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

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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

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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

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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

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Spatial Transformations and Regional Differences in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary (1000–1500)

Beatrix F. Romhányi
Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 339-360 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.339

Spatial transformations of the economies and/or demographic trends of pre-modern European kingdoms are difficult to assess, as statistical data are not available. However, it is possible to create large data sets using different types of sources, including written and archaeological, which can be used as indicators of relative population density, economic activity, and regional differences. Although most of these data included are qualitative in nature and many can only have binary values (0 or 1), the use of a large number of variables has led to reasonable results that can be compared with the results of analyses in later periods. Most of the data available are related mainly either to agriculture or ecclesiastical institutions (parishes and monasteries). The period before the Mongol invasion in 1241 is mainly represented by archaeological data, while for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there are considerably more written sources. One of the most important sources is the papal tithe register of 1332–1337, the only tax in Hungary directly related to the differences in agricultural incomes. However, the focus of this paper is not on individual time periods, but on the spatial changes that occurred within the medieval Kingdom of Hungary between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, with a particular emphasis on possible driving forces behind these changes and various regional differences.

Keywords: Middle Ages, Kingdom of Hungary, regional differences, spatial transformations, long-term processes

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Jakša Kušan’s Forgotten Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Croatia

Josip Mihaljević

Croatian Institute of History

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 1  (2024):107-132 DOI 10.38145/2024.1.107

Croatian journalist and writer Jakša Kušan (1931–2019) was one of the most prominent Croatian émigré dissidents. By editing and publishing the non-partisan magazine Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia), he tried to inform the global public about the suppression of human rights and civil liberties in socialist Yugoslavia, even under constant threat of being attacked by the Yugoslav secret police. After the fall of communism, he returned to Croatia and continued his work in the media and the civil sector for a brief time. In this article, I offer an overview of the most relevant of Kušan’s oppositional activities during the period of communist rule in Croatia and Yugoslavia and consider the roles and impact of his activities. I also venture some explanation as to why his life and work have mostly been forgotten in today’s Croatia. One possible answer to this question could be his complex relationships with the Croatian dissidents who won the first multiparty elections in Croatia in 1990. My discussion is based on the findings of the COURAGE project (Cultural Opposition – Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries), oral history sources, and archival documents of the Yugoslav secret police.

Keywords: Jakša Kušan, Croatian émigré, dissent, socialist Yugoslavia, Croatia, democracy, COURAGE project, Yugoslav secret service

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