historian of feudal institutions knows, the practice of tithing is rooted in the regulations of the Old Testament.1 Early Christianity was still averse to it, but in the fourth and fifth centuries the idea of tithing began to become increasingly accepted. In Latin-rite territories, from the Carolingian period onwards, the tithe became a compulsory ecclesiastical annuity paid by all members of the fold. This was, of course, achieved with the support of the reigning secular power.2 Theoretically, the tithe should have been paid on all kinds of income, but due to the socio-economic conditions of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, it was collected primarily from the annual wine and grain harvests and secondarily from the reproduction of certain domestic animals (for instance sheep and bees).3 For this reason, the tithe records (documents, accounts, receipts, etc.) are an important source for the study of the rural history of Western and Central Europe.4

According to the Church Fathers (and to the canon law that quotes them), one of the functions of (and thus justifications of) tithing is to acknowledge God’s rule (signum dominii) and one is to provide support for the poor and others in need (tributum egentium animarum). The argument for a fitting tribute to the clergy (as a spiritual elite) emerges rather rarely and relatively late.5 Whatever the reason for this, the Church had always been considered the administrator and thus the actual holder of the tithe. Its exclusive right to this income was confirmed by several papal decrees and synods of the eleventh–thirteenth centuries against secular bodies of power.6 Not without reason: the tithe was by far the most important source of revenues for the Church, accounting for up to three quarters of a bishop’s income.7

The income from the tithe was divided among different actors in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. As the bishoprics were the first rank to be established in the early church and in the newly Christianized areas, the bishops themselves usually received the greater part of the tithes. Over time, tithing rights were granted to the chapters and their members, monastic convents, altar foundations, etc.8 From the outset, however, it was clear that the local priests were also entitled to a share (pars condigna) of the tithe from their parishes. The most commonly used principle in this respect was laid down by Pope Gelasius I (492–496), whose provisions were applied to the matter of tithing from the eighth century onwards. According to him, church revenues were to be divided into four parts, one of which (a quarta) was to go to the diocesan bishop, another to the parish priest, a third to the maintenance of the church (fabrica), and a fourth to charity.9 In practice, however, the set of beneficiaries varied from one diocese to another, and the proportions differed essentially from one locality to another. For example, in the areas that converted to Christianity between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the bishops generally received a much larger slice, and the local clergy received little more than metaphorical crumbs.10 However, the higher magistrates, such as the archbishop or the pope, usually did not receive a share of the tithes of other bishops’ dioceses (only from their own dioceses). The so-called “papal tithe,” which was decreed by the Second Council of Lyon (1274) and then by the Council of Vienne (1311–1312), was a different kind of tax. It obliged all ecclesiastics to pay a tithe of their income to the papal court for six years.11

In order to interpret the sources regarding the tithing, it is essential to map the local distribution of this income among the different ecclesiastical actors, since individual tithe data usually refer only to the share of one of the beneficiaries. A demographic or economic-historical evaluation¹² of the papal tithe registers of 1332–1337,¹³ crucial to any overview of the topography and incomes of the Hungarian Church, is only possible if we know the multipliers that can be applied to the amounts paid by a priest, as this information is essential if we seek to use these amounts to calculate the total production of his parish in a given year. I have recently completed this work on parishes in mid-sixteenth century Transylvania, and I present my findings below. Essentially, I seek to identify the external factors that shaped the observed regional differences.

The Structural Framework of Tithing in Transylvania

Historical Transylvania was the eastern province of the Hungarian Kingdom in the Middle Ages, but in the mid-sixteenth century, it became the core territory of an independent principality. In terms of secular administration, it was divided into three major parts. First, there were the seven counties covering the western, northern, and central areas, which were inhabited by serfs and nobles. The feudal system in these regions differed from the average Hungarian system only in minor details. The so-called King’s Land (Königs­boden, Fundus Regius), which was inhabited by privileged Saxons (i.e. German settlers), was the second area, and the Székely Land in the east was the third. The Saxons formed a comparatively urban, literate society, while the Székelys were a closed ethnic group governed by oral tradition. The Romanian population, which for the most part followed the Orthodox rite, did not have its own administrative units and lived largely in the mountainous parts of the counties and the Saxon territories.¹⁴

From the ecclesiastical point of view, most of Transylvania fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Transylvania, who had his seat in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia/Weissenburg)¹⁵ and whose authority extended north-westwards beyond the Meszes (Meseş) Mountains, and up to the Tisza River.¹⁶ The southern part of the King’s Land (the area around Szeben [Sibiu/Her­mannstadt] and Brassó [Braşov/Kronstadt]) was under the direct jurisdiction of the archbishop of Esztergom. A small region, the so-called Kalotaszeg, which is roughly the area surrounding the headwaters of the Sebes-Körös [Crişul Repede] River), belonged to the diocese of Várad (Oradea), while the region of the Lápos Basin (Ţara Lăpuşului) formed a part of the diocese of Eger.¹⁷

 

Figure 1. The old (Veszprém) and the new (Transylvania) model of distribution of the tithe.

On the question of the distribution of the tithes among the holders in Hungary, the secondary literature is unanimous in stating that three quarters of the tithe went to the diocesan bishop in each settlement, while the remaining quarter (quarta) was shared in various proportions between the cathedral chapter and the local parish priest. The latter’s share is usually estimated at a quarter of a quarta, i.e. one sixteenth of the tithe.18

The model above (see Fig. 1), however, is based solely on a few thirteenth-century papal and royal documents concerning the distribution of the tithe, as well as on a detailed examination of the tithing system of the diocese of Veszprém.19 Although it does seem to be valid for some other dioceses, too (e.g. Győr, and Várad), I believe that the general application of this model to the whole kingdom was done rather hastily in the earlier secondary literature. Based on my study of primary sources, a different system seems to have prevailed in Transylvania and in the dioceses of Eger and Zágráb. In these territories, the bishop (or the chapter) was entitled to the major share of the local tithe, which varied between half and three quarters, depending on the parish priest’s share. The archdeacon, as regional magistrate, uniformly received one quarter in his own district.20 In conclusion, the crucial difference between the previous model and the present one is that here the parish priest did not share a quarter of the tithe with the canons. Rather, he shared three quarters of the tithe with the bishop or with the chapter or, sometimes, with other beneficiaries (such as the abbot of the Kolozsmonostor Convent, altar directors, etc.).21 On the other hand, the parish priests of Saxon deaneries on the so-called King’s Land could usually keep the full tithe (libera decima).22

Sources and Methods

The 447 surviving sources of which I am currently aware on the medieval history of the tithe in Transylvania (up to 1556)23 relate mostly to the tithing affairs of the bishop and the chapter, as well as of the Saxon clergy. There is, at the same time, disappointingly little data on the tithing income of Hungarian priests in the counties.24 With these data alone, it would be impossible to reconstruct the topography of the clergy’s tithe share.

Figure 2. Transylvanian dioceses with the share of priests

However, a somewhat later but comprehensive document allows us to arrive at this reconstruction through an indirect procedure. An inventory from 1589 shows the price for which the episcopal (E) and the archdeaconal (A) tithes were rented out to local landlords in each tithe-paying settlement of the seven counties.25 These parts of the tithes were secularized in 1556, that is, confiscated to provide the material basis for the nascent principality, and from then on, they were administered by the princely treasury.26 We are not so much interested in the specific amounts as in their relative proportions, which remained largely unchanged for decades (if not centuries). A fragment of a similarly structured list from 1563 covering some parts of Küküllő and Fehér Counties, can be used as a reference, and its data are in most cases identical to those from 1589.27

As mentioned above, these two lists do not include the precise wages corresponding to the tithe of the priest (P). We have seen, however, that in most places the archdeacon’s share (A) was a quarter of the total tithe (T), so we can calculate the priest’s share, too, as follows:

T = 4A

P = T–E–A = 4A–E–A = 3A–E

And the share itself is: p = P/T

It is true that, in some cases, this method does not lead to meaningful results, for example because the share of the archdeaconry is missing28 or its quadruple does not reach the sum of the rents.29 But we cannot expect structural regularities to be applied mechanically, especially not in the medieval world. In such cases, other, individual approaches or estimates yield results. Nevertheless, the method outlined above produces acceptable proportions in the vast majority of cases, and this indirectly supports its validity. When the value of the quarta30 is also explicitly referred to in any of the registers of 1563 and 1589 (for 104 localities), there is a direct way of checking the correctness of our calculations, and the result is generally reassuring (see Table 1).

Where possible, I have also used early modern urbaria and ecclesiastical sources, which usually confirm the data of the 1589 register.31

Evaluation of the Findings

I have identified a total of 1239 tithe-paying settlements in the territory of historical Transylvania, where a total of approximately 2150 settlements existed in the mid-sixteenth century. It can therefore be concluded that about 900 settlements did not pay tithes. Typically, these were settlements where the population for a long time (often from the moment they had been founded) had been predominantly Orthodox Romanians. Tithing as a compulsory ecclesiastical tax did not exist in Eastern Christianity, and this custom was respected by the Hungarian ecclesiastical and secular authorities.32 Settlements which had been inhabited by Catholics who were later replaced by Romanians were, in principle, treated differently. In 1408, a decree stipulated that these settlements were still obliged to pay the tithe to the Catholic Church.33 However, despite its repeated renewal, in many cases the decree was not enforced,34 which explains why among the 900 villages without tithe there were several, especially in the Székás area (Podişul Secaş) of Fehér County, that lost their former Catholic Saxon population only after the Turkish invasions of the fifteenth century35 and later became Romanian.36

In addition to the Romanian villages, a few other localities were exempted from tithing. Three of these localities were mining towns in the mountains, which had predominantly Saxon (and partly Hungarian) populations,37 presumably with infertile lands, where grains and grapes, the main base for tithes, were not grown. Some Hungarian villages with Catholic parishes in Hunyad County38 also did not pay the tithe, presumably because their inhabitants were all minor nobles and were not obliged to pay taxes.

For more than a third (457) of the 1239 settlements that did pay the tithe it is not possible to determine (or even to estimate) the amount of the priestly tithe. The vast majority of these settlements (417) were found in the Székely Land, because for this territory (except for the Aranyos Seat), as a consequence of low literacy rates, we have no usable medieval or early modern data on the tithe incomes of the clergy, not only from the Middle Ages but also from the early modern period. There is only some general evidence that this privileged but poor, partly mountain dwelling population did pay the tithe.39 In the case of Kalotaszeg and the Maros (Mureş) Valley between Nagyenyed (Aiud/Engeten) and Gyulafehérvár, the scarcity or even complete lack of sources is also to blame for the holes in our knowledge.40

However, the 771 known cases are still representative of the situation in the counties and the Fundus Regius. The three most common types of distribution were when the local parish priest received no tithe (269.541); a quarter of the tithe (278.5), or the whole tithe (189).

As I have already mentioned, the latter option, which accounts for almost a quarter of all known cases, was almost exclusively linked to the Saxon parishes. However, it was not specific to all Saxon settlements, but only, with a few exceptions, to privileged areas on royal land.42 It was therefore determined primarily (though only in broad terms) by the existence of secular self-government and only secondarily, in the details, by the ecclesiastical administration. The priests of the deaneries of Szeben and Brassó, which were directly under Esztergom’s jurisdiction, enjoyed the same rights in this regard as the free Saxon deaneries under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Transylvania. The main reason for this was that the cornerstone of the Saxon privileges, the Andreanum of 1224, had already guaranteed the priestly libera decima.43 However, this happened at the expense of the former tithe-holders (the bishop and the chapter of Transylvania), and it was necessary to obtain their consent, which always involved the payment of a symbolic annuity (census). Only some of these agreements have survived: those of the Transylvanian chapter with the deaneries of Medgyes (1283, 1289) and Sebes (1303, 1330), and that of the bishop with the deanery of Kozd (c. 1330).44 However, similar arrangements must have been made for all of the deaneries established on the territory of the free (royal) Saxons, i.e. Szászváros (Broos), Kézd, Királya, and Beszterce.

Those parishes of the aforementioned deaneries, which were located on the territory of the counties, also enjoyed the right of “free tithing,” at least until around 1580.45 This was probably because they were originally royal estates, too, and their situation was little different from that of their fellows who later moved on to self-government. Exceptionally, the Saxon parishes of the deanery of Régen, which were entirely on the territory of the counties, were also in possession of the full tithe46 for reasons that are not yet known. Another special case in the western part of the King’s Land were the Romanian villages which were settled in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the neighborhood of certain Saxon villages 47 and paid the full tithe to the parish priests.48 However, two Saxon villages (Petres [Petriş/Petersdorf] from the deanery of Királya and Buzd [Buzd/Bussd] from the deanery of Medgyes) as well as the entire deanery of Selyk (Şeica/Schelk), which also belonged to the King’s Land but probably joined it with a delay, were excluded from the circle of those who kept the whole tithe. I touch on them in the discussion below.

In terms of the distribution of tithes, we find a particular diversity in the ten Hungarian serf villages under the jurisdiction of the deanery of Brassó at the end of the Middle Ages. Those which had previously been in royal hands for a long time as part of the domains of Höltövény (Hălchiu/Heltesdorf) and Törcsvár (Bran/Törzburg) castles, were allowed to retain the full tithe in the fifteenth century (or at least claimed it, as the Saxon clergy did), but later most of them were forced to cede half of it to the castellans for the maintenance of the castle.49 Only Újfalu (Satu Nou/Neudorf), which seceded from the royal estates in 1404 and later became the property of the city of Brassó (1462), was able to preserve successfully the libera decima.50 In contrast, the priests of villages permanently owned by private landlords did not receive any tithe at all.51 This state of affairs was not changed by the fact that they all ended up in the same position in secular terms, becoming parts of the domain of Törcsvár pledged to the city of Brassó in 1498.52

Compared to the three large groups referred to above, the number of parishes where the parish priest received half the tithe is small but significant (23). These parishes were also located in the King’s Land. Apart from Buzd and the abovementioned villages around Brassó, the 13 parishes of the deanery of Selyk belonged here, the Saxon population of which must have arrived sometime around 1300 and which only belatedly became part of the King’s Land, being formerly a noble estate.53 Although between 1322 and 1504 they had continued a lawsuit against the bishop for the same privileges as the other free Saxons, they did not succeed in obtaining the full tithe. They were granted only half of it by acquiring after 1357, in addition to their original quarta, the archdeaconal share of tithe.54 Three villages from the deanery of Sebes55 took a different path. During the Turkish invasions from 1438 and 1442, their populations had shrunk dramatically, and the Transylvanian chapter had gotten its hands on their tithes. When these localities were repopulated by Saxons, the chapter returned only half of the tithes to the parish priests.56

There were only two settlements in which the priest received between half and a quarter of the tithe: in Küküllővár, he received three eighths of the tithe and in Gyalu he received a third.57 None of this was merely a matter of chance. Küküllővár was in royal hands for a long time and functioned as a sub-residence of the voivodes and vice-voivodes, and Gyalu was a sub-residence of bishops.58

The set of localities with a priestly quarta was the most numerous and also the most heterogeneous. Their most significant subgroup (114) was that of Saxon deaneries falling wholly or largely within the territory of the counties, i.e. Sajó, Teke, Székás, Négyfalu (Vierdörfer), Hidegvíz, Lower and Upper Küküllő, and Szentlászló. These deaneries, which had attained only a lower degree of ecclesiastical self-government, also secured a quarter of the tithe from their ecclesiastical and secular superiors.59 Here we have to take into account the aforementioned Saxon village of Petres too, which became a member of the deanery and of the seat of Beszterce after having been a noble estate at the beginning of the fourteenth century.60

The ecclesiastical landowners (the bishop and chapter of Transylvania and the abbot of Kolozsmonostor) also consistently gave the local parish priests the canonically prescribed quarta of their own estates (for the domains of Gyalu, Enyed, and Gyulafehérvár),61 except when the identity of the ecclesiastical landlord and the tithe-holder differed.62 The monarch also set an example by granting a quarter of the tithe to the parish priests of the royal cities, salt-mining towns, and domains.63 He or the later baronial owners were responsible for the priestly quarta of the Hungarian parishes of other domains (Bálványos [Unguraş], and Csicsó [Ciceu]) and estates (Bonchida [Bonţida], and Búza [Buza], as well as the villages of the Bánfi and Dezsőfi families in Upper Valley of the Maros River).64 Some families of the middle nobility (Apafi, Bethleni, Erdélyi de Somkerék) also granted the quarter of the tithe to the priests of their Catholic estates, others only to the parish priest of the central settlement of their estate.65 The remaining dozen or so villages could receive the quarta by occasional donations, for which some documents have survived.66

Contrary to what is widely stated in the secondary literature, the number of clerical benefices, which represented a fraction of a quarter of a tithe, was extremely small in Transylvania. It is even possible that some of them are in fact the result of a calculation error, because the contemporaries rounded off the numbers for the sake of simplicity, and thus these numbers do not accurately reflect the smaller ratios. Mostly, the centers of some manors or estates can be included here (with one sixth or one eighth as the priestly share),67 as well as the Hungarian villages of the Zsuki family, where the priests uniformly received half of the quarta (i.e. one eighth of the tithe).68 The one-sixteenth share, which is considered common in the literature, occurs marginally, only five times, and exclusively in the northern part of the province.69

Almost as numerous as the places with quarta were the tithing villages where the parish priest received nothing from the tithe (more than a third of the known cases). For the most part, these settlements were the Hungarian villages of the small and middle nobles from the western bank of the Kis-Szamos (Şomeşul Mic) River, the Mezőség (Câmpia Transilvaniei), and between the Maros and Kis-Küküllő (Târnava Mică) Rivers, as well as the settlements of the Aranyos Seat (with the exception of Felvinc [Unirea]).70 Their landlords may not have had sufficient lobbying power, or more likely, they would not have looked kindly on the local priest having an income that exceeded their own.

In the late Middle Ages, demographic changes often led to changes in the structure of the local tithe. Exceptions were those villages of the Szászváros Seat, which were formerly inhabited by Saxons and then by Romanians. These villages continued to pay tithes to the parish priest of Szászváros.71 Usually, when a Catholic community in the King’s Land died out and the village was left deserted72 or was repopulated by Romanians,73 the priest’s share ceased to exist, and the full tithe was collected by the secular Saxon authorities or (in the deanery of Sebes) the chapter of Transylvania. The same processes led to similar results on Church estates, too.74 On the other hand, if the Catholic population disappeared in one of the villages lying on the territory of nobles, the result was ambiguous, depending on the attitude of the landlord and the time of the change. In some cases, the tithe continued to be paid (without the priestly part, of course),75 but in most cases, the tithe was completely abolished.76

As a result of the Reformation and the secularization of Church estates and revenues, the medieval ecclesiastical framework was shaken and ecclesiastical immunity and privileges were weakened. Under these circumstances, many communities were not able to resist the increasing pressure of secular elites to expropriate more and more of the tithes, even if their populations remained adherents of Western denominations. From 1580 onwards, the parish priests in the King’s Land had to be content with three-quarters of the tithe, as the princely power expropriated a quarta for the benefit of the treasury, first for a fee, and then from 1612 on, without payment.77 Encouraged by this, the Diet passed a resolution in 1588 stating that if there were places in the counties where the libera decima existed, the priestly share should be reduced to quarta.78 The primary victims of this provision were the parishes of the deanery of Régen, which lost a significant part (even if not always three quarters) of their tithe income from the following year onwards.79 Even more vulnerable were the settlements in which the Saxons had been replaced by Hungarians, and the parish was therefore cut off from the protective framework of the Saxon deaneries.80 Some settlements fared even worse. Some Hungarian villages between the two Küküllő Rivers81 lost the priestly quarta altogether sometime between 1563 and 1589.82

Conclusions

In conclusion, parishes which had the same share of the tithe as their incomes were geographically concentrated. The settlements which retained all or half of the tithe for their priests covered roughly the large southern and small northeastern blocs of the King’s Land. These areas were surrounded to the north, respectively to the west, and south by a wide band of settlements in which the parish had a quarter of the tithe, with addition of the wider area around Kolozsvár and, presumably, the Fehér County section of the right bank of the Maros River. In most of the rest of Catholic villages, the local priest received none of the tithes.

Another important observation is that the level of tithe sharing correlated with secular and ecclesiastical privileges, the ethnicity of the population that paid the tithe, and the person of the landlord. A high level of self-government, the existence of a deanery, the presence of a Saxon population, and ecclesiastical or royal possession were all advantages for the local priest in terms of the degree of his share from the tithe, while Hungarian villages with serf populations, owned by the petty nobility, and in particular villages which had been deserted and then repopulated by Romanian serfs were the least likely for him to enjoy any revenue from this ecclesiastical tax.

Table 1. The priest’s share of tithe in the settlements where the value of the quarta is known83

Name of settlement	Page	E	A	q	T	P	p
Fehér County
Nagylak (Noşlac) and Káp­talan (Căptălan)	21	[60]	20	20	80	0	0
Szentkirály (Sâncrai)	(f. 1r) 21	(36) 40.50	(14) 13.50	13.50	54	0	0
Bagó (Băgău)	21	20	8	7	28	0	0
Lapád (Lopadea Nouă)	(f. 1r) 21	(36) [40]	(12) 8	12	48	0	0
Háporton (Hopârta) and Ispánlaka (Şpălnaca)	(f. 1r) 21–22	8	(4) [4]	(4) [3]	(16) 12	(4) 0	(1/4) 0
Ózd (Ozd)	(f. 1r) 22	30	10	(10)	40	0	0
Herepe (Herepea)	(f. 1r) 22	36	12	12	48	0	0
Csekelaka (Cecălaca)	22	16	6	6	24	2	1/12
Lőrincréve (Leorinţ)	23	4	2	[2]	[8]	q	1/4
Forró (Fărău)	(f. 1v) 23	36	12	12	48	0	0
Szentbenedek (Sânbenedic)	(f. 1v) 23	36	12	12	48	0	0
Hunyad County
Rápolt (Rapoltu Mare)	24	40	10	12.[50]	50	0	0
Arany (Uroi)	26	6	3	2.25	9	0	0
Küküllő County
Hosszúaszó (Valea Lungă)	(f. 2v) 27	50	25	(25)	100	25	1/4
Nagyekemező (Târnava) and Kisekemező (Târnăvioara)	27	120	60	60	240	60	1/4
Bogács (Băgaciu)	27	124	62	62	248	62	1/4
Nagykőrös (Curciu)	27	72	36	36	144	36	1/4
Felsőbajom (Bazna)	27	100	50	50	200	50	1/4
Szénaverős (Senereuş)	(f. 2v) 28	64	32	32	128	32	1/4
Szentiván (Sântioana)	29	32	16	16	64	16	1/4
Balázstelke (Blăjel)	(f. 2v) 30	44	22	22	88	22	1/4
Ádámos (Adămuş)	(f. 3r) 30	18	9	(9)	36	9	1/4
Dombó (Dâmbău)	(f. 3r) 30–31	16	8	8	32	8	1/4
Fületelke (Filitelnic)	(f. 3r) 31	28	14	14	56	14	1/4
Domáld (Viişoara)	(f. 3r) 31	16	8	8	32	8	1/4
Királyfalva (Crăieşti)	(f. 3r) 31	32	16	(16)	64	16	1/4
Ernye (Ernea)	(f. 3v) 32	14	7	(7)	28	7	1/4
Mikeszásza (Micăsasa)	(f. 3v) 32	(13.33) 12	(6.67) 8*	6.67	26.67	6.67	1/4
Désfalva (Deaj)	(f. 4r) 33	14	7	7	28	7	1/4
Sárd (Şoard)	34	2	1	1	4	1	1/4
Gálfalva (Găneşti)	(f. 4r) 34	(20) 30	10	10	40	(10) 0	(1/4) 0
Kissáros (Delenii)	34	36	12	12	48	0	0
Péterfalva (Petrisat) and Pettend (deserted)	35	28	8	9	36	0	0
Kóródszentmárton (Coroi­sân­martin)	(f. 4r) 35	(10) 15	5	(5*)	20	(5) 0	(1/4) 0
Besenyő (Valea Izvoarelor)	(f. 4r) 35	(16) 24	8	8	32	(8) 0	(1/4) 0
Harangláb (Hărănglab)	(f. 4v) 35	(24) 36	12	12	48	(12) 0	(1/4) 0
Csapó (Cipău) and Kisfalud (deserted)	35	18	6	6	24	0	0
Kisszőllős (Seleuş)	(f. 4v) 36	(–) 36	18	(18*) 18	72	18	1/4
Kiskend (Chendu Mic), Nagykend (Chendu Mare) and Balavásár (Bălăuşeri)	36	10	5	5	20	5	1/4
Szancsal (Sâncel)	36	16	8	6	24	0	0
Doboka County
Bádok (Bădeşti)	37	6	2	2	8	0	0
Magyarújfalu (Vultureni)	37	16	8	8	32	8	1/4
Csomafája (Ciumăfaia)	37	6	2	2	8	0	0
Báboc (Băbuţiu)	38	6	2	2	8	0	0
Fodorháza (Fodora)	38	6	2	2	8	0	0
Vajdaháza (Voivodeni)	39	25	8.33	8.33	33.33	0	0
Hídalmás (Hida)	39	20	4	6	24	0	0
Récsekeresztúr (Recea-Cris­tur)	39	13	4.34	4.34	17.34	0	0
Páncélcseh (Panticeu)	40	12	4	4	16	0	0
Köblös (Cubleşu Someşan)	40	18	5.50	6	24	0.50	0
Derzse (Dârja)	40	13	4.33	4.33	17.33	0	0
Felsőtők (Tiocu de Sus)	40	20	6	6.50	26	0	0
Alsótők (Tiocu de Jos)	40	6	2	2	8	0	0
Kecsetszilvás (Pruneni)	40	14	4.66	4.67	18.66	0	0
Szava (Sava)	42	16	5	5.25	21	0	0
Cegőtelke (Ţigău)	42	16	8	8	32	8	1/4
Nagydevecser (Diviciorii Mari), Kisdevecser (Divi­ciorii Mici)	42–43	26	13	13	52	13	1/4
Veresegyház (Strugureni)	43	10	5	5	20	5	1/4
Szentandrás (Şieu-Sfântu) and Kajla (Caila)	44	18	9	9	36	9	1/4
Kisbudak (Buduş)	45	15	–	5	20	5	1/4
Várhely (Orheiu Bistriţei)	45	6	–	1.50	6	0	0
Móric (Moruţ)	46	40	20	20	80	20	1/4
Inner Szolnok County
Dés (Dej)	47	12	6	6	24	6	1/4
Szentmargita (Sânmărghita)	47	20	10	7.50	30	0	0
Somkerék (Şintereag)	48	6	–	[2]	8	q	1/4
Dengeleg (Livada)	49	33	11	11	44	0	0
Iklódszentivány (deserted)	50	6	2	2	8	0	0
Zápróc (Băbdiu)	50	3	1	1	4	0	0
Kozárvár (Cuzdrioara)	51	15	5	5*	20	0	0
Péntek (Pintic)	51	12	4	4	16	0	0
Girolt (Ghirolt)	52	17	5.75	6.08	24.32	1.57	1/16
Kolozs County
Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca)	53	500	250	250	1000	250	1/4
Gyeke (Geaca)	53	12	4	4	16	0	0
Novaj (Năoiu)	53	3	1	1	4	0	0
Légen (Legii)	54	8	4	3	12	0	0
Zutor (Sutoru)	54	6	2	2.67	10.67	2.67	1/4
Vásárhely (Dumbrava), Inak­telke (Inucu), Sztána (Stana) and Kiskapus (Căpuşu Mic)	55	18	6	6	24	0	0
Tamásfalva (Tămaşa)	55	13	5	4.50	18	0	0
Mócs (Mociu)	55	10	3.34	3.34	13.34	0	0
Palatka (Pălatca)	56	25	9	8.50	34	0	0
Fejérd (Feiurdeni)	57	40	20	20	80	20	1/4
Méhes (Miheşu de Câmpie)	58	16	6	5.50	22	0	0
Középlak (Cuzăplac)	59	20	–	5	20	0	0
Fűzkút (Sălcuţa)	59	16	8	8	32	8	1/4
Vajola (Uila)	60	12	6	6	24	6	1/4
Torda County
Szind (Sănduleşti)	65	22	7.34	7.34	29.34	0	0
Boldoc (Bolduţ)	65	8.50	2.48	2.75	11	0	0
Egerbegy (Viişoara)	65	18.50	6.68	6.68	25.18	0	0
Gerend (Luncani) and Szent­márton (Gligoreşti)	66	26	8.68	8.68	34.68	0	0
Csanád (Pădureni)	67	12	4	4	16	0	0
Jára (Iara de Mureş)	69	12	4	4	16	0	0

Archival Sources

Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Vatican City (AAV)

Registra Lateranensia (RegLat)

Registra Supplicationum (RegSuppl)

Registra Vaticana (RegVat)

Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Serviciul Judeţean Cluj [Romanian National Archives, Cluj County Branch], Cluj-Napoca (SJAN-CJ)

Fond familial Kornis (Fond 378) [Archive of the Kornis Family, in the Archives of the Transylvanian National Museum] (F 378)

Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Serviciul Judeţean Covasna [Romanian National Archives, Covasna County Branch], Sfântu Gheorghe (SJAN-CV)

Fond familial Gyulay [Archive of the Gyulay Family, in the Collection of the Székely National Muzeum] (F 65, 2-4)

Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Serviciul Judeţean Sibiu [Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Branch], Sibiu (SJAN-SB)

Episcopia Bisericii Evanghelice C. A. din Transilvania (Fond 3) [Archive of the Saxon Lutheran Bishopric of Transylvania] (F 3)

Magistratul oraşului şi scanului Sibiu (Fond 1) [Archive of Saxon Nation and of City of Sibiu] (F 1)

Biblioteca Naţională a României, Biblioteca Batthyaneum [Romanian National Library, Batthyaneum Library], Alba Iulia (Batthyaneum)

Arhiva Capitlului din Transilvania [Private Archives of the Chapter of Transylvania] (ACT)

Erdélyi Református Egyházkerület Levéltára, Kolozsvári Gyűjtőlevéltár [Archives of the Reformed Church of Transylvania, Cluj Branch] (EREK, KvGylt)

Széki Egyházmegye Levéltára [Archives of the Deanery of Sic] (B 2)

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [National Archives of Hungary], Budapest (MNL OL)

Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény [Diplomatic Photograph Collection] (DF)

Diplomatikai Levéltár [Diplomatic Archive] (DL)

Erdélyi Fejedelmi Kancellária [Chancellery of the Transylvanian Princes] (F 1)

Gyulafehérvári Káptalan Országos Levéltára [Public Archives of the Chapter of Transylvania], Cista comitatuum (F 4)

Hunyad megyei gyűjtemény [Collection from Hunyad County] (R 391)

Sombory család levéltára [Archive of the Sombory Family] (P 1912)

Udvarhelyi Református Egyházmegye Levéltára [Archives of the Reformed Deanery of Odorheiu Secuiesc] (UhEmLt)

Héjjasfalvi egyházközség iratai [Documents of the Parish of Vânători] (B 10)

Mohai egyházközség iratai [Documents of the Parish of Grânari] (B 15)

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Mályusz, Elemér. “Az egyházi tizedkizsákmányolás” [Ecclesiastical exploitation by tithe]. In Ta­nulmányok a parasztság történetéhez Magyarországon a 14. században, edited by György Székely, 320–33. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1953.

Müller, Georg. Die deutschen Landkapitel in Siebenbürgen und ihre De­chanten 1192–1848. Ein rechtsgeschichtlicher Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Landeskirche in Siebenbürgen. Archiv des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 48. 3 vols. Hermannstadt: Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1934–1936.

Müller, Georg. “Die ursprüngliche Rechtslage der Rumänen im Siebenbürger Sachsenlande.” Archiv des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 38 (1912): 85–314.

Plöchl, Willibald. Das kirchliche Zehntwesen in Niederösterreich. Forschungen zur Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 5. Vienna: Verein für Landeskunde und Heimatschutz von Niederösterreich und Wien, 1935.

Prodan, David. Iobăgia în Transilvania în secolul al XVI-lea [Serfdom in Transylvania in the sixteenth century]. 3 vols. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei, 1967–1968.

Puza, Richard. “Zehnt. I. Allgemeine Darstellung des Kirchenzehnten.” In Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 9, edited by Henri Bautier, Gloria Avella-Widhalm, and Robert Auty,499–502. Munich: LexMA, 1998.

Rácz, György. “A magyarországi káptalanok és monostorok magisztrátus-joga a 13–14. században” [The magisterial right of Hungarian chapters and monasteries in the 13th–14th centuries]. Századok 134 (2000): 147–210.

Roth, Harald. Kleine Geschichte Siebenbürgens. Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 1996.

Samaran, Charles, and Guillaume Mollat. La fiscalité pontificale en France au XIVe siécle (période d’Avignon et Grand Schisme d’Occident). Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 96. Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1905.

Solymosi, László. “Das kirchliche Mortuarium im mittelalterlichen Ungarn.” In Forschungen über Siebenbürgen und seine Nachbarn: Festschrift für Attila T. Szabó und Zsigmond Jakó, edited by Kálmán Benda, Thomas von Bogyay, Horst Glassl, and Zsolt K. Lengyel, 51–65. Studia Hungarica 31, vol. 1. Munich: R. Trofenik, 1987.

Solymosi, László. “Tized” [Tithe]. In Magyar Művelődéstörténeti Lexikon, edited by Péter Kőszeghy, vol. 12, 65–67. Budapest: Balassi, 2011.

Teutsch, Georg Daniel. Das Zehntrecht der evangelischen Landeskirche A.B. in Siebenbürgen. Schässburg: C. J. Habersang, 1858.

Vekov Károly. “A gyulafehérvári káptalan hiteleshelyi tevékenysége és 16. századi sze­ku­la­rizációja” [The authentication activity and the sixteenth-century secularization of the Chapter of Transylvania]. In Loca credibilia. Hiteleshelyek a középkori Magyarorszá­gon. Egyháztörténeti Tanulmányok a Pécsi Egyházmegye Történetéből 4, edited by, Tamás Fedeles, Irén Bilkei,131–41. Pécs: Fény Kft., 2009.

Viard, Paul. Histoire de la dîme ecclésiastique, principalement en France, jusqu’au décret de Gratien. Dijon: Jobard, 1909.

Vischer, Lukas. “Die Zehntforderung in der alten Kirche.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 70 (1959): 201–17.

W. Kovács, András. “The Participation of the Medieval Transylvanian Counties in Tax Collection.” Hungarian Historical Review 7 (2018): 671–93.

Zimmermann, Gunter. “Zehnt. III. Kirchengeschichtlich.” In Theologische Realenzyklopädie, edited by Gerhard Müller, Horst Balz, and Gerhard Krause, vol. 36, 496–504. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004.

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1. 1 Körting, “Zehnt”; Jagersma, “Tithes in OT”; Eissfeldt et al., “Zehnten,” 1878–79. Cf. Gen. 14:20, 28:22; Lev. 27:30–33; Num. 18:21.24–28; Deut. 12:6.11.17, 14:22–29, 26:12–26; 2 Chron. 31:5–12; Neh. 10:38–40, 12:44, 13:5.12–13; Mal. 3:8–10; Tob. 1:6–8; Matt. 23:23; Luke 11:42.

2. 2 Zimmermann, “Zehnt,” 495–98; Puza, “Zehnt,” 499–500; Constable, Monastic Tithes, 13–56; Eissfeldt et al., “Zehnten,” 1879; Vischer, “Zehntforderung”; Boyd, Tithes and Parishes, 26–46; Lepointe, “Dîme,” 1231–32; Viard, Dîme, 17–148.

3. 3 Zimmermann, “Zehnt,” 499–500; Puza, “Zehnt,” 500–501; Constable, Monastic Tithes, 16–19, 34–35; Eissfeldt et al., “Zehnten,” 1879; Lepointe, “Dîme,” 1232–33; Viard, Dîme, 101–5, 150–60.

4. 4 Dodds, Peasants and Production; Le Roy Ladurie and Goy, Tithe and Agrarian History.

5. 5 CIC, vol. 1, 784 (C. 16, q. 1, c. 66); ibid., vol. 2, 563–65, 568 (X 3.30, c. 22, 26, 33). Cf. Constable, Monastic Tithes, 10–13, 36, 43–44, 47–52; Vischer, “Zehntforderung,” 210–11, 214–16; Lepointe, “Dîme,” 1236–39; Viard, Dîme, 89–91.

6. 6 CIC, vol. 1, 417–18 (C. 1, q. 3, c. 13–14), 801 (C. 16, q. 7, c. 3.); ibid., vol. 2, 561–62 (X 3.30, c. 15, 17, 19.), 1048–50 (VI 3.13, c. 2), 1062–64 (VI 3.23, c. 13). Cf. Zimmermann, “Zehnt,” 497, 498; Puza, “Zehnt,” 500; Eissfeldt et al., “Zehnten,” 1879; Lepointe, “Dîme,” 1234–35; Viard, Dîme, 205–17.

7. 7 Puza, “Zehnt,” 501; Fügedi, “Wirtschaft des Erzbistums,” 258.

8. 8 Constable, Monastic Tithes, 57–197; Lepointe, “Dîme,” 1234; Kuujo, “Zehentwesen in Hamburg–Bremen,” 218–41; Plöchl, “Zehentwesen in Niederösterreich,” 49–54, 89–92; Viard, Dîme, 173–75, 181–204; Loy, “Zehnt im Bistum Lübeck,” 5–9, 52–54.

9. 9 Zimmermann, “Zehnt,” 497; Puza, “Zehnt,” 500; Constable, Monastic Tithes, 27–28, 35–42, 49–56; Eissfeldt et al., “Zehnten,” 1879; Boyd, Tithes and Parishes, 75–79; Lepointe, “Dîme,” 1234; Viard, Dîme, 112–24, 175–80.

10. 10 Zimmermann, “Zehnt,” 497–98; Lindner, “Zehntwesen in Salzburg”; Boyd, Tithes and Parishes, 79–153, 233–34; Kuujo, “Zehentwesen in Hamburg–Bremen,” 168–91; Plöchl, “Zehentwesen in Niederösterreich,” 55–56, 84–89.

11. 11 Hegyi, “Egyházigazgatási határok,” 9–17; Dudziak, Dziesięcina papieska, 56–100, 180–203; Hennig, Päpstliche Zehnten, 7–26; Samaran and Mollat, Fiscalité pontificale, 12–22; Fejérpataky, “Prolegomena,” xx–xxii, xxv–xlvii.

12. 12 Cf. F. Romhányi et al., “Regionális különbségek”; F. Romhányi, “Plébániák és adóporták,” 916–27; F. Romhányi,“Középkori magyar plébániák,” 348–51; Engel, “Probleme,” 57–63; Fügedi, “Történeti demográfia,” 25–28; Györffy, “Päpstliche Zehntlisten”; Györffy, Einwohnerzahl, 29–30.

13. 13 Edited in RatColl, 41–409.

14. 14 Cf. Chaline and Saudraix-Vajda, “Introduction”; Hegyi, “Transylvanie”; Roth, Kleine Geschichte.

15. 15 The names of the Transylvanian localities are used in their Hungarian form, as these are the names that appear in the sources. However, in the first occurrence of the place name, the current, official (Romanian) form, and, where appropriate, the historical German variants of the name are given, too, in brackets.

16. 16 In the discussion below, I ignore this part of the diocese due to the lack of sources and limit my investigation to Transylvania in the secular sense.

17. 17 Hegyi, “Esperességek,” 359–63; Hegyi, “Relation of Sălaj,” 62–65; Kristó, Early Transylvania, 79–84; Kristó, Vármegyék kialakulása, 426–27, 478, 482–512. Cf. RelColl 49–50, 54, 70, 76, 84, 89, 91–144, 327, 330, 355–56.

18. 18 F. Romhányi, “Plébániák és adóporták,” 918 (see note 27, too); Solymosi, “Tized,” 66; Rácz, “Magisztrátus-jog,” 151, 159–60; Györffy, “Päpstliche Zehntlisten,” 64; Csizmadia, “Rechtliche Ent­wicklung,” 230–31; Mályusz, “Tizedkizsákmányolás,” 322.

19. 19 Solymosi, “Kirchliche Mortuarium,” 52–54; Holub, Zala, vol. 1, 383–404.

20. 20 1298: Ub, vol. 1, 210; 1334: ibid., vol. 1, 465; 1357: ibid., vol. 2, 146–47; 1367: DocRomHist C, vol. 13: 332; 1380: Ub, vol. 2, 528; 1394: ibid., vol. 3, 75; 1428: ibid., vol. 4, 327; 1439: AAV, RegSuppl, 357: 26r and RegLat, 367: 142v; 1451: DL 39579; 1505: DL 65194; 1509: DF 253542; 1510: SJAN-SB, F 1, 1-U5-1226; 1517: DL 82485; 1518: DF 277755; 1526: DF 253624; 1536: EgyhtEml, vol. 3, 75; 1538: ibid., vol. 3, 313; 1541: Batthyaneum, ACT, 5-41; 1550: MNL OL, P 1912, 36-1; 1552: SJAN-CJ, F 378, 1-64; 1554: Batthyaneum, ACT, 5-98.

21. 21 Hegyi, “Tized intézményrendszere,” 189–94, 197–200.

22. 22 Ibid., 195–97; Hegyi, “Plébánia fogalma,” 16–19; Müller, Landkapitel, 122–83; Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 18–47.

23. 23 Cf. Hegyi, “Tized intézményrendszere,” 185–87.

24. 24 1322: Ub, vol. 1, 368; 1398: DF 257485; 1414: ZsOkl, vol. 4, no. 1632; 1444: KmJkv, 1: no. 522; 1521: KvOkl, vol. 1, 353; 1541: Batthyaneum, ACT, 5-41. Cf. Hegyi, “Tized intézményrendszere,” 194–95; Hegyi, “Plébánia fogalma,” 14.

25. 25 Edited in Jakó, Dézsma, 20–75.

26. 26 EOE, vol. 2, 64–65, 74–75, 82, 97; ErdKirKv, vol. 1/1, no. 79, 138; ibid., vol. ½, no. 24, 72; ibid., vol. 1/3, no. 363, 1137. Cf. Vekov, “Hiteleshely és szekularizáció,” 135–37.

27. 27 SJAN-SB, F 3, 1-173. (I am grateful to Emőke Gálfi for drawing my attention to the document.) The dating of the source is justified by the fact that it mentions the widow of Nikola Cherepovich (who died in June 1562) and notes that Gergely Apafi (who died before September 1563) was still paying the rent for the tithe in person.

28. 28 FH: Bece (Beţa), Feldiód (Stremţ); KÜ: Boldogfalva (Sântămărie); DO: Kisbudak (Buduş/Budesdorf), Várhely (Orheiu Bistriţei/Burghalle); BSZ: Somkerék (Şintereag); KL: Gyalu (Gilău), Gesztrágy (Straja), Középlak (Cuzăplac). Cf. Jakó, Dézsma, 23, 29, 45, 48, 53, 58, 59. For ease of identification, I have also included the county code before each group of settlements (BSZ = Belső-Szolnok, DO = Doboka, FH = Fehér, HD = Hunyad, KL = Kolozs, KÜ = Küküllő, TD = Torda).

29. 29 FH: Lapád (Lopadea Nouă); HD: Rápolt (Rapoltu Mare); KÜ: Küküllővár (Cetatea de Baltă/Kokelburg); DO: Kisesküllő (Aşchileu Mic), Mikó (disappeared), Hídalmás (Hida), Esztény (Stoiana), Olnok (Bârlea); BSZ: Monostorszeg (Mănăşturel); TD: Décse (Decea), Szengyel (Sângeru de Pădure). Cf. Jakó, Dézsma, 21, 24, 29, 38–41, 49, 67, 68.

30. 30 In the register of 1589, the term quarta is always used in the absolute sense, i.e. it refers to a quarter of the total tithe. By contrast, the adjectives integra or medium referred to the portion rented (E+A).

31. 31 Prodan, Iobăgia, vol. 1, 255–56, vol. 2, 568, 630; Jakó, Gyalui urbárium, 52, 53, 57, 69, 97, 100, 109, 127, 143, etc.; Ursuţiu, Gurghiu, 39, 63, 66, 76, 82–83, 103, etc. – MonAntHung, vol. 2: 99, 101, 249; 4: 284, 290; EREK, KvGylt, B 2, Prot. 1/1, p. 1–14, 519–664; Buzogány et al., Küküllői Egyházmegye, passim; Gudor, Gyulafehérvári Egyházmegye, 369–425.

32. 32 Hegyi, “Did Romanians,” 694–97, 707–10.

33. 33 Hegyi, “Terrae Christianorum.”

34. 34 Hegyi, “Románok tizedfizetése,” 25–29, 31–32, 35–36.

35. 35 Cf. Gündisch, “Türkenabwehr.”

36. 36 E.g. Drassó (Draşov/Troschen), Birbó (Ghirbom/Birnbaum), Alamor (Alămor/Mildenburg). Cf. Hegyi, “Románok tizedfizetése,” 26–27, 30–31, 35.

37. 37 FH: Abrudbánya (Abrud/Grossschlatten); TD: Offenbánya (Baia de Arieş/Offenberg); BSZ: Radna (Rodna/Rodenau).

38. 38 Hosdát (Hăşdat), Rákosd (Răcăştia), Lozsád (Jeledinţi). For their Catholic parishes, see: 1503: DL 46764; 1524: DL 47548; 1533: MNL OL, R 391, 1-8-4.

39. 39 1462: SzOkl, vol. 1,192; 1466: ibid., vol. 8, 115; 1496: Barabás, “Tizedlajstromok,” 427; 1503: SzOkl, vol. 3, 155; 1522: ibid., vol. 2, 10; 1535: SJAN-CV, F 65, 2-4-1(6).

40. 40 The villages of Kalotaszeg district are listed in the tithe register of 1589, but since they were previously part of the bishopric of Várad, the distribution of the tithe was different from that of Transylvania, and therefore the share of the priests cannot be calculated in the same way as described above (cf. Jakó, Dézsma, 61–64). On the tithe-paying settlements from the valley of the Maros River: 1477: Barabás, “Tizedlajstro­mok,” 417; 1496: ibid., 421, 428–29; 1504: DF 277689, fol. 2v–3r, 7v–8r.

41. 41 The fractional numbers appear due to the fact that the territory of some settlements was divided between two ecclesiastical units, and this might result in differences regarding the distribution of the tithe. The settlements in question are Balázsfalva (Blaj), Medgyes (Mediaş/Medwisch), Segesvár (Sighişoara/Schässburg), Kecset (Aluniş), Gyeke (Geaca), Gyerővásárhely (Dumbrava), Sztána (Stana), Almás (Almaşu), Kispetri (Petrinzel), and Bábony (Băbiu).

42. 42 Hegyi, “Tized intézményrendszere,” 195–96; Hegyi, “Plébánia fogalma,” 19; Müller, Landkapitel, 123–127.

43. 43 Ub, vol. 1, 34 = CDTrans, vol. 1, no. 132.

44. 44 1283: Ub, vol. 1, 145 = CDTrans, vol. 1, no. 399; 1289: Ub, vol. 1, 160 = CDTrans, vol. 1, no. 445; 1303: Ub, vol. 1, 226–27 = CDTrans, vol. 2, no. 21; 1330: Ub, vol. 1, 421–26, 433–36 = CDTrans, vol. 2, nos. 618, 676–77; [c. 1330]: Ub, vol. 1, 440 = CDTrans, vol. 2, no. 688.

45. 45 1543: Batthyaneum, ACT, 5-59 (Igen [Ighiu/Krapundorf]); 1560: MNL OL, F 4, Alba, 1-5-13 (Kisenyed [Sângătin/Klein-Enyed]); 1614: MNL OL, F 1, 10, p. 154 (Fogaras [Făgăraş]. I am grateful to Tamás Fejér for sending me the transcription of the source.); 1622: Kemény, “Bruchstück,” 394 (Kövesd [Coveş/Käbisch]); 1627, 1637: UhEmLt, 2/15 (Moha [Grânari/Muckendorf]); 1640: ibid., B 10, 10 (Héjjasfalva [Vânători/Diewaldsdorf]); 1642: Bod, Historia ecclesiastica, vol. 1, 280 (Bürkös [Bârghiş/Bürgisch]);1648: Kemény, “Bruchstück,” 396–97 (Réten [Retiş/Rittersdorf]). Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 125–26, 174–75.

46. 46 Jakó, Dézsma, 71–72; Müller, Landkapitel, 165–67.

47. 47 Vajdej (Vaidei), Dál (Deal), Kerpenyes (Cărpiniş), Poján (Poiana Sibiului), Ród (Rod/Rodt), Guraró (Gura Râului/Auendorf).

48. 48 Müller, “Rechtslage der Rumänen,” 110, 154, 156, 167–68.

49. 49 Apáca (Apaţa), Krizba (Crizbav), Csernátfalu (Cernatu), perhaps even Bácsfalu (Baciu) and Türkös (Turcheş). See: 1456: Ub, vol. 5, 527, 529–30; 1506: RechnKrsdt, vol. 1, 104; 1544: Brandsch, “Dorfschulen,” 503; 1554: RechnKrsdt, vol. 3, 469. Cf. Barcsay, “Bárcai magyarság,” 1310, 1337. – Previous attempts by the castellans to expropriate a part of the tithe: 1351: CDTrans, vol. 3, nos. 618–620; 1352: ibid., vol. 3, no. 660; 1354: ibid., vol. 3, no. 772; 1355: ibid., vol. 3, no. 800; 1361: ibid., vol. 4, no. 95–96. – On the history of land tenure: 1366: DocRomHist C, vol. 13, 101–2; 1444: DL 29252; 1460: Ub, vol. 6, 85; 1476: Ub, vol. 7, 115–16; 1484: Ub, vol. 7, 369–70.

50. 50 1404: Ub, vol. 3, 333; 1456: Ub, vol. 5, 528; 1462: Ub, vol. 6, 127–29, 142–43; 1471: Ub, vol. 6, 489, 493–94. Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 137–38; Barcsay, “Bárcai magyarság,” 1341.

51. 51 Hosszúfalu (Satulung), Tatrang (Tărlungeni), Zajzon (Zizin), Pürkerec (Purcăreni). See: 1367: DocRomHist C, vol. 13, 299–301; 1373: ibid., vol. 14, 398–401; 1544: Brandsch, “Dorfschulen,” 503–4. Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 137–38; Barcsay, “Bárcai magyarság,” 1335, 1337–38.

52. 52 1500: DF 247090; 1548–1555: RechnKrsdt, vol. 3, 469. Cf. W. Kovács, “Participation of the Counties,” 685–86.

53. 53 In 1305, some of the villages here (Baromlak [Valea Viilor/Wurmloch], Ivánfalva [Ighişu Nou/Eibesdorf]) were still in the hands of private landlords (Ub, vol. 1, 229–30 = CDTrans, vol. 2, no. 44), and in 1322 the area is described as a “novella plantatio” (Ub, vol. 1, 369).

54. 54 1322: Ub, vol. 1, 369 = CDTrans, vol. 2, no. 444; 1323: Ub, vol. 1, 376 = CDTrans, vol. 2, no. 465; 1357: Ub, vol. 2, 146–47 = CDTrans, vol. 3, no. 959; 1364: AAV, RegVat, 251: 347r-v; 1369: Ub, vol. 2, 323 = CDTrans, 4: no. 732; 1414: Ub, vol. 3, 591–92, 596–97, 600–1; 1415: Ub, vol. 3, 644–51, 662–63; 1416: ZsOkl, vol. 5, no. 1618; 1454: KmJkv, vol. 1, no. 1147; 1504: Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 132–36, DF 246275, SJAN-SB, F 1, 1-U5-1882. Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 168–70; Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 35–38.

55. 55 Szászpián (Pianu de Jos/Deutschpien) with Oláhpián (Pianu de Sus/Walachischpien), Lámkerék (Lancrăm/Langendorf), Rehó (Răhău/Reichenau).

56. 56 1494: DF 245206; 1477: Barabás, “Tizedlajstromok,” 418; 1496: ibid., 420–21, 433; 1504: DF 277689, fol. 2v, 10v; 1513: DF 277731/b, fol. 1v. Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 160–61.

57. 57 1589: Jakó, Dézsma, 29 (Küküllővár); 1640: Jakó, Gyalui urbáriumok, 57; 1666: ibid., 148; 1679: ibid., 205 (Gyalu).

58. 58 The bishops also provided generously for the local priests of their estates beyond Meszes Mountain: they received half the tithe in Zilah (Zalău) and a third in Tasnád (Tăşnad) (Diaconescu, Izvoare, 37, 117). In contrast, the cathedral city of Gyulafehérvár had only a parish with quarta (1754: Gudor, Gyulafehérvári Egyházmegye, 399).

59. 59 Hegyi, “Plébánia fogalma,” 19; Müller, Landkapitel, 131–32, 134, 145, 151–52, 178–80; Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 32–34.

60. 60 Cf. [1314?]: Ub, vol. 1, 300 = CDTrans, vol. 2, no. 218.

61. 61 1414: ZsOkl, vol. 4, no. 1632; 1444: KmJkv, vol. 1, no. 522; 1580: MonAntHung, vol. 2, 99, 101 (estates of the Kolozsmonostor Convent); 1589: Jakó, Dézsma, 52–53 (bishop’s domain of Gyalu). On the chapter estates, the priests’ share of tithes can be more or less deduced from the quartas of the provost and the canons (1477: Barabás, “Tizedlajstromok,” 417–18).

62. 62 E.g. FH: Kutyfalva (Cuci), Koppánd (Copand), and Nagylak (Noşlac) (cf. Jakó, Dézsma, 21–23). They were the estates of the chapter, but their tithe belonged to the bishop.

63. 63 Royal city: Kolozsvár (Cluj/Klausenburg). Salt-mining towns: Dés (Dej), Désakna (Ocna Dejului), Szék (Sic), Kolozsakna (Cojocna). Torda (Turda) seems to be an exception in this respect, as the priest here received little or no tithe (cf. Hegyi, “Plébánia fogalma,” 15–16). Royal castles with their domains: Déva (Deva), Küküllővár, Görgény (Gurghiu).

64. 64 On estates and their landlords see Pál Engel’s digital map of medieval Hungary (available for download here: https://abtk.hu/hirek/1713-megujult-engel-pal-adatbazisa-a-kozepkori-magyarorszag-digitalis-atlasza).

65. 65 FH: Tövis (Teiuş); TD: Felvinc (Unirea), Gyéres (Câmpia Turzii), Vajdaszentivány (Voivodeni); KL: Szamosfalva (Someşeni), Fejérd (Feiurdeni); DO: Drág (Dragu), Doboka (Dăbâca).

66. 66 1398: DF 257485 (Szengyel [Sângeru de Pădure, TD]); 1541: Batthyaneum, ACT, 5-41 (Solymos [Şoimuş, HD]).

67. 67 One sixth: Apanagyfalu (Nuşeni, BSZ). One eighth: Léta (Liteni, KL); Magyaregregy (Românaşi, DO).

68. 68 KL: Alsózsuk (Jucu de Jos), Felsőzsuk (Jucu de Sus), Kályán (Căianu).

69. 69 DO: Kisesküllő (Aşchileu Mic), Esztény (Stoiana),Szentegyed (Sântejude); BSZ: Girolt (Ghirolt), Monostorszeg (Mănăşturel). In contrast, it appears that beyond the Meszes the p = 1/16 share was much more common (Diaconescu, Izvoare, 13, 15, 17, 19, 106, 189, 191).

70. 70 If it were more documentable, we would probably find it in most parts of the Székely Land, too.

71. 71 Szarkad (Sereca), Berény (Beriu), Kasztó (Căstău), Perkász (Pricaz). Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 133; Müller, “Rechtslage der Rumänen,” 195, 235.

72. 72 Szászárkos (near Balomir), Giesshübel (near Szászsebes [Sebeş/Mühlbach]), Fehéregyháza (near Szerdahely [Miercurea Sibiului/Reussmarkt]), Underten (between Alcina [Alţina/Alzen] and Kürpöd [Chirpăr/Kirchberg]). Cf. Jakó, Dézsma, 25; Müller, Landkapitel, 161.

73. 73 Alkenyér (Şibot/Unterbrotsdorf), Felkenyér (Vinerea/Oberbrotsdorf), Cikendál (Ţichindeal/Ziegenthal), Glimboka (Glâmboaca/Hühnerbach), Hóföld (Fofeldea/Hochfeld), Illenbák (Ilimbav/Eulen­bach), Szászaház (Săsăuş/Sachsenhausen), Kálbor (Calbor/Kaltbrunnen), Boholc (Boholţ/Buchholz), Sona (Şona/Schönau). Cf. Müller, “Rechtslage der Rumänen,” 192, 212, 217, 224–25, 234–37, 240.

74. 74 FH: Poklos (Pâclişa), Sóspatak (Şeuşa), Táté (Totoi). Cf. Hegyi, “Románok tizedfizetése,” 28, 30–31; Hegyi, “Did Romanians,” 710 (note 73).

75. 75 E.g. FH: Veresegyháza (Roşia de Secaş/Rothkirch), Meggykerék (Meşcreac); DO: Sajósebes (Ruştior/Nieder­schebesch), Solymos (Şoimuş/Almesch), Radla (Ragla/Radelsdorf), Alsóbalázsfalva (Blăjenii de Jos/Unterblasendorf), Fata (near Nagydemeter [Dumitra/Mettersdorf]). Cf. Jakó, Dézsma, 20, 23, 45, 47.

76. 76 FH: Váralja (Orlat/Winsberg), Feketevíz (Săcel/Schwarzwasser), Alamor, Hosszútelke (Doştat/Thorstadt), Drassó, Dálya, Kútfalva, Birbó, Henningfalva (Henig). Cf. Hegyi, “Románok tizedfizetése,” 26–28, 30, 34.

77. 77 1580: EOE, vol. 3, 149–51; Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 164–68; 1612: EOE, vol. 6, 254–55; Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 191–95. Cf. ibid., 55–67.

78. 78 EOE, vol. 3, 244.

79. 79 Teutsch, Zehntrecht, 185–86, 188–89. Cf. Müller, Landkapitel, 166.

80. 80 E.g. 1664: Gudor, Gyulafehérvári Egyházmegye, 378 (Krakkó [Cricău/Krakau], FH), 406–7 (Alvinc [Vinţu de Jos/Winz], FH).

81. 81 KÜ: Gálfalva (Găneşti), Pócsfalva (Păucişoara), Kissáros (Delenii), Kóródszentmárton (Coroi­sânmartin), Besenyő (Valea Izvoarelor), Mikefalva (Mica), Kápolna (Căpâlna de Sus), Héderfája (Idrifaia), Harangláb (Hărănglab), and probably also Szőkefalva (Seuca).

82. 82 These findings are based on a comparison of the registers from 1563 and 1589 (SJAN-SB, F 3, 1-173, fol. 4r-v; Jakó, Dézsma, 34, 35, cf. Table 1, too).

83. 83 Source of data: SJAN-SB, F 3, 1–173 (the values in brackets), Jakó, Dézsma, 20–71 (page numbers refer to this). Abbreviations: E = episcopal share of tithe, A= archdeaconal share of tithe, q = quarta, T = the whole tithe, P = priest’s share of tithe (for all these, the amount of the corresponding wage is indicated in florins), p = the rate of the priestly tithe. The first three are taken directly from the source, the others are calculated using the formulae: T = 4q; P = T – (E+A); p = P/T.

 

* The research on which this article is based was done with the financial support of the HTMKNP FAEK MTA National Program and of the K 145924 funding schemes of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary.

Differences in Quality of Life and Profitability on Small and Large Farms (1730–1930): A Statistical Approach*

Gábor Demeter
HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 361-402 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.361

The competitiveness and productivity of large landholdings and small estates and the incomes or welfare of the people living on such estates have long been an important issue in the Hungarian historiography – and in everyday politics too. Based on the statistical evaluation of serial sources from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries we give a thorough analysis on the productivity of smallholdings and large estates, which showed a remarkable a spatio-temporal diversity contrary to the statements in the literature focusing on case studies or social aspects of the problems. The size of the in­­vestigated area (Kingdom of Hungary versus Hungary after 1920), as well as land-use colored the palette further. Statistical analysis also proved that socio-economic features on large landholdings were not so unfavorable as depicted by literature. There was a remarkable diversity within the large-estates regarding productivity too, and while in the 19th century their income/ha values were better, than the income on small estates, this gap partly disappeared between 1910 and 1935.

Keywords: Productivity, incomes, large estates, smallholdings, tenant peasantry, King­dom of Hungary, 18th–20th centuries

Introduction

The competitiveness and productivity of large landholdings and small estates and the incomes or welfare of the people living on such estates have long been an important issue in the Hungarian historiography, and indeed this issue remains controversial today. That matter at hand is not simply an economic or social question. Rather, it is one of the means through which the various political regimes after 1848 sought to legitimate their rule and policies. Neither is this issue negligible from the point of view of contemporary regional research and territorial planning. In his discussion of peripheralization at the time of the regime change in the early 1990s Endre Miklóssy identified the preponderance of large estates, rural overpopulation, and the marginalization of livestock farming as three of the four main historical factors contributing to the alleged backwardness of the region today.¹ Thus, the question can also be raised from the perspective of conditions today, or in other words, one could ask which former type of farm (allodial estates or farms dominated by plots) and social class (villages of former tenants with plots or villages inhabited by the landless, who after 1848 were mostly daily-wage agrarian laborers) are associated with areas which today are peripheral. The latter, the connection between the territorial pattern of social classes, and areas that are peripheral today, is not examined in the present paper.3In the interwar period, a political debate broke out on the issue of the comparative productivity of large versus small estates. Miklós Móricz (brother of the family writer Zsigmond Móricz) contended that large estates were more productive, but these estates were also associated with poorer living conditions for the populations living on them (and he supposed a causal relationship between the two).² Jenő Czettler pointed out the advantages of the large estates from the perspective of productivity—in the interwar period, because large estates had 20 percent better grain yields and 30 percent better yields for potatoes than small estates.³ Mihály Kerék refuted this. He contended that livestock production on smallholdings (which most statistics do not measure) compensated for the advantages of large holdings in grain production⁴ (and net cadastral land income)⁵ per acre. A table comparing the Balkan countries in the volume by Zagorov, Végh and Bilimovich, which was published after World War II, shows that in Hungary and Romania (as opposed to Greece, which also had a polarized estate structure) the yields of large estates were 20–30 percent higher than the yields of small estates in terms of grain production.⁶ However, Tibor Tóth’s research on the Interwar period, which is limited to the Transdanubian region, shows that the yields were better on smallholdings, although the return rates were somewhat slower^.7 The issue is not a specific Hungarian problem. According to Yanaki Mollov, Bulgarian smallholdings had better yields per hectare than the large estates in the interwar period.⁸ However, this is not the case if per capita values are calculated (labor force), and small farms were much more vulnerable to climate variability and changes in the external economic situation (including price volatility, which became an acute crisis after 1929).

The profitability of a given estate type may well have depended on many factors, including type of land use, land quality, location of the sample area, and the availability of technological advances, all of which are examined in the present study. Even the proclivities of political regimes (i.e. legal measures) may have been helpful in many cases (for instance in the case of Ottoman Macedonia in the nine­teenth century or in dualist Hungary). However, there are also examples when state intervention was not beneficial (for instance the permanent agrarian crisis in Serbia and Bulgaria after 1870, which was due to the maintenance of smallholder peasant democracy). Productivity and profitability also varied over time. There are many ways to measure these changes, but they do not always produce the same results.

If our results show that productivity measured according to harvest yield per acre was better on large estates then we need to consider the possible reasons for this, which include the following: (a) plot size, parcel size, parcel numbers, (b) technological development, (c) land use and product structure of the smallholdings and large estates, (d) whether the nobility managed to acquire better quality lands after 1848, or (e) whether the landed gentry, losing their tax exemption after 1848, attempted to manipulate the cadastral land survey during the registry period (1851–1865), when land income became the basis for land tax (1865), thus reducing their land tax by claiming that their lands were of poor quality. Klára Mérey, Pál Sándor, and Lajos Für have given concrete examples of how large landowners acquired fallow land after 1848 that had formerly been used by the peasants.⁹ They have also shown, furthermore, that these lands were often of better quality than the plots remaining in peasants’ hands.¹⁰ Scott M. Eddie, however, argues that this was not a general trend in 1850–1870. His sophisticated cliometric studies using country-scale data support the hypothesis that large estates (more precisely, the estates owned by the aristocracy) were subject to a more favorable tax classification than might have been expected in only one county out of the 52 studied (see the case of Viharsarok, also analyzed here).¹¹ The peasant estate was also sometimes placed in a higher “golden crown” category because it had a higher proportion of ploughland, even if the soil quality was actually worse because peasants were forced to cultivate more arable lands regardless of quality (see the case of Békés County in the discussion below).¹² On the other hand, the proportion of land taken up by pastures and forests was sometimes higher on large estates, and because of their generally lower income per acre, the average cadastral income per hectare on the whole large estate was also lower compared to the peasant farms, which were primarily ploughland. (The Draskovich family’s estates in southern Baranya offer an example of lands with a higher proportion of pastures and forests, while the Benyovszky family’s estates in the same area were primarily ploughlands).¹³

Productivity in the 18th Century

In the discussion below, I offer an overview of the issue by providing a summary of research done between 2018 and 2023. According to the census of 1728, which survived in 11 counties (2,200 settlements),¹⁴ the declared (and this word is important) seed yield (measured in proportion to seeds sown)¹⁵ on serf plots was not more than 1:2 in 25 percent of the settlements (500 settlements), and a seed yield of 1:4 or more was measured in only 20 percent of the settlements. (If the output is calculated in cubulus before sowing and harvesting and paying the tithe and state tax, a grain output of 1 to 4 was close to 800 kg/ha). The average yield of 1:3 was exceeded in Heves, Nógrád, Tolna, Sopron, and Szabolcs Counties. The lower-than-average value in Bihar and Szepes Counties, which are mountainous and forested, is not surprising, while the below average yield of Pest County is more surprising (animal husbandry still dominated the central plains in the eighteenth century due to the devastation caused in 1541–1699 during the Ottoman era). The declared yields of the municipalities of Somogy, Zala, and Vas Counties were also below 3:1. As 10 of the 11 counties are located in present-day Hungary (which is mostly lowlands), data from counties for which the sources do not provide these figures probably would not meaningfully raise this 1:3 average.¹⁶ As the landlords and the Church each took 10 percent of the harvest and 33 percent of the harvest had to be spared as seed for the next year, this 1:3 ratio allowed peasants to keep only 47 percent of their harvest, and part of this had to be used to pay taxes to the state. Thus, in the end, not more than 30 percent remained for peasant consumption. Supposing that 200 kg of grain are required for one adult and 150 for one child every year as a minimum, this makes total human consumption for a family 1,000–1,200 kg¹⁷ (without animals). This cannot be more than 33 percent of the total grain produced, ranging from 3,000 to 3,500 kg (otherwise the taxes cannot be paid). Calculating with a general output ratio of 1:3, this means that 1,000–1,200 kg of seed had to be set aside to be sown for the next year. Land size was calculated in cubulus, which indicates the volume of seed, 92 kg¹⁸ for a Hungarian acre (1 cadastral acre equals with 5,570 sq m, 1 Hungarian acre is 4,200 sq m). Thus, 11 to 12 acres (4.5 to 5 ha) had to be sown to produce this amount of grain at an output ratio of 1:3 in order to secure the subsistence of a family. In the case of an output ratio of 1:5, the seed set aside for the next year was 20 percent of the total harvest, taxes paid to the landlord and the Church came to a total of 40 percent, leaving 60 percent for the peasant to use to feed his family and pay the royal taxes. This left him with more than 40 to 45 percent of his harvest after taxation. Thus, even a smaller plot under 10 acres could sustain a similar family of six according to the figures used above.

To obtain more land, peasants could change the field-system and increase the ratio of cultivated lands from the usual 50 percent (the remainder 50% was used as fallow or grazeland) in the two-field system to 67 percent by applying three-field system (using one third of the plot for autumn crops, one third for spring crops and one third as fallow in a rotational system). They could also rent land from the landlords. This three-field system was often used in hilly regions in 1728 to compensate for lower soil quality.¹⁹ Applying the three-field system in the 18th century was not necessarily the sign of modernization or relative welfare (crop surplus), as plots using three-field system were not more productive, than lands under two-field system. It was rather a response to challenges caused by relative land shortages.

In 1728, the larger plots (sessio) had proportionally smaller yields per acre than the smaller units of land. In the lands with poorer yields, the plots tended to be larger, both in absolute terms (sessio size) and measured per capita. Had this not been the case, the population would have been compelled to move. (More than 60 percent of tenant peasants worked lands that were less than half a plot. This is a clear indication of the progressive fragmentation of the lands.) In his research on the Székely Land in the early eighteenth century,²⁰ Dezső Garda has shown that there was no significant difference in the grain yield of the armalist noblemen (nobles without peasants), the tenant peasants, and the landless cottars. The yields fluctuated around nine of ten kalangya.²¹ The differences between social groups were more pronounced in terms of livestock (1.9 and 3.7 cattle per family for cottars and members of the petty nobility, respectively). Most of the large estates were basically engaged in livestock farming in the first decades of the eighteenth century, either because of the general demand in Europe or because of labor shortages. Before the unification of peasant duties in 1767, the number of days spent on in corvée (compulsory work on a landlord’s manor) or the geographical location of the manor may be a guide to the nature of the large estates (allodia). Vast landholdings that made little use of corvée or allowed tenant farmers to free themselves of this obligation by making payments instead were more likely to be livestock farms (as these required less labor force thus were unable to exploit corvée efficiently), while near the larger cities (Vienna, Buda) grain production began to spread, and this required a workforce. This also suggests that the grain farming methods used on large estates may not have been very efficient in the beginning of the eighteenth century.

As eighteenth-century cadastral census data survived along the valley of the Tisza River, they can be used to quantify the share of tenant peasant plots compared to large estates, as well as to compare the yields on peasant plots and large manors at the end of the eighteenth century (Figs. 1 and 2). In contrast to Jászság and Nagykunság, the Tisza floodplain (and the Hevesi plain) was dominated by manorial ploughlands in 1786. This had not changed even in 1865, when water regulations were introduced and cadastral surveys were made to document the boundaries of estates and tenant plots.²² In the Central Tisza floodplain, both in regional comparison and also on the smallholdings, the grain yield per acre was lower than in Nagykunság and the plains of south Heves, for instance, and more land was owned by the lords and more crops were appropriated by the nobility (Table 1), whereas the amount of land per one agricultural inhabitant (including the cottars) was the smallest.²³ On the other hand, at the end of the eighteenth century, there was hardly any measurable difference between the yield per acre of small and large landholdings according to the surviving cadastral data. In terms of the total area of large holdings and plots, there were hardly any settlements on the Central Tisza floodplain, in the Békés loess and Nagykunság, and in South Heves which did not reach the limit of self-sufficiency (nine pm²⁴/person or five pm without animals) calculated by Glósz, with the exception of the region of Kiskunság (Danube-Tisza Interfluve, and in this area there was still heavy emphasis on animal husbandry on the large, empty quicksand plains) and Dévaványa in the moorland of Sárrét. Here, therefore, self-sufficiency had to be achieved either through animal husbandry or other forms of work (cottage industry, migrant labor). However, if we deduct the production of large estates from the total regional production, the situation was not good elsewhere either. Along the Tisza River (in contrast to the settlements of the Nagykunság or southern Heves), the yield was often barely 5 pm per person for peasant plots, if landless cottars are included and the yields of large holdings are not added (Table 3). Thus, the landless cottars²⁵ were forced to work either on the large estates or in animal husbandry (either as owners or herders) in the late eighteenth century. As long as there was enough common grazeland (this was the case until the beginning of great water regulation works in the late 1840s), the livelihood of this stratum was assured. However, the expansion of the large estates (and private land in general) over the commons and the expansion of ploughing on the large estates at the time of the river regulations²⁶ eliminated their livelihood and also provided the large estates with a cheap labor force that was no longer self-sufficient and thus could be easily exploited. This class was the biggest loser of the water regulations works and the new laws on land property after 1848. (The former common lands fell into the hand of landlords after 1848, who, prompted by the European grain hunger after the great crisis in 1847, began the transformation of even lower quality lands to arable land. These lands were profitable until grain prices collapsed after 1873).

According to Glósz, one or two sown cadastral acres were usually enough for one person to subsist, and since the amount of arable land per tenant peasant in most of the floodplains reached ten to twelve acres in the beginning of the nineteenth century, families of five to six people were able to live off the land at the time. By 1910, however, even with the increase of cultivated lands due to water regulation, only an average of six sown acres was available per family, which could only be sufficient for a family of this size if yields doubled (to twelve pm/acre, or about one ton/ha).

It is also important to underline that the yields of the arable land of the landlords in the Central Tisza floodplain were not good, and water regulation resulted in the further expansion of these low-quality ploughlands.²⁷

Table 1. Differences in grain productivity of Hungarian lands based on the specific variables extracted from the data of the first cadastral survey in the 1780s

  

Figures 1–2. The size and proportion of manorial arable land (light grey) in the surviving material of the 1786 cadastral census (based on Dávid, “Magyarország első kataszteri felmérése” and Rózsa’s recent explorations, Rózsa, “Az ártéri gazdálkodás mérlege.” / Regional differences in the land use of total cultivated land in 1786 based on the cadastral census (light grey for ploughland, medium grey for meadow and pasture, dark for garden and forest). There was hardly any arable land in the settlements of the Tisza floodplain, which were characterized by small administrative areas and large (manorial) estates with high share of the available arable land.

Productivity of Smallholdings and Large Estates from the 1860s to 1910

The significance of the data series published in 1865 during the first surviving cadastral survey³⁰ is that it is available for the whole country (except Transylvania and the large towns). To a limited extent it also makes it possible to calculate the net cadastral incomes³¹ of large and small estates, since the number of settlements where only smallholdings or only large estates were recorded (the data for so-called puszta, or “plainland farmsteads,” which had only one or two owners, were recorded separately) was statistically relevant. (Where both large estates and smallholdings were present, we cannot calculate their incomes separately.) From Table 2, it is clear that in the 1860s (after the abolition of corvée), the large holdings were more productive (in terms of harvest yield per acre) than smallholdings. Smallholdings had harvests per acre that were only 66 percent of the harvests (measured per acre) of the large estates.

Table 2. Differences between the profitability of small farms and large holdings in Hungary in 1865 (net cadastral income, excluding the production of livestock) 

Indicator	Small farms (sample)	Large landholdings (sample)	Large estates with some small farm	Country total and average**
Number of holdings	126,758 out of 2,010, 000	187 out of 23,685	138*+235	2,034,630.0
Total utilised area (acre)	1,380,000.0	409,000.0	131,487.0	33,510,620.0
Net cadastral income (forint)	3,610,000.0	1,944,000.0	599,600.0	98,056,000.0
Average size of holding (acre)	10.9	2190.0	1000.0	16.5
Average net income per holding (forint)	28.5	10,395.0	4500*.0	.048.2
Net income per 1 acre (forint)	2.6	4.7	4.6	2.9
Proportion of area used	92	80.0	95.0	91.0
Study sample	6.2% of farms, 4.1% of land, 3.7% of income	1.1% of farms, 1.3% of land, 2% of income	0.4% of land, 0.6% of income	100
** Counting only large estates. ** Excluding Transylvania and Croatia and some large cities (e.g. Debrecen).

Were the differences in income between small and large estates due to technological differences, or were they rather due to the fact that after the reforms in 1848, the nobility acquired land of better quality?³² Followers of prominent twentieth-century Hungarian historian Gyula Szekfű argue, on the basis of parcel names, that the large landowners established their estates on land cleared and cultivated in the nineteenth century and not on parcels obtained from peasants. This land therefore cannot have been of a terribly high quality and cannot have yielded impressive harvests or large incomes (and therefore there was no need for the landowners to manipulate the data). The results given above, however, seem to contradict Szekfű’s idea, though only partially. Surprisingly, if we approach the data series in a different way, in 1865, smallholdings were overrepresented in settlements with a high net cadastral land income of over six forints³³ per acre (323,000 holdings, or 15 percent of the smallholdings, compared to 2,635 large holdings, or 10 percent of the large estates).³⁴ This seem to support Szekfű’s thesis (according to which the land quality of the large holdings was generally poor). However, since the distribution of landholdings within a settlement (and therefore the difference in their soil quality) is not known, these data are not conclusive.³⁵ At the other extreme, for the settlements with a low net income of one or two forints per acre (below average), we counted 6,630 large estates and 466,000 small farms in total, which is 28 percent and 23 percent, respectively. Here, large estates are overrepresented, but this is also due to large forest estates with poor yields (this is immediately clear if one plots the large estates on the map).

In other words, the dominant land use of the estate types has a strong influence on the incomes/acre expressed in money. Despite the low group average in the sample in Table 2, smallholdings were not characterized by uniformly low productivity. In Baranya in 1910, for example, smallholdings did not yield worse net cadastral incomes per acre than the larger holdings, because the smallholdings had a higher proportion of arable land, which had higher net cadastral incomes than forests, meadows, and pastures, and this increased the weighted average of the net income per plot.

The notion that, after the 1875 tax reform, when cadastral net income became the tax base, the tax system favored large estates and the taxes placed on smallholdings were higher in absolute terms is untenable. In 1910 (the investigation was reduced to the recent territory of Hungary due to the availability of data), the direct tax³⁶ per capita in settlements dominated by large estates was 20 kronen (30 K for the large estates of aristocrats), and in settlements dominated by small estates it was 15 K (in the national territory of Hungary today).

Figure 4. Net land income per cadastral acre in kronen (K) in different subsets of two districts of Baranya County (Ormánság and Hegyhát), 1910 (Demeter and Koloh, “Birtokstruktúra és jövedelmezőség.”)

 The same is true if we use per acre values instead of per capita. The average tax for settlements without large estates was 6.5 K per acre, and the average tax for settlements dominated by estates owned by the petty nobility was the same, whereas for villages dominated by aristocratic estates it was 7.3–8 K per acre. Since direct taxes also included land tax alongside a household tax and corporate and industrial taxes, the tax values are also indicative of income conditions. Thus, the hypothesis that large estates paid less tax per acre because the nobility used its political influence to manipulate taxation to underestimate the value of their land in the golden crown system is not tenable in general either. In fact, they did not pay less, as proved above, and Eddie’s aforementioned thesis (that large estates in general did not enjoy more favorable tax rates between 1850 and 1870) seems persuasive.³⁷

Mariann Nagy also concludes that the higher the share of smallholdings in a county, the lower the net cadastral income (r= -0.39).³⁸ Our own country-level (within the state boundaries of Hungary after 1920), settlement-scale study confirms that in the villages dominated by large holdings, net cadastral income per capita (27.8 vs. 21 K) and, to a lesser extent, net cadastral income per acre (10.5 vs. 8.6 K) were also higher in 1910 than in settlements dominated by smallholdings. However, by 1935 the difference had almost disappeared. Thus, this phenomenon showed significant dynamics within two generations!

For the mid-nineteenth century, another case study gave new information concerning the productivity of large and small estates. In 1857, several censuses of the former Harruckern estates (today Békés County in southwestern Hungary) were recorded,³⁹ and here the net income per acre (in forints) can be calculated for more than 80 large estates. Since we also know which settlements these large estates were located in, their net incomes could be compared with the average land incomes of the total municipality (which includes small farms) in 1865. The resulting picture is rather chaotic, because the net cadastral income per acre of large farms varied between five and nine forints/acre, and in some cases the net cadastral income per acre of large landholdings was lower than the overall municipal average. Since this was not owing to differences in the sizes of large farms, we also examined the role of land use. Interestingly, large farms were more profitable than small farms if the share of ploughlands exceeded 75 percent of the area of large farms. (This implicitly also means that the large estates might have had better soil quality, at least for grain production, since it was the large estates that offered a viable way of expanding arable land up to 90 percent of the whole). When the share of ploughlands was between 60 and 70 percent, the net income per hectare of the large farms was equal to the average net income of the municipality, and below this percentage value, the small farms were more profitable (Table 3). Large farms were therefore more competitive in the case of monocultural farming.

Leaving aside land quality and land use as factors and focusing only on the size of the landholdings, in the 42 settlements analyzed in Békés, Csongrád, and Csanád Counties, the large landholdings had 25 percent higher net incomes per acre than the small landholdings in 1865 (Table 4), confirming the result of our general survey for 1865 but contradicting the results of the investigation of the 80 large estates above (Table 3). However, as before, we were unable to quantify the role of animal husbandry, so we cannot estimate how it would modify the differences. Net cadastral income, as an indicator, allows us to determine neither where the income/expenditure ratio was better (i.e. which estate type was more efficient) nor where the expenditures were lower (i.e. which landholding size was less capital intensive), since no other indicator is available at the settlement level beside the “income minus expenditure value” (i.e. net cadastral income).⁴⁰

Table 4. Differences in net cadastral incomes of smallholdings and large estates (1865) on the area covered by the genetic soil map of Békés County (1858)

Dominant farm structure (by municipality)		Net cadastral income   forint/acre	Net income forint/estate owner	Average estate size (acre)
Mixed (25)	Avg.	4.30	135.0	31.40
Smallholdings dominate (5)	Avg.	4.24	61.1	14.44
Large estates dominate (12)	Avg.	5.43	29846.0	5494.31
Total number of settlements and “puszta” on map (42)	Avg.	4.45	8615.6	1933.97

Using a special source, however, it is possible to examine how land quality affected income and determine whether large estates were located on better land or not in these three counties. Table 4 above is based on the cadastral survey conscription published in 1865, which includes the precise, accurate number of large and small estates (but not their size separately) and the number of “puszta.” A genetic soil map of the area (the second oldest in Europe) from 1858 has also survived. By superimposing the administrative boundaries of 1865 (Figure 5) on the soil map using GIS-techniques, one can identify the dominant soil type per settlement, and the settlement level average values for net cadastral income per acre in 1865 can be compared to the soil types. Net cadastral income per acre and per holding was highest in the loess (Table 5), which also suggests that the loess was dominated by large estates, while in contrast, the sand or the saline solonetz soils (vertisols) were dominated by small estates in 1865. The net cadastral income per acre on smallholdings located on sands was good, while the incomes of small farms established on peat and solonetz soils was poor. Settlements with mixed saline-loess soils were also dominated by large estates, but with better income per acre values. In other words, the large estates were mostly located on better soils.

Table 5. Net cadastral income per acre and per holding (in forints) by soil type and average size of holdings by soil type in 1865

Soil type and settlement number		Net cadastral income   forint/acre	Net cadastral income   forint/estate	Average estate size
sand IV (1)	Avg.	5.49	97.38	17.74
peat (2)	Avg.	2.38	103.25	43.36
loess I (8)	Avg.	5.91	2,3076.77	3,903.40
salty/saline II (14)	Avg.	3.51	1,811.74	516.68
salty and peat (1)	Avg.	2.32	68.75	29.66
salty and bound clay (2)	Avg.	3.47	56.81	16.35
salty and loess (14)	Avg.	5.09	10,813.64	2,126.25
total (42)	Avg.	4.45	–	–
Source: Our calculations based on the 1858 soil map and income data published in 1865.

By comparing the productivity of small and large estates located on the same soil types (Table 6), one can highlight the “soil-neutral” efficiency of the farm type. The combined query of the incomes (1865)—soil (1858) database revealed that in the case of loess, the large estates were clearly more efficient, while in the case of saline soils, the smallholdings were more efficient, obviously because the smallholder was forced to produce a minimum quantity even by investing extra work (and/or a larger workforce) to subsist, while the large farm was not under such pressure. In the case of settlements with mixed loess and saline soils, there was no significant difference between small and large farms.

Table 6. Differences in net cadastral income grouped by soil types and farm sizes (in forints, 1865)

Dominant soils    (1858)	Farm size (type, settlement number, avg. estate size)	Net cadastral income   forint/acre	Net cadastral income forint/estate
sand	MIXED estate structure (1)	5.49	97.38
peat	MIXED estate structure (2)	2.38	103.25
loess	DOMINANCE OF SMALLHOLDINGS (2) (79), cadastral acres	4.67	370.32
	DOMINANCE OF LARGE ESTATES (6) (4848 cadastral acres)	6.32	30,645.59
	TOTAL (8)	5.91	23,076.77
saline	MIXED estate structure (12)	3.52	90.46
	DOMINANCE OF SMALLHOLDINGS (1) (4 cadastral acres)	4.06	36.79
	DOMINANCE OF LARGE ESTATES (1)	2.74	24,242.00
	TOTAL (14)	3.51	1,811.74
saline and soot	(1)	2.32	68.75
saline and clay	MIXED estate structure (1)	3.38	95.65
	SMALLHOLDING DOMINANCE (1)	3.57	17.97
	TOTAL (2)	3.47	56.81
saline and loess	MIXED estate structure (6)	5.53	183.82
	SMALL FARMS DOMINANCE (3) (18 kh)	4.52	83.67
	LARGE ESTATES (5) (6122 kh)	4.90	30,007.40
	TOTAL (14)	5,09	10,813.00
Source: Our calculations based on the 1858 soil map and income data published in 1865.

How did landowners manage to acquire good quality land? In order to answer this question, we superimposed the soil map from 1858 on the Harruckern map of land use in the 1780s, which also contained aggregated landuse and population data at the settlement level (unfortunately, it did not include yields). Our research has shown that around 1780, most of the land far away from rivers and covered with loess was used as pasture (Tables 7 and 8), which, as public property (communal land, which meant that both the landlord and the peasants had the right to use it), fell into the hands of the manor according to the laws of 1848. These areas, converted into ploughland as a result of the land-use change induced by grain hunger in Europe, which generated high prices, showed extremely high yields and high incomes in the mid-nineteenth century due to decades of fertilization and fallowing.

Water regulation works began here around 1865, so the statistics cited reflect the incomes of the pre-regulation situation, when plots on saline soils and peat were more exposed to water. This implicitly also meant that the water regulation work of 1865 generated a temporary ameliorating situation for the smallholders (although peat that has lost water is easily damaged by wind and compaction caused by trampling, so the improvements are only temporary). In contrast to the situation along the Körös River, in the Central Tisza region at the end of the eighteenth century the floodplains of the rivers were dominated not by small farms but by large estates and communal-public lands used as pastures and meadows for grazing. This all became manorial land after 1848. So, water regulation along the Tisza River favored large estates.

Table 7. Differences in land use types on different soils (%) and farm types in 1865

Soil type (I-V: soil quality)		Smallholding / large holding ratio	Arable (%)	Meadow (%)	Pasture (%)	Woodland (%)	Vineyard (%)	Reed (%)	Uncultivated (%)
sand IV	1	138.17	65.84	4.33	25.16	0.00	1.54	0.00	3.13
peat III	2	32.72	18.06	29.74	16.28	10.64	0.21	7.99	17.09
loess I	8	17.39	60.37	19.04	17.02	0.39	0.16	0.00	3.01
saline II	14	73.40	44.02	16.13	28.95	2.92	1.22	1.03	5.73
saline and sooty peat	1	175.50	34.91	29.17	21.47	0.47	0.84	2.31	10.83
saline and clay, V	2	141.83	37.98	12.40	31.62	3.86	3.17	0.42	10.55
saline and loess	14	52.28	59.89	9.44	23.21	0.94	0.64	0.78	5.10
Total	42	61.32	51.20	14.96	24.02	2.06	0.87	1.06	5.83
Source: Our calculations based on the 1858 soil map and the income data published in 1865 (area and income of Hungary by cultivation). The dominant land use pattern(s) have been highlighted by bold letters.

Table 8. The land use and quality of the land (in 1858) that functioned as praedium (non-urbarial, non-peasant plots) in 1790

Praedium	Soil quality   1858	Soil genetic type   1858	Arable  %	Meadow  %	Pasture  %	Forests  %
Kígyósapáti pr.41	2	saline	0.00	4.76	95.24	0.00
Nagykondoros pr.	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Nagy Csákó	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Kis Csákó	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Csorvás dominale42	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Csorvás comm.	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Eperjes pr.	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Szénás pr.	2	saline	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Kis Kamut pr.	1	loess	100.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Szt. Miklós pr.			100.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Csejti Pr.	2	saline	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Bélmegyer pr.	2	saline	0.00	55.03	40.46	4.51
Gerla pr.	3	peat	0.00	44.48	44.48	11.04
Ölyved pr.	3	peat	0.00	73.61	24.51	1.88
Királyhegyes pr.		loess	0.00	12.27	87.73	0.00
Apáca pr.	1	loess	0.00	0.00	100.00	0.00
Tamás pr.	2	saline	0.00	40.20	24.87	34.93
Kis Péll pr.	5	clayey	0.00	24.97	75.03	0.00

The relationship between soil conditions and net cadastral land income can also be examined in 1910, since the genetic soil type can be considered a conservative property (at least for a span of 50 years), and the municipal net cadastral income is also available from 1883 and 1910 and even sorted even by type of land use. So, net income is available for different products (Table 9), which was not true of the survey done in 1865. The difference between loess-soils and clayey or salty solonetz soil is still remarkable, and estate size on loess remained extremely high in 1910.

By 1935, the positive trends in the net cadastral income of smallholdings in the Pécs region (southern Hungary) mentioned earlier (Figure 4) had also changed. The net cadastral income per acre of small estates fell from almost twelve crowns in 1911 to less than eleven crowns, while that of large estates rose to over eight crowns, and on the Biedermann and Benyovszky estates, the net income per cultivated acre of land jumped from eight or nine golden crowns⁴³ before World War I (Figure 6) to ten or eleven. This confirms that we have a spatially and temporally fluctuating phenomenon, which also depended on market volume, soil quality, and land use, in addition to technology and crop culture.

Figure 5. Overlay of the 1858 Békés-Csanád soil map with post-1886 settlement boundaries

Figure 6. Differences in the net cadastral incomes of small and large estates of different types in 1935, expressed in golden crowns. (Demeter and Koloh, “Birtokstruktúra és jövedelmezőség.”)

Socio-Economic Characteristics of Estate Types (1890s–1930s)

The question of profitability is therefore not settled by the series of studies summarized above. Income alone, however, does not necessarily offer a precise means with which to classify a settlement (or the type of enterprise that predominates) as developed or underdeveloped, since the concept of welfare includes a variety of other dimensions (health, environment, cultural indicators, etc.). And as a large part of the income generated in settlements that were dominated by large estates did not fall into the hands of the agrarian producers, this indicator is therefore inappropriate for comparisons of welfare. If we want to check or reproduce Miklós Móricz’s local-scale research for the whole country and investigate further the contradictory picture of large estates as either “oppressive” or “modern and profitable,” other social, economic and demographic factors must be taken into account in addition to cadastral income (which is more an indicator of farming quality than of livelihood).

The GISta Hungarorum database⁴⁴ allows the reconstruction of the socio-economic-demographic conditions of the settlements dominated either by large estates or small farms for 1910. Since various indicators of development are also available (the Human Development Index, HDI at settlement level from 1910 calculated by Zsolt Szilágyi),⁴⁵ it is also possible to determine whether there was a correlation between general development levels and farm type in 1910. For this purpose, we extracted a list of large farms from the compendium compiled by Gyula Hantos (1926)⁴⁶ and the Farmers’ Inventory (1897). The former provides statistical data on large estate types within the post-1920 boundaries of Hungary. The latter makes the entire area of the historical country available for analysis from an earlier period, but using different criteria and classifications of large estates. The Farmers’ Inventory from 1935 provides further possibilities. First, it is possible to group the settlements according to the share of the large estates as a proportion of the total area of the given settlements, and second, it is possible to examine the difference in net cadastral incomes per acre between large estates and small farms in the 1920s, but only for the post-Trianon area of the state.⁴⁷

Based on Hantos’ dataset from the 1920s (the postwar territory of Hungary) and the socio-economic indicators from the census of 1910, it was possible to distinguish aristocratic, non-aristocratic noble, ecclesiastic, etc. large estate types (above 100 acres), and one can also draw a distinction between large estates consisting mostly of arable land and large estates large estates consisting mostly of non-arable land. Using the socio-economic indicators from 1910, the several conclusions can be drawn, each of which I discuss below.

Natural reproduction rate (measured according to the proportion of the population under six years of age) was 1–2 percent higher on almost all types of large holdings than in the settlements dominated by smallholdings.⁴⁸ The situation was reversed for the population aged 60 and over, with a higher proportion on smallholdings (eight percent versus nine percent). The proportion of elderly people was lower on large farms dominated by arable land, indicating a larger workforce (i.e. people belonging to the work force were usually younger). In 1910, literacy rates on large estates of the noble, feudal, aristocratic, and non-feudal types were one to two percent lower than on small estates. This constitutes a significant change from circumstances in 1880, when literacy rates in the settlements dominated by smallholdings were markedly lower compared to the values in large-estate dominated settlements. Indeed, over the course of those three decades, literacy rates in settlements dominated by smallholdings increased by five percent points. Almost all large estates had 50 percent higher per capita net cadastral income than settlements dominated by smallholders (which is not surprising). The reason for this difference in per capita income clearly lies in the differences in cadastral income per acre, which was significantly higher on the large estates (10.6 vs. 8.6 kronen) than in settlements dominated by smallholdings. Since the amount of land per agricultural earner (including day laborers) was also higher on large estates, the difference in income per earner could be more than 50 percent on most large estates compared to small estates (except for Church and state-owned large estates, where the difference was smaller). The net cadastral income per acre was higher even on the large holdings that were dominated by pasture than it was on the smallholdings.

Death rates were also higher on large estates, as were birth rates. Migration gains were clearly more significant on large estates, with values up to two to three times higher (Church and state-owned estates were the least preferred),⁴⁹ and in 1910, migration still provided a means with which to address rural overpopulation. On large estates, the death rate from measles, dysentery, and whooping cough was lower.

In terms of distance from the railways, large estates were usually closer than small estates, and the proportion of smallholders compelled to work as day laborers was also higher on large estates (not surprisingly). The quality of housing, on the other hand, was uniformly worse on large estates. In this light, it is particularly noteworthy that mortality from diseases influenced by housing conditions (such as tuberculosis and the commonly prevalent diseases mentioned above) was still lower on these estates. This was probably due to better access to health services in settlements dominated by large estates. The proportion of deceased who had received some medical treatment was also higher on large landholdings.

Finally, the HDI value calculated by Zsolt Szilágyi⁵⁰ for 1910 was also clearly better in the settlements dominated by large estates and was higher than the national average (Table 10). However, from the perspective of today’s development levels and patterns, there is no connection between the present status of a piece of agricultural land as part of a periphery or core and the locations of former large estates. This means that much has changed over the course of the past century. (High development values were recorded in 2016 on former large estates, where the abundance of arable land was moderate around 1920, i.e. 50-75 percent of the cultivated land).

Based on the 1897 Farmers’ Inventory (which included landowners with estates over 100 cadastral hold), we can draw conclusions for the whole country, not just for the post-Trianon area. Of the 12,600 settlements, 5,576 had no large landholdings and their complex development index was much lower than that of the settlements with large landholdings in 1910 (except the group of large estates less than 15 percent of which was arable land, i.e. they were dominated by forests or pasture). There was hardly any difference in the proportion of the population under six years of age in each group, and the same is true for the population over 60 years of age, in contrast to the results of our investigation using Hantos’ dataset for the “reduced” interwar area in 1926. However, literacy rates were significantly higher in settlements with large estates dominated by ploughland (the opposite was true for the post-1920 country study). The improvement in literacy rates between 1880 and 1910 showed no significant difference between estate types (this also differs from the result of the statistical evaluation of Hantos’ estate list for the post-1920 country), showing an overall improvement of 20 percent (compared to the 5 percent increase in literacy rates in settlements found in the territory of post-Trianon Hungary). The proportion of deceased persons who had received some form of medical treatment was higher on large estates than on small farms. The rate of illegitimate births was high in settlements dominated by forest holdings and was below the national average in settlements with large estates dominated by arable land. However, these two mentioned types of large holdings were the most unfavorable in terms of settlement level infant mortality in 1910.

Table 10. Characteristics of the socio-economic-demographic conditions in the settlements dominated by large estates in the statistics compiled by Hantos in 1926 on large estates (group averages)

Group	Estate	Population under 6 years 1910, %	Population above 60 years 1910, %	Over 60 years old / under 6 years old	Average birth rate,  1901–10	Average death rate, 1901–10	Average natural reproduction rate, 1901–10	Population increase rate, 1901–10	Average migration rate, 1901–10	Whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles as a % of total deaths, 1901–10	Tuberculosis as a % of total deaths, 1901–10
large estates of non-nobles	33	17.27	8.32	0.50	37.86	24.04	13.82	74.77	60.96	3.86	16.17
aristocrats	182	16.39	8.10	0.52	37.52	24.08	13.44	73.20	58.99	4.09	14.79
clerical	51	16.28	8.83	0.57	38.33	25.43	12.90	63.61	50.71	4.36	14.53
state (urban)	40	15.73	8.17	0.54	35.57	24.96	10.61	91.30	80.70	3.58	15.18
corporate	3	19.37	4.98	0.26	41.34	21.12	20.22	68.17	47.95	6.00	11.91
foundation	9	15.86	9.03	0.62	35.30	23.68	11.62	98.81	87.19	3.01	16.50
noble	13	16.22	8.00	0.59	38.76	25.16	13.60	111.91	96.11	2.61	15.07
hereditary	20	17.63	7.59	0.45	39.76	25.16	14.60	68.45	53.85	4.66	15.36
all large estates	351	16.46	8.20	0.53	37.60	24.44	13.16	75.80	62.16	4.02	14.99
all municipalities of the country after Trianon	3,392	15.74	9.03	0.62	35.78	23.63	12.15	44.64	31.82	4.74	16.25
settlements without large estates	3,042	15.65	9.13	0.63	35.56	23.53	12.03	41.03	28.31	4.82	16.39

Group	Settlement wealth per capita, 1908, K*	Direct tax per capita, 1909, K	Settlement income per capita, 1909, K	Earners from population, %, 1910	Industrial earners from all earners, 1910, %	Tertiary earner in %, 1910	Literate in 1910, %	Literate in, 1880, %	Increase in literacy rate (1880-1910) %	Average size of population 1910
large estates of non-nobles	34.09	23.79	8.58	39.09	9.79	16.33	63.43	45.60	17.83	5,665.21
aristocratic	29.72	20.20	7.35	39.27	11.25	15.36	64.84	44.84	20.01	5,100.73
clerical	37.09	19.60	6.97	38.70	9.32	13.33	65.93	45.50	20.43	5,408.08
state (urban)	46.29	10.76	4.19	41.37	17.58	27.70	66.96	49.17	17.79	41,761.78
corporate	9.86	34.79	5.43	37.56	6.08	9.50	59.44	36.68	22.76	2,944.33
foundation	41.73	23.45	6.23	40.09	9.12	14.18	67.15	51.70	15.45	9,236.22
noble	46.74	19.95	8.36	38.00	10.07	12.38	64.09	43.41	20.68	4,462.31
hereditary	19.96	24.50	6.25	38.07	9.27	15.62	61.83	44.43	17.40	4,368.45
all large estates	33.30	19.82	6.98	39.30	11.30	16.39	64.92	45.53	19.39	9,398.59
all municipalities of the country after Trianon	25.31	16.06	6.44	40.82	10.18	13.61	65.67	42.47	23.21	2,362.15
settlements without large estates	24.38	15.63	6.37	40.98	10.05	13.28	65.74	42.10	23.64	1,549.47
* Kronen

Group	Smallholders compelled today laborers %, 1910	Cadastral income / agr. earner (K, 1910)	Cadastral income/capita (K, 1910)	Cadastral income per acre (K, 1910)	Cadastral income per estate (K, 1910)	Average estate size (acre, 1910)	Average estate size per one agr. earner (acre, 1910)	Direct tax / cadastral income in 1910
large estates of non-nobles	64.32	146.00	32.76	12.78	467.44	31.81	11.64	0.73
aristocrats	62.01	125.54	28.70	10.47	1945.19	275.39	12.35	0.70
clerical	62.17	95.39	25.05	9.61	124.52	12.74	9.66	0.78
state (urban)	59.47	96.31	18.88	10.14	4776.94	247.35	10.37	0.57
corporate	43.98	258.43	32.44	11.11	5986.46	430.17	20.42	1.07
foundation	58.01	127.40	33.31	12.00	263.55	21.74	10.75	0.70
noble	63.16	106.85	30.42	9.92	158.80	16.85	11.02	0.66
hereditary	60.43	159.60	31.05	10.93	1222.40	91.68	14.60	0.79
all large estates	61.66	122.18	27.78	10.57	1757.26	186.64	11.77	0.71
all municipalities of the country after Trianon	62.98	77.69	21.75	8.82	239.51	28.61	9.85	0.74
settlements without large estates	63.12	72.53	21.04	8.62	64.30	10.37	9.62	0.74

Group	Deaths, receiving medical treatment (1=100%)	Share of persons involved in home industry to total population, 1910	Infant mortality measured to deaths, avg. of 1901–1910 (1=100%)	Houses of bad quality material in 1910 (1=100%)	HDI in 1910 (Szilágyi 2019)	Territorial development index in 2010- (Pénzes 2014)	Distance from nearest railway station (m, 1890)
large estates of non-nobles	0.86	0.002	0.33	0.64	0.42	0.524	14,226
aristocrats	0.76	0.002	0.34	0.54	0.41	0.548	9947
clerical	0.74	0.001	0.32	0.68	0.41	0.576	14,138
state (urban)	0.87	0.002	0.31	0.54	0.43	0.616	7891
corporate	0.76	0.003	0.39	0.51	0.44	0.479	18,282
foundation	0.88	0.002	0.31	0.70	0.42	0.531	9542
noble	0.73	0.001	0.36	0.81	0.40	0.544	8090
hereditary	0.81	0.002	0.35	0.57	0.43	0.518	12,291
all large estates	0.78	0.002	0.33	0.59	0.41	0.588	10,850
all municipalities of the country after Trianon	0.48	0.002	0.32	0.46	0.38	0.568	11,768
settlements without large estates	0.44	0.002	0.32	0.45	0.38		11,870

Settlement wealth per capita was also high for large estates over 75 percent of which was arable land, as was the value of direct taxes. This was similar for “smaller” large estates under 500 acres. Municipal incomes per capita were similar in all categories, except for large estates over 75 percent of which was arable land, where we find an outlier value. Large estates over 75 percent of which was ploughland and those with over 1,000 acres had higher birth rates, while there was no difference in the death rates between estate types. However, migration rates were high towards settlements with large estates dominated by forest and grassland and estates that were over 1000 acres, while in settlements with large estates dominated by arable land the rate of population growth from migration was below the national average. The death rates from scarlet fever, measles, and whooping cough were particularly high in settlements with large holdings dominated by pasture and forests and on large holdings under 500 acres, exceeding the average measured for villages dominated by smallholdings. (Again, this contradicts the results of the earlier study on a narrower area, suggesting that the difference is not really due to the size of the estate but to other, natural geographic and cultural causes, as was true in the case of the contrast regarding literacy described above.) In the case of tuberculosis, however, there was no such remarkable difference. The share of industrial earners was significant on extremely large estates and large estates dominated by pasture, forest, and ploughland, two percentage points above the share measured in settlements dominated by small estates. Large estates dominated by ploughland and estates over 1,000 acres were four and a half kilometers closer to railway stations than small estates (again excluding large estates dominated by forest and grassland).

The share of smallholders compelled to work as day laborers approached the high value typical for smallholding villages only in the type of large holdings that were predominantly pasture. This may have been due to the fact that on the large holdings that were predominantly ploughland and on extensive large holdings landless day laborers were often the majority of the work force. Net cadastral income per capita was more significant on large holdings than on smallholdings (except for the large estates dominated by pasture or forests), supporting the notion that large holdings were more productive (though this still does not include data on livestock). For large holdings of over 1,000 acres 75 percent of which were ploughland, net cadastral income per acre was also notably high.

The significance of the 1935 Farmers’ Inventory for the present investigation (as well as the inventory from 1910, which we did not use here) is that it allows us to determine the productivity of small farms. By aggregating the total area and total income of large farms by settlement given in the inventory and subtracting these values from the total income and total area of settlements published by the Central Statistical Bureau in 1935 we can calculate the unpublished cadastral income data for smallholdings. In addition, it is also possible to create groups based on the proportion of large holdings (as a percent of area) per settlement and calculate the socioeconomic indicators for these subsets, within the post-1920 state boundaries.

The share of large landholdings as a percentage of total cultivated land in 1935 was analyzed in the following subgroups: above 60 percent, 40 percent-60 percent and 20 percent-40 percent. 1,970 settlements had large estates of over 500 acres (a share usually higher than 60 percent of the total cultivated land of the settlements), 500 settlements had large estate(s) between 100 and 500 acres, and 275 settlements had only large estate fragments under 100 acres (here the share of large estates was usually less than 20 percent of the total cultivated land). Some 600 settlements had no large holdings at all on their administrative area. To sum it up, in 1935, 56 percent of the settlements had a landholding of over 500 acres on their territory (Table 12).

Despite the fact that the 1910 value of the historical HDI calculated by Szilágyi did not show significant differences between the estate types, this does not exclude the possibility that some of its components (HDI is composed of literacy rate, life expectancy, GDP/capita) did so—offsetting each others’ effects. However, there were no differences in mortality rates, neither within the large estate types nor compared to the national average (mortality rates were used as proxies to life expectancy missing from 1910). The proportion of the population under six years of age was one percent higher on settlements with large estates compared to settlements with no estates over 100 acres kh, and 1 percent higher than the national average. The direct taxes per capita, which functioned as the basis of the local municipal surtax (and was used as a proxy to substitute missing settlement-level GDP data by Szilágyi, were high on large estates of over 500 kh (direct taxes still applied to incomes from tertiary and secondary sectors, in addition to agrarian land taxes).

Table 12. The value of socio-economic-demographic indicators (1910’s census) in the sub-groups of the large landholding population, based on the categorizations used in the Farmers’ Inventory (Gazdacímtár) in 1935

Estate type by size in acre (settlement number in brackets)	Settlement size (population), 1910	Average death rate, 1901–1910 (1=100%)	Population under 6, 1910 (1=100%)	State tax per capita (1910, K)	Crude death rate, avg. of 1901-1910	Literacy rate in 1910 among population above 6 years, %	HDI 1910 (Szilágyi, Zsolt, 2019)	Composite development in 1910 (composed of the single variables used here)
under 500 acres (502)	900.664	0.024	0.160	7.177	23.283	78.275	0.382	1.214
above 500 acres (1969)	3267.898	0.024	0.147	13.012	24.045	77.125	0.387	1.379
fragment (275)	1103.306	0.022	0.161	7.092	23.464	78.143	0.380	1.104
All settlements’ value	2611.682	0.024	0.149	12.388	23.845	77.440	0.385	1.321

Estate type by size in acre (settlement number in brackets)	Average cadastral income of large estates, 1935, aK*	Average cadastral income of large estates per acre, 1935, aK	Proportion of estates under 1 acre, 1935 (1=100%)	Proportion of estates over 100 acre, 1935 (1=100%)	Average size of all estates inc. large landholdings (kh)	Total cadastral income of ALL estates in 1935, aK	Total cadastral income of smallholdings in 1935, aK	Cadastral income of smallholdings per acre in 1935, aK
under 500 acres (502)	2058.86	7.169	0.232	0.422	1409.34	11305	9100	7.299
above 500 acres (1969)	18,926.28	6.643	0.262	0.600	5519.81	47914	27,483	6.184
fragment (275)	262.19	7.534	0.277	0.197	1237.12	11149	10,829	4.935
All settlements’ value	14,047.96	6.830	0.258	0.526	4317.04	37281	22,403	6.264
* Golden crowns instead of pengő to make data comparable with that in 1910.

However, compared to the previous examinations, there is a significant difference in net cadastral income per acre. The net cadastral incomes per acre on large estates were lowest for large holdings over 500 acres in 1935. At the same time, the net cadastral incomes of small farms were also low, somewhat lower than that of large holdings, but this situation was reversed for holdings between 100 and 500 acres. Here, the net cadastral income per acre on a large estate was higher than on large estates over 500 acres, but the net incomes of smallholdings were even greater. In contrast, the cadastral incomes per acre of the fragmented large estates exceeded that of the other categories of large estates and was also higher than cadastral incomes on smallholdings, since the net cadastral incomes of the small estates were lowest here, in this category, where there were hardly any large estates anyway. In other words, the presence of large landholdings seems to have had a positive effect on the net cadastral income per acre of small landholdings too.

If the values of single variables are aggregated in one composite development index, the most undeveloped settlements were those where only fragments of large estates were found (less than 100 acres in 1935), while settlements with large holdings over 500 acres showed development levels above the national average (1.37). This sheds new light on Móricz’s investigations concerning the welfare of the people who lived and worked on large estates in the interwar period.

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [National Archives of Hungary] (MNL OL)

A39 A Magyar Kancelláriai Levéltár [Archives of the Hungarian Chancery]

Acta Generalia (1770–1848), 3688/1786

Központi Statisztikai Hivatal [Archives of the Central Statisctical Bureau]

Iratgyűjtemények (volt F iratgyűjtemény) (1701–1996), XXXII-23-j-12, 31–85. doboz.Az 1728-as adóösszeírás feldolgozásának anyaga (Perjés Géza hagyatéka).

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Békés Vármegyei Levéltára [National Archives of Hungary, Archives of County Békés] (MNL BéML)

IV. Megyei törvényhatóságok, szabad királyi városok és törvényhatósági jogú városok [County municipalities, royal cities, and towns with municipality rights]

B. 156 A Csabai Cs. Kir. Vegyes Szolgabíróság iratai [Papers of Csaba

B. 202 Szarvas mezőváros iratai

B. 302 Document of Békéscsaba nagyközség iratai

B. 317 Gyoma nagyközség (1872-ig mezőváros) iratai

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Demeter, Gábor, Gábor Németh, János Szulovszky, Zsolt Bottlik, Zsuzsa Frisnyák, Béla Nagy, Pál Beluszky et al. Kisatlasz a dualizmus kori Magyarország regionális társadalmi–gazdasági folyamatainak tanulmányozásához / A Historical Geographical Atlas of Hungary for the Analysis of Socio-economic Phenomena (1869–1910).Budapest–Debrecen: Kapitális Kft., 2020.

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1 Miklóssy, “A területi elmaradottság,” 881–89.

2 Large estates had higher birth rates and lower death rates than the villages dominated by small estates, but population increases were not high due to significant emigration (reaching 40 percent of the natural population increase, whereas in the small estates emigration accounted for an estimated 25 percent of the population increase), despite the fact that population density was the lowest on the large estates. Miklós Móricz interprets this as an indication that the large estate were less sustainable, although it is more likely that fewer people were needed to run a large estate efficiently. Móricz, “Nagybirtok,” 293–309.

3 Czettler, “Földbirtok-politika,” Table 51.

4 According to a statistical assessment of 232 small farms, Kerék argues that although large farms produced more grains (an average of +2 quintals of grain per acre and +800 liters of milk per cow compared to smallholding), the small farms had much larger numbers of livestock, which means that while the large farms had a gross income of 135–167 pengő per acre, the small farms have gross incomes of 170–190 pengő per acre. In addition, the Hungarian smallholders marketed more products (as a percentage of their products) than Balkan smallholders (which were self-sustaining economies according to Chayanov), up to 60–70 percent (compared to 25–35 percent), similarly to the large estates. It is therefore not surprising that the share of contributions made by smallholders to total marketed goods was also high. The net income was thus between 57 and 64 pengő on the small farms compared to 31–35 pengő on the large landholdings. Kerék, A magyar földkérdés, 361–64.

5 Net cadastral land income is calculated in Hungarian statistics as the difference between incomes and costs, so it is similar to the term profit.

6 Zagorov et al., The Agricultural Economy, 15–22, and 50.

7 Tóth, A Dunántúli kisüzemek, 29.

8 Mollov and Kondov, Dohodnostta. According to our recent surveys, this did not stand for the 1860s.

9 Für, A csákvári uradalom, 33–139; Sándor, Birtokrendezési periratok, 94–95; Orosz, A jobbágyvilág megszűnése, 125; Egyed, Falu, város, civilizáció, 134–35; Sándor, “A XIX. századi parasztbirtok,” 1968, 94–117, and Sándor, “A XIX. századi parasztbirtok,” 1964, 36–81.

10 T. Mérey, A somogyi parasztság, 248; Orosz, A jobbágyvilág megszűnése, 133.

11 Eddie, Ami “köztudott”, az igaz is?, 83.

12 See Demeter et al., “Földminőség.”

13 See Demeter and Koloh, “Birtokstruktúra és jövedelmezőség.”

14 MNL OL. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal [Archives of the Central Statisctical Bureau]. Iratgyűjtemények (volt F iratgyűjtemény) (1701–1996), XXXII-23-j-12, 31–85.

15 In the eighteenth century, instead of yields expressed in quintals, grain yield was given as a ratio to seeds sown. Thus, all quantified data expressed here in kg, q, or tons are calculated and estimated.

16 See Demeter and Horváth, “Sopron vármegye.”

17 Glósz’s calculations are very similar. From a different basis he gives five pozsonyi mérő (pm) for an adult person without animals, which is 225 kg. In case of animals fed from arable land this goes up to nine pm. (Glósz, “Területi hiány és felesleg”; Glósz, “A gabonakereskedelem feltételrendszere”; Glósz, “A birtokviszonyok.”

18 This is only valid from the late 18th century according to Schwartner’s description. See Bogdán, Magyarországi űr-, térfogat-, súly és darabmértékek, 303–4.

19 In our opinion (see Demeter and Horváth, “Sopron vármegye”), three-field system were usually applied where intensive farming was needed because of the lack or low quality of arable land. In general, seed yields were also higher for plots using the two-field system. The implementation of three-field system was to compensate for this by extending the arable area from 50 percent to two-third of the ploughland, by reducing the fallow land. In regions using three-field system the ratio of peasants with half plots or less was also high, referring to relative shortages in arable land. The data also indicate that manure was not widespread on lands of better quality and higher yield in 1728. Wheat grain yields were only 1:2.5 in villages in which manure was used, but were close to 1:3 in villages in which manure was not used. The villages in which manure was used presumably relied more on livestock farming than on crop production.

20 Garda, Főnépek, lófők, gyalogkatonák, 138–50.

21 The term refers essentially to a haystack, though the term does not indicate a precise shape or quantity.

22 Demeter et al., Kisatlasz, 175 (Map 129). According to calculations based on the raw data of the 1897 Farmers’ Inventory (Gazdacímtár 1897), the share of arable land on large estates was above the national average in the floodplain counties, but on small farms it was even higher.

23 In Nagykunság and Csongrád Counties in the south, even the small amount of tenant ploughlands resulted in a large grain output per acre, and the landlord expropriated only a quarter of this. In the Tisza floodplain, more than half of the total harvested cereals went to the landlord, as was the case, for instance, in Heves, but the extent of the ploughlands was much greater in the latter. Thus, although the total per capita cereal yield in the Central Tisza region was higher than in the Kiskunság and Jászság, in the latter regions the proportion of grain expropriated by the landlords were only around 10 percent.

24 Pozsonyi mérő. Hereinafter referred as pm. Two pm equals to one cubulus, thus one pm is approximately 45 kg.

25 MNL OL. A39 A Magyar Kancelláriai Levéltár [Archives of the Hungarian Chancery]. Acta Generalia (1770–1848), 3688/1786.

26 See Demeter and Koloh, “Birtokstruktúra és jövedelmezőség,” 25–76.

27 Considering arable land, small farms were more productive in Ormánság, while in Békés and Csanád Counties large farms were more productive in terms of income per acre.

28 From this, we deduct the seed. One Hungarian acre = one cubulus = two pozsonyi mérő of seed (125 l = 92 kg) = 4,200 sq m. This gives an estimate of the seed output, which is 2:7 in Moson and 2:9 in Nagykunság as a ratio of seed yield to seeds sown.

29 Control area.

30 Magyarország művelési ágak szerinti terjedelme és földjövedelme, 1865.

31 We still do not have data on settlement level yield (in tons) between 1865 and 1910. Instead, net cadastral income was measured in 1865 in forints, which was the basis of the land tax. However, this indicator reveals nothing concerning expenditures or gross incomes.

32 Eddie, Ami “köztudott”, az igaz is?

33 One forint = two kronen (two crowns or two golden crowns) = ca. two French francs.

34 Our 1865 (and 1910) data only give the value of crop production. They do not reveal anything concerning livestock production. The figure of six forints was well above the national average.

35 For net income per acre above six forints, smallholdings included settlements such as Ruszt and Kismarton/Eisenstadt (no large holdings were recorded in either place, so there were no such settlements skewing the average upwards), which certainly owe their inclusion in the group to their special agricultural crops (wines, grape) and not to cereals.

36 That included land tax based on net cadastral income, taxes on houses, industrial taxes, and profit taxes paid by enterprises.

37 Eddie, Ami “köztudott”, az igaz is?, 75–88.

38 Nagy, A magyar mezőgazdaság, 36.

39 MNL BéML IV. Megyei törvényhatóságok, szabad királyi városok és törvényhatósági jogú városok B. 156. A Csabai Cs. Kir. Vegyes Szolgabíróság iratai 1133/1857. Birtokosok kimutatása községenként 1857-ben; MNL BéML V. Mezővárosok, rendezett tanácsú városok, községek. B.202. Szarvas mezőváros iratai 635/1857. List of landowners with more than 100 acres; MNL BéML V. Községek B. 317. Gyoma nagyközség (1872-ig mezőváros) iratai b. Közigazgatási iratok 823/1857. List of landowners with more than 100 acres; MNL BéML V. Városok B. 302. Document of Békéscsaba nagyközség iratai b. Tanács-ülési jegyzőkönyvek 582/1857. List of landowners with more than 100 acres.

40 Keleti, A telekadó és kataster, 7–14.

41 Pr. refers to praedium, in this case that is economically exploited area without settlement (community) on it (Hungarian puszta).

42 Part of the settlement was owned by the landlord, the other part belonged to the community.

43 Whereas golden crown and kronen before 1910 meant almost the same, the new Hungarian currency after World War I, the pengő, had a different exchange rate. Therefore we use values expressed in golden crowns (real price instead of nominal price represented by pengő) in order to make them comparable with the prewar kronen (crowns) and to eliminate the effect of inflation.

44 For the census data of 1910 in excel sheets, see: www.gistory.hu.

45 Szilágyi, Az ismeretlen Alföld.

46 Hantos, Magyarország nagybirtok-térképe.

47 In a separate study, the socio-economic-demographic indicators of villages in 1910 that were dominated by former tenants versus landless cottars are analyzed to examine the extent to which they differed from one another 60 years after the abolition of serfdom.

48 Differences were checked with a two sample t-tests. Hereafter, unless otherwise indicated, differences are defined as significant at p=0.05 significance level, which means that there is only a five percent probability of that the measured difference is insignificant (contrary to our assumption).

49 This did not necessarily meant that work opportunities and living conditions on the large estates were better. Rather, it was simply not possible to create new plots for smallholders at the time except by breaking existing estates into smaller fragments. This made migration a viable macro-social strategy. The populations of large estates were recruited from poor areas (such as Göcsej, Matyóföld, and Szabolcs).

50 Szilágyi, “Regional differences.”