Discussion Papers 2005. No. 46.
The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
CENTRE FOR REGIONAL STUDIES
OF HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
DISCUSSION PAPERS
No. 46
The Hungarian Urban Network in
the Beginning of the 20th Century
by
Pál Beluszky – Róbert Gyıri
Series editor
Zoltán GÁL
Pécs
2005
1
Discussion Papers 2005. No. 46.
The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
ISSN 0238–2008
ISBN 963 9052 53 1
2005 by Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Technical editor: Ilona Csapó.
Printed in Hungary by Sümegi Nyomdaipari, Kereskedelmi és Szolgáltató
Ltd., Pécs.
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Discussion Papers 2005. No. 46.
The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
CONTENTS
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 7
2. Historical preliminaries of the birth of the modern urban network in Hungary ............... 8
2.1 Medieval towns in the Carpathian Basin ................................................................ 8
2.2 The development of the urban network in 1529–1688 ......................................... 12
2.3 Urban development between the expelling of the Turks and the bourgeois
revolution (1684–1848) ........................................................................................ 17
3 Conditions of urban development in the age of capitalism (until 1914)....................... 20
3.1 Political, international and general economic conditions of urban
development in the age of the Dual Monarchy ..................................................... 20
3.2 The economic structure of Hungary: the modernisation of agriculture,
industry and transport ........................................................................................... 23
3.3 The role of public administration in urban development in the age of the
Dual Monarchy ..................................................................................................... 30
3.4 The demographic conditions of urbanisation........................................................ 34
3.5 Regional frameworks of urban development ........................................................ 36
4 The hierarchy of the Hungarian towns in the early 20th century................................... 41
4.1 Method for the definition of the urban hierarchy.................................................. 41
4.2 The urban hierarchy of Hungary in 1910.............................................................. 45
4.2.1 Settlements with town rank – settlements with urban functions................ 45
4.2.2 The proportion of urban population – urbanisation level – sizes of
the towns ................................................................................................... 52
4.2.3 Spatial distribution of the towns ................................................................ 63
4.2.4. Transformation of the urban hierarchy and the urban network in the
Dualist era ................................................................................................. 67
4.2.5 The weight of urban functions in the settlements ..................................... 71
5 A brief description of the respective hierarchy levels .................................................. 96
5.1 Budapest ............................................................................................................... 96
5.2 Regional centres ................................................................................................. 100
5.3 County seats........................................................................................................ 117
5.4 Middle towns ...................................................................................................... 120
5.5 Small towns ........................................................................................................ 122
5.6 Settlements with some district level functions.................................................... 124
6 Summary .................................................................................................................... 124
Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 126
References ........................................................................................................................ 129
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Discussion Papers 2005. No. 46.
The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
List of figures
Figure 1
Industrial regions and centres in 1910 ........................................................ 25
Figure 2
Industrial employees in settlements with more than 500 employees,
1910 ............................................................................................................ 26
Figure 3
Railway network in Hungary, 1867 ............................................................. 30
Figure 4
Railway network in Hungary according to the owners, 1914 ...................... 31
Figure 5
Zones of modernisation in the early 20th century......................................... 39
Figure 6
Hierarchy of the Hungarian cities, 1910 ...................................................... 46
Figure 7
Relationship between settlements with legal status of cities,
characterised by urban functions and urbanised society, early 20th
century ......................................................................................................... 52
Figure 8
Level of urbanisation in the counties, 1900 (all settlements with urban
functions are taken into consideration) ...................................................... 58
Figure 9
Total and rural population supplied by urban functions .............................. 76
Figure 10
Per capita urban functions (density) ............................................................ 81
Figure 11
Urban types according to qualitative and quantitative functions ................. 86
Figure 12a
Headquarters and scope of gendarme districts........................................... 104
Figure 12b
Headquarters and scope of notary chambers ............................................. 105
Figure 12c
Headquarters and scope of commercial and industrial chambers .............. 106
Figure 12d
Headquarters and scope of royal suppreme courts..................................... 107
Figure 13
Structure of employment in regional centres, 1910 .................................... 110
List of tables
Table 1
Hungarian towns with the biggest population in 1825 ................................ 19
Table 2
Employment structure in Hungary, 1870–1910........................................... 24
Table 3
Change of the number of population in Hungary, 1870–1910..................... 34
Table 4
Change of the number and share of urban population in Hungary,
1857–1910 ................................................................................................... 35
Table 5
Literacy rate within the population aged older than 6 years, 1880–
1910 ............................................................................................................. 37
Table 6
Counties with high literacy rate, 1880–1910 ............................................... 37
Table 7
Counties with high illiteracy rate, 1880–1910 ............................................. 37
Table 8
Hierarchic division of the towns in the functional sense ............................. 45
Table 9
Legal status and administrative centre functions of the settlements in
the respective hierarchy categories .............................................................. 47
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The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
Table 10
Typical numbers of population in the towns belonging to the different
hierarchy levels, 1910 .................................................................................. 54
Table 11
Major indices of the urbanisation level of the regions, 1910 ....................... 59
Table 12
Major indices of the urbanisation level of the counties, 1910 ..................... 61
Table 13
Number of centres by hierarchy levels according to W. Christaller and
our survey .................................................................................................... 64
Table 14
Comparison of the urban hierarchies in Sándor Gyimesi’s survey of
1828 and the present examination of 1910 .................................................. 68
Table 15
Average number of all citizens and of the rural population served by
the tons at the different levels of hierarchy.................................................. 74
Table 16
Average number of rural citizens supplied in the towns of the Great
Hungarian Plain and in the other Hungarian regions, by hierarchy
level ............................................................................................................. 78
Table 17
Budapest’s weight within Hungary, 1910 (Without Croatia and
Slavonia)...................................................................................................... 98
Table 18
Change of the population of Budapest in 1851–1910.................................. 99
Table 19
Main characteristics of the regional centres, 1910..................................... 108
Table 20
Employment structure at the respective hierarchy levels, 1910................. 109
Table 21
Volume of urban functions in the regional centres and the county
centres........................................................................................................ 118
Type 1
High hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – high
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 84
Type 2
High hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – medium
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 85
Type 3A
High hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – high
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 85
Type 3B
High hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied –
medium share of non-urban residents supplied............................................ 87
Type 3C
Medium hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – high
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 87
Type 4
Medium hierarchy level – high number of population supplied –
medium share of non-urban residents supplied............................................ 88
Type 5A
Medium hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied –
high share of non-urban residents supplied ................................................. 89
Type 5B
low hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – high
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 89
Type 6A
Medium hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied –
medium share of non-urban residents supplied............................................ 90
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The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
Type 6B
Medium hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied –
no share of non-urban residents supplied..................................................... 91
Type 7A
Medium hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – high
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 91
Type 7B
Medium hierarchy level – low number of population supplied –
medium share of non-urban residents supplied............................................ 92
Type 7C
Medium hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – no
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 92
Type 8A
Low hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied –
medium share of non-urban residents supplied............................................ 93
Type 8B
Low hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – no
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 93
Type 9
Low hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied ................................................................... 94
Type 10
Low hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – medium
share of non-urban residents supplied.......................................................... 95
Type 11
Low hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – no share
of non-urban residents supplied .................................................................... 95
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Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
1 Introduction
In Hungary, part of the Habsburg Empire, the political and legal conditions of the
birth of the bourgeois society were created by the bourgeois revolution of 1848; the
laws enacted by the Parliament in the April of this year abolished the noblemen’s
privileges – e.g. the exemption from taxes, the exclusive right to participate in the
political life –; the election of the principal legislative organ, the Parliament on the
basis of popular representation was declared, villeinage was abolished, as was so-
cage tenure. The lands cultivated by the villeins became their own properties, the
principle that all public expenses were to be contributed to by all was declared, and
laws were enacted for the modernisation of the economy of Hungary, a one-sided
agricultural country at that time (setting up a credit institute, state support for the
development of transport etc.). Following the bourgeois revolution, Hungary was
involved in an armed fight against the ruler from the Habsburg House and lost this
war of independence (in 1849), but the laws making the basis of the bourgeois
transformation were still in force. After the so-called “Compromise” between the
Austrians and Hungarians (in 1867), Hungary regained its (limited) national
sovereignty (the person of the ruler was the same, and foreign and military affairs
were common issues). The periods between 1867 and 1918 is called the era of
Dualism, on the age of the Austro–Hungarian Dual Monarchy. As a consequence
of these events, in Hungary, with a territory of just 325,000 km2 (whose territory
shrank to the present 92,000 km2 after the decisions made at the Paris peace treaties
concluding World War I), an extremely rapid economic growth, a social and
economic modernisation took place; the population of Budapest with a population
of just 170,000 increased to 880,000 by 1910, the number of industrial earners
doubled between 1870 and 1910, the 178-kilometre railway network that had been
completed by the year of the bourgeois revolution grew to 22 thousand kilometres
by the beginning of World War I etc. In the period between the “Compromise”
(1867) and World War I, the single national market was created, the integration of
the formerly rather autarchic regions progressed and the urban network of Hungary
was organised into a single network. Our study focuses on this latter process, the
development of the urban system into an integrated network and the achievements
of its process of organisation into a hierarchical system, concentrating on the
conditions at the beginning of the 20th century.
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2 Historical preliminaries of the birth of the modern urban
network in Hungary
2.1 Medieval towns in the Carpathian Basin
The Carpathian Basin1 was first “touched” by urbanisation when some parts of it
were conquered by the Roman Empire in the first years AD.
In Pannonia, province of the Roman Empire – i.e. in Transdanubia and the ter-
ritory between the Drava and the Sava Rivers –, the anthropogeneous landscape
started to develop, the engineers of the empire had cities built. However, the conti-
nuity of these settlements and the cities born after the foundation of the Hungarian
state is now rejected, not only because of the destructions of the time of the great
migrations and the decay and flight of the urban population, but also because the
social roles and the economy of the antique and the medieval city, and also their
positions in the geographical division of labour are completely different: the cities
of the Roman Empire (i.e. the antique cities) were administrative, military and
cultural-cult centres of the empire; the legal situation and societal status of their
citizens were mostly independent of their place of residence, as the cities were
home to a large number of slaves, as well. In the Roman Empire cities were not the
islands of freedom. They had a special situation in goods exchange, too: this ex-
change between the towns and the villages took place not on the basis of “market”
rules but also within the frameworks of large holding employing slaves. Maybe the
luxury goods of faraway countries were sold and bought in a “classical” trade. The
medieval cities, on the other hand, are first of all autonomous settlements.
Thus the roots of the urban network of the Carpathian Basin go back to the time
of the foundation of the Hungarian state (1000 AD) in the best case. The semi-no-
madic Hungarian nation that settled down between “West” ands “East”, in the
power vacuum in the border zone of the Byzantine and West Roman Empire, took
up Latin Christianity and chose dynastic relations one century later by which, also
in the contemporary views, it joined the West. However, the “Western” and the
1 The Carpathian Basin is a large region in Central Europe, with an area covering approximately
320,000 km2, including the region between the Drava and the Sava Rivers and the slopes of the
mountain range surrounding the Basin. It is a marked region, well separated from its environment,
offering “natural” conditions for the peoples settling down in it. The Hungarian nation settling
down here in 895–896 gradually filled up these frameworks, and after the foundation of the
Hungarian state (in 1000), the state borders ran for almost a millennium along the ridges of the
Carpathian Mountains. A less definite borderline was located in the south, only, although the Sava
and the Drava Rivers marked quite clearly the border of the Hungarian territories in this direction
too, despite the fact that in the Middle Ages also south of these rivers there were satellite state
formations, dependant on the Hungarian ruler.
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“Eastern” elements of the social organisation coexisted in Hungary in the 10–13th
centuries: in spite of the presence of the western church, legal system, ideology,
culture and state administration there was actually no feudal system in Hungary
until the late 12th century, and even in the time of “early feudalism” – a period
thought by Hungarian historians to have lasted until the middle or the end of the
13th century – several “Eastern” elements could be seen in both the society and the
economy.2 These elements of course set a framework for the development of the
settlement system as well:
– The segregation of the society into two basic classes had not taken place yet.
– The patterns of property ownership had not stabilised yet, either; the common
ownership of land was typical, the principle of “no land without a feudal
landlord” only gradually became exclusive. The formation of the system of
villein holdings may have started in the early 13th century;
– The almost exclusive social, political and economic role was held by the
ruler. In the early 13th century the king owned approximately three-quarters
of the cultivated land. The first organisations of feudal character started in the
1200s.
– In these centuries in the Carpathian Basin a nature-based economy was typi-
cal, consequently the internal exchange of goods was limited, trading activi-
ties were not separate from production (except the luxury goods trade of a
2 It is broadly accepted by historians that societal development within Europe had different ways,
and different regional types emerged; the basic types being the West- and the East-European social
development model (and the so-called Mediterranean world that was another, distinct phenome-
non). The West European model was born by the melting of the antique (Roman) and the Germanic
heritage. Its economic base was the indisputable private ownership of land, the legally settled right
of the villeins to the villein holding, the villeins’ ownership of certain pieces of land (clearings,
vineyards), the legally guaranteed and clear-cut separation of the lands used by the villeins and
those being the private properties of the landlord. This made individuals (the villein families) inter-
ested in the increase of the volume and the efficiency of production, in the modernisation and ex-
tension of the tools of production (clearings of forests, planting of vineyards, increase of the
draught power etc.) and in the application of the achievements of technical development. The vil-
lage communities ceased to exist in Western Europe quite soon, the “operational units” of agricul-
tural production were villein holdings. To the contrary, in Eastern Europe the overwhelming ma-
jority of the “working class” was servants of early medieval character, who did not have any right
to the land that they cultivated. The landlords had the right to sell or expel their villeins or to sepa-
rate them from the lands that they cultivated . In Eastern Europe, the system of the land community
(village community) as a taxation unit survived until the 20th century, together with the common
and mutual responsibility of the members of the village communities. This limited the “interests of
the individuals” considerably.
In Western Europe, the villeins’ class with private land property was part of the complex feudal
society. The legally regulated system of feudalism created a number of autonomies – for towns,
guilds, universities, counties, churches etc.
Hungary lived in the border region of these two development types, in a region where Central
Europe was born in the middle of the second millennium.
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few cities). The agricultural workers and the handicraftsmen were the same
persons and could not be concentrated in certain settlements. Without sepa-
rate trading and handicrafts activities and the population pursuing these ac-
tivities – i.e. without an urban bourgeois class – no elaborate division of la-
bour could be born in Hungary, and the lack of a continuous exchange of
goods did not allow the birth of real towns in Hungary in the 10–13th centu-
ries, either. Only two towns were different from the situation described
above: Esztergom and (Székes)Fehérvár, as the royal, church and sacral cen-
tres of Hungary. Until the beginning of the 13th century, only Esztergom had
the staple rights in Hungary. Esztergom was the home of well-to-do (Wal-
lonian) merchants, and the royal mint and money exchange worked here as
well. In the 13th century it was already the most important marketplace in
Hungary, the centre of international trade (of luxury goods) and a handicrafts
centre.
In such conditions it is meaningless to talk about urban hierarchy and an urban
system. There was hardly any connection among the co-existing central places, and
these relationships were not induced by a hierarchically and functionally organ-
ised, long-term division of labour, anyway.
In the late 12th and early 13th century, the conditions of settlement development
changed; the chances for the birth of “real” towns and cities were there. The most
important factors of these changes are as follows:
– The spread of goods production; the acquisition of the innovations of the
European agricultural revolution in the 12th–13th centuries doubled the yields.
In addition to the luxury goods, mass goods produced by peasants – cereals,
wine, fruits, fish, honey, livestock – were marketed, in fact, exported.
– The social division of labour resulting in the separation of those pursuing
agricultural and handicrafts activities progressed.
– After the Tartar invasion, defence became of primary importance; in order to
achieve this, the king donated royal estates to the noblemen3 building for-
tresses, and city rights to the towns with increasing population.
– In order to use the formerly scarcely inhabited or uninhabited mountainous
fringes of the Carpathian Basin for economic purposes, the king invited for-
eign, mostly German speaking settlers to Hungary: Upper Northern Hungary
and Transylvania (Saxons of the Szepesség and Barcaság areas). The mining
towns involved in noble metal extraction also received miners from Ger-
3 The Mongol Empire moved more and more west in the 13th century and had an intensive attack on
the Kingdom of Hungary in 1241. The Tartars (i.e. the Mongols) managed to conquer almost the
total territory of Hungary. In 1242, however, they left Hungary, leaving a serious destruction be-
hind them. The Tartar invasion set back the population and economy of Hungary by about a cen-
tury.
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many; the bigger part of the urban population in the Carpathian Basin spoke
German in the Middle Ages. These privileged settlements also spread the
principle of self-governance and a practice of developed urban architecture in
Hungary.
– Although the Tartar invasion set back the population increase of Hungary, the
population reached 2 million again around the 1330s and 4–4.5 million by the
end of the 15th century. The average density of population of the inhabited
territories rose to 15–16 persons per square kilometre.
The demand to increase the financial resources made the king promote trade and
urbanisation. The king could to this by the donation of different privileges (urban
rank, staple right etc.). Pest received already before the Tartar invasion the so-
called Fehérvár urban rights.4 The excellent geographical endowments of Pest (the
harbour of Pest was the best one along a large section of the Danube River; the
waterway of the Danube; the large number of roads running to the harbour etc.)
could immediately be utilised parallel to the spread of goods production; already in
the early 13th century, Ishmaelite merchants lived and held fairs in the proximity of
the harbour. In 1218–1225, the population of the town was increased by German
speaking hostesses (“guests”) engaged in industry and trade. Also in the 13th cen-
tury, the following towns were given urban privileges: Nagyszombat [Trnava,
SK]5, Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK], Késmárk [Kežmarok, SK], Zágráb [Za-
greb, HR], Zólyom [Zvolen, SK], Sopron, Nyitra [Nitra, SK], Pozsony [Bratislava,
SK], Gyır and Eperjes [Prešov, SK]. The rulers could take special aspects into con-
sideration when donating urban privileges – e.g. the strengthening of the defence of
the country, development of the economy in the formerly less intensively utilised
regions etc. –, the reason for the rise of the towns in the urban network was in al-
most all cases attributable to geographical factors, too. The urbanisation process in
the Carpathian Basin in the 13th–14th centuries was primarily built on wine produc-
tion and trade, mining6 (noble metal mining, salt mining) and even more on long-
distance trade. In the 14th century, the importance of guild handicraft became im-
portant in the urban life.
The number of settlements with the full range of urban privileges was small in
the 13th–14th centuries (especially in the present territory of Hungary). In the late
4 The Fehérvár urban rights of included the free choice of vicar, judge and jury, and the right of
jurisdiction – the so-called “jus gladii”, i.e. “the law of the sword” –, exemption from duties, right
of holding fairs and the right of free movement.
5 A városok névírásánal megtartottuk a korabeli – hivatalos – magyar elnevezéseket. A jelenleg
használatos városneveket zárójelben közüljök. Rövidítések: A = Ausztria, SCG = Szerbia és Mon-
tenegró, SLO = Szlovénia, SK = Szlovákia, RO = Románia, UA = Ukrajna.
6 The noble metal mining of Hungary was of international significance in the 12th–15th centuries. In
the 13th century, the Hungarian gold production was one ton per year, silver production ten tons
(four-fifth and one quarter of the total European production, respectively).
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Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Middle Ages these few towns were not enough to carry out the goods exchange and
to manufacture the necessary commercial goods. A large number of settlements
with more or less urban functions and with limited autonomy appeared. These were
owned by landlords and featured only a part of the contemporary urban character-
istics (e.g. larger size, wall, limited agricultural activities etc.). Their most impor-
tant urban functions were the tasks in relation to the local market centre (weekly
fairs, fairs, craftsmen producing tools for everyday use etc.) and they were often
the centres of the estates of private landowners. These settlements remained villein
communities in the legal sense; although they chose their own judges, they only
were competent in affairs of lesser importance. The citizens of these settlements
had villein duties; they could redeem themselves from forced labour or could do
their duties in cash, in one annual lump sum. These settlements were country
towns, the so-called oppidums. Their number reached 800–900 by the 15th century,
but the major part of them remained villein communities without any real urban
functions. There were some, on the other hand, whose economic importance com-
peted with those of the “civitas” (cities).
At the end of the Middle Ages, in the 15th–16th centuries, some signs of the in-
tegration of the Hungarian settlements into an urban network were already visible.
Buda (and Pest) was the political and administrative centre of the Carpathian Ba-
sin; three-quarters of the imported goods were brought to Hungary by the mer-
chants of Buda, and the attraction of the city reached the population of the whole of
Transdanubia and the southern parts of Upper Northern Hungary. Some big cities,
such as Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], Sopron, Kassa [Košice, SK] and Brassó [Braşov,
RO] were home to specialised handicrafts activities and merchants dealing with
imported goods, and these cities were able to expand their “attraction” on smaller
civitas and country towns, so the spread of the division of labour could be experi-
enced within the urban network.
2.2 The development of the urban network in 1529–1688
The catching up process to the West remained lopsided, and not only because of
the occupation by the Ottoman Empire but above all due to the regional rear-
rangement of the economy of Europe; the focal point of industrial production and
world trade gradually shifted from North Italy (and the Mediterranean region in
general) to the “Atlantic Europe”, i.e. the Netherlands, the Rhine region, the
northwest regions of France, and later to England. This macro-region played a
dominant role from the 15th century in the appearance of early capitalism, allowing
the birth of the early forms of the capitalist industry (meanwhile the disintegration
of the feudal agricultural system accelerated, the villeins became tenants or free
peasants). The character of international trade changed, too: while it had mostly
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mediated luxury goods before, from the 15th–16th century the Atlantic ports and
commercial cities were home to the exchange of mass goods. The region imported
foods and raw materials (cereals, livestock, wine, fish, wood for constructions,
wool etc.) and gave commercial goods in exchange (felt, textile goods, metal tools
etc.). The centre of the trade of the imperial goods shifted to the Atlantic coast, too.
The rapidly increasing demand of Western Europe for foods and raw materials (and
the noble metal flowing into Europe in large amounts from the newly discovered
America) amounted to a “price revolution”: as a result of the increase of produc-
tivity and the growing supply, the price of the commercial goods either did not rise
or only increased to a small extent, whereas the prices of the foods and raw materi-
als rapidly multiplied in the 16th century. The large-scale movements of goods and
the fundamental transformation of the price ratios of certain goods had an ex-
tremely strong dynamising effect on the European economy; large areas were in-
volved in mass (agricultural) goods production and import, creating at the same
time a market for the commercial goods produced in Western Europe. The new,
regular, large-scale and one-sided exchange of goods (which meant the import of
commercial goods and the export of raw materials for Central and Eastern Europe)
replaced belatedness with asymmetry: Central and Eastern Europe became more
and more the periphery of the West and joined the international division of labour
as agricultural production and commercial goods purchasing region. The imbal-
ance of the relations existed despite the fact that the direct effects of the “price
revolution” were favourable for the Central European economy, too; they were able
to buy more commercial goods for the same amount of agricultural products, and
the market for these goods expanded. The changing price ratios made the commer-
cial goods of Western Europe cheap, creating a strong competition for the local
industry that was unable to shift to mass production, the modern, capitalising forms
of industry organisation. The production of the industry of the Central European
towns was more and more restricted for the local market, only, industry protected
itself from the intensifying competition within the “walls” of the guilds, isolated
from the competitors; industry thus did not spur but actually blocked capitalist de-
velopment. Of course it was also due to the fact that the bourgeois class of Central
Europe was smaller and not so well-off in the Middle Ages; also, the geographical
conditions – e.g. the distance of the trans-Atlantic routes – were unfavourable for
this region. The landlords of Central Europe made use of the agricultural boom by
increasing feudal duties, expanding the lands in their own management (manors)
and increasing forced labour for the cultivation of these lands. All these phenom-
ena – the re-strengthening of the feudal dependencies, the limited possibilities of
becoming a free peasant, the decline of the cities, the stop of the industrial devel-
opment etc. – finally resulted in the diversion of the socio-economic development
of Central Europe from the western “way”.
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The processes described above are clearly visible in Hungary, too. All over the
Middle Ages, including the 15th century, the Hungarian economy exported agri-
cultural goods and noble metals, and imported a large amount of commercial goods
into Hungary. This prevented the increase in the number of the handicraftsmen and
actually blocked urban development. The Hungarian cities were maintained by
foreign trade and agricultural production, and their population stagnated already
during the 15th century. These processes even strengthened in the 16th century, ex-
acerbated by the Turkish conquer. The Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Em-
pire made heavy wars against each other already in the 15th century, in the Balkan
peninsula at that time. During these fights the Turks gradually occupied the Balkan
region and reached the southern borders of Hungary by the end of the century.
Then they already had regular robbery attacks on the Hungarian territories. In 1521
they occupied the strongest southern fortress of Hungary, Nándorfehérvár (the pre-
sent Beograd). In 1526 the Turks had a devastating victory over the Hungarian
military forces. In the following decades they conquered the middle third of Hun-
gary and occupied the capital city, Buda as well. The western edge of Hungary
remained in Hungarian hands, but the feudal classes elected a Habsburg ruler. The
eastern third of Hungary, Transylvania became a principality in feudal dependence
on the Turkish Empire. The Turks were expelled at the end of the 17th century. The
socio-economic arrangement of the Ottoman Empire showed in an even more char-
acteristic and more extreme way the “eastern” features than the Eastern part of
Europe did. The lack of private ownership of land made the Turkish society an
“Asian type” society.
The Turkish conquer resulted in a vast destruction of the factors of production,
the settlements, the cultural landscape and the population. The number of popula-
tion hardly changed between the early 15th century and the 1715–1720 censuses, it
was approximately 4 million people (according to the present, probably a bit too
optimistic estimations). This means that it was “only” natural increase that was lost
in Hungary. The destruction of the settlements in the conquered areas and in the
direct vicinity of them was 50–96%.
The above-mentioned East-Central European features were valid in the time of
the Ottoman conquer, too. The export of 70,000–80,000 livestock in the mid–16th
century grew to 120,000–150,000 by the end of the century, its share from the
Hungarian export may have reached 80–90%. The import was almost exclusively
manufactured goods (textiles, especially felt, metal tools etc.). These data demon-
strate the extreme version of the tendency described before: the raw material sup-
plying and manufactured goods importing role that Hungary had on the “periph-
ery” of Europe. This makes the development of the Hungarian towns understand-
able; they were restricted to the internal markets that were threatened by the com-
petition of the foreign goods in the 16th century.
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The royal Hungary and Transylvania became peripheries from several aspects:
the peripheries of not only Europe but also of the Habsburg and the Ottoman Em-
pire. The most striking feature of this situation was the decline of the urban devel-
opment, the preservation of the medieval conditions. We have already mentioned
that almost no manufactured goods were exported from Hungary; the industry of
the Hungarian towns did not produce any goods that were marketable abroad. The
industry of the towns was limited to and mostly produced for a poor market. The
number of handicraftsmen did not increase and their property was rather modest.
The character of the economy of the towns is well demonstrated by the fact that the
most important item of the urban revenues was the profit from the wine sold in the
pubs; even in the relatively developed Sopron it reached 25–26%. The decreasing
economic resources of the towns, the lack of royal (state) support, the strengthen-
ing of the strongholds of feudalism led to a serious decline of urbanisation. This
was reflected by the stagnation of the number of urban population (Bártfa
[Bardejov, SK] had approximately one thousand, Kassa [Košice, SK] and Eperjes
[Prešov, SK] some two and a half thousand inhabitants in the 16th century – and
these were all towns with long urban traditions), by the efforts of the urban citizens
to acquire the noblemen status and the resignation by the urban bourgeois to this
situation that was actually worse than the medieval conditions. The main effort of
the bourgeois and the guilds was to defend their former privileges.7 The towns im-
poverished, the urban (bourgeois) capital that could have been accumulated by the
agricultural boom was lost. The development of the royal Hungary and Transylva-
nia thus fell back to medieval conditions; the urban network consisted of munici-
palities with small population, living from conservative guild industry and often
from agriculture; these municipalities more and more often only had local market
centre functions. The towns and the wholesale merchants became clients of the
Western (in fact, Central) European partners. The urban system of the Carpathian
Basin made a step backwards as regards urban networking, too. Buda was not more
than a Turkish administrative and military centre, a border fortress, leaving the
Carpathian Basin without a clear urban centre of national importance; the larger
towns of the royal Hungary had some “regional” functions as the seats of civil and
military administration, maybe as fortresses (Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], Gyır,
Kassa [Košice, SK]. In the Southern Region – the Szerémség, the Temesköz, Bod-
rog and Bács counties – urban life almost completely ceased to exist. In Tran-
sylvania urban functions were divided: Gyulafehérvár [Alba Iulia, RO] was the
centre of the state life, Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] functioned as the economic
7 The guilds e.g. prevented any industrial activity or any attempt of industry organisation outside the
frameworks of the guilds (this is why the initiatives to establish manufactures were limited to the
royal domains or the landlords’ estates). The urban citizens made the national assembly legally
prohibit the settling down of Jews in the free royal towns.
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and cultural centre of the Hungarian population, while Brassó [Braşov, RO] and
Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO] were the urban settlements of the Saxon “szék”-s (seats).
The conditions of the Turkish conquer, the peripheral character, the agricultural
production and above all the increasing importance of cattle farming led to the
birth of a very peculiar settlement system, with unique features, in the Great Hun-
garian Plain. It is reasonable to talk about a special “Great Plain way” in social-,
economic- and settlement development. The essence of this is that the Great Hun-
garian Plain had been a superficially feudalised region since the foundation of the
Hungarian state, soon getting rid of feudalism. The Great Hungarian Plain was
characterised by a peasant-bourgeois development, almost always within peripheral
conditions; this was the basis of a special dual character of this large region, the
constant lagging of the economy behind social development. In the Central Euro-
pean conditions this path of development did not lead to an autochtonuos bourgeois
development, nevertheless it contained some “more western” elements of social
development until the middle or late 19th century compared to the other parts of
Hungary, characterised by the Central European development model (villeins with
the right of free movement, self-governments, people’s church, looser feudal de-
pendency). The most characteristic products and also the implementers of the
“Great Plain way” were the country towns in the Great Hungarian Plain. Their
origin and legal status were similar to the so-called oppidums in the other parts of
Hungary, but their “diversion” had already started before the Turkish occupation
(the dominance of agricultural character and consequently large outer areas be-
longing to the towns). In the time of the Turkish occupation, several of these spe-
cial features strengthened. The legal status of these towns was favourable: after the
landlords and the county administration fled, their everyday life was free from the
presence of the feudal power. On the other hand, their primary economic activity,
the extensive livestock farming was pursued in community framework – commonly
used or leased pastures, common flocks or herds, the use of the pasture regulated
by the country town –, and the landlords could only manage their country towns as
communities. This resulted in a much bigger autonomy of the Great Plain towns
than their counterparts in Transdanubia or Upper Northern Hungary enjoyed. In
order to keep their large numbers of livestock, they bought or leased the territories
of the villages destroyed by the war damages, and gained large territories to use.
These large territories belonging to the country towns (Debrecen e.g. had 170,000
“hold” of land, equal to approximately 240,000 English acres), even on the basis of
agricultural production, created large concentrations of population in those times
(Debrecen had 15,000 inhabitants in the 17th century, while the number of popula-
tion in Kecskemét, Cegléd, Nagykırös and (Hódmezı)Vásárhely was about 5,000
each), where urban functions (handicraftsmen, merchants, schools, pharmacies,
physicians and officers with legal education etc.) settled down.
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2.3 Urban development between the expelling of the Turks and the
bourgeois revolution (1684–1848)
During the long decades of the Turkish occupation, the position of Hungary com-
pared to the large European regions, i.e. the geopolitical situation of the country
hardly changed. Hungary remained to be a periphery of Europe, where “belated-
ness” turned into being different, Central European features became more and
more marked. This “relation” was mediated to Hungary more and more by the
Habsburg Empire, and this empire itself was a typically Central European state
formation. The structure of the Hungarian export changed in the 18th century: it
was still mainly agricultural products that Hungary exported, but the share of live-
stock decreased (to 30–33% by the end of the century), whereas the share of wool
export and from the turn of the 18th–19th century, the export of cereals increased.
The wine production of Hungary struggled with market problems.
The 18th century was the century of reconstruction. The most striking element
of this was the re-population of the territories depopulated or suffering a popula-
tion loss during the Turkish occupation. This re-population was partly organised –
settlers arrived at Hungary from abroad, especially the German speaking territory –
, partly a spontaneous migration started from the more densely populated fringes
and from beyond the state border, especially from the Balkans, to the scarcely
populated regions. As a result of these processes, the number of population doubled
by the end of the 18th century, the population density approached the figure of 30
persons per square kilometre, but the share of the Hungarian speaking population
dropped to 42% by the beginning of the 19th century.
The reconstruction of the settlement network meant the restoration of the condi-
tions before the Turkish occupation – more precisely, before the spatial rearrange-
ment of the European economy –, the quantitative growth took place within these
frameworks. As the economies and the settlement networks of Western Europe and
even more so of the fortunate Central European regions had basically transformed
and modernised over the centuries, the simple reconstruction of the Hungarian
settlement network was actually a return to the conditions of the 15th–16th century.
Urban development was “between the devil and the seep sea”: the unfavourable
geopolitical location, on the one hand, and the strengthening of the strongholds of
feudalism, on the other. In the last third of the 18th century, in some places modern
– capitalist? – urban development factors could be seen, for a long time “indi-
rectly”, connected to trade.8
8 Sándor Gyimesi, a Hungarian urban historian wrote: “… the consequences of the birth of capital-
ism reached the Central-Eastern European regions by trade for the first time, before the capitalist
transformation of the industry and in general the production of these areas made a significant pro-
gress. The urban network shaping effect of capitalism this way preceded the unfurling of capitalist
production to some extent…” (Gyimesi, 1975).
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The “urban developing” trade still meant for Hungary the purchase, transport,
collection and export of agricultural products, but livestock were more and more
replaced by the more transport-intensive cereals and wool. The profit of cereals
production and trade first reached the towns of the Little Hungarian Plain, close to
the markets – Tata, Magyaróvár, Moson, Keszthely and Pápa –, later the towns
along the Danubian waterway: Komárom [Komarno, SK], Gyır, Vác, Szentendre
and Esztergom (Párkány [Štúrovo, SK]. The demand for the cereals produced in the
Great Hungarian Plain increased in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, induced by
the boom of the wars of Napoleon. This is the time when Dunaföldvár, Paks, Baja,
Apatin [Apatin, SCG] and Újvidék [Novi Sad, SCG] became cereals trading towns;
the Ferenc [Francis] Canal connecting the Danube with the Tisza River, opened in
1802, promoted the traffic of Törökbecse [Novi Bečej, SCG], Szeged, Zombor
[Sombor, SCR], Zenta [Senta, SCR] and Arad [Arad, RO]. With the canalisation of
the Béga River, Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] gained a navigable waterway. Until the
construction of the railway system, the towns on the banks of the Danube River
and its navigable tributaries were favoured by cereals trade.
From the late 18th century, administrative and cultural functions started to play
an increasingly important role in urban development. The seats of the administra-
tive units of Hungary with considerable autonomy, the so-called noblemen’s coun-
ties9 gained more and more immobile institutions (county hall home to the county
administration, county archives, savings bank, prison etc.), and the number of sec-
ondary schools multiplied. At the same time, Hungary had no single administrative
and cultural centre; some government offices and the royal court operated in Vi-
enna; the Hungarian Parliament held its sessions in Pozsony [Bratislava, SK]; the
only university of Hungary operated in a countryside small town, Nagyszombat
[Trnava, SK] until 1776, while the clerical centre in another small town, Eszter-
gom. Only in the late 18th century were the most important state administrative
functions moved to Pest or Buda, the later united towns that rose to a capital city
status. In the early 19th century, the three cities of Pest, Buda and Óbuda – admin-
istratively separate from each other – were the clear economic, intellectual and
administrative centre of Hungary (the university already worked here, as did the
supreme court, the council of the governor-general, carrying out a part of the gov-
ernmental tasks, later the national museum, theatre, library, academy of sciences
etc. also operated here). The population of the three cities exceeded 100,000
around 1830. The studies on the urban network of Hungary in the early 19th century
talk about the differentiation of the urban system all over the country. Only Pest-
9 Hungary’s territory – including Transylvania and Croatia – was divided into 63 noblemen’s coun-
ties before 1848. In addition, several so-called privileged territories existed, together the so-called
Frontier Guard Zone along the southern borders of Hungary, with a territory equal to several coun-
ties, administered directly from Vienna. The free royal towns were exempt from the administration
of the counties, too.
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Buda had a real spatial organising influence, and the catchment area of the bigger
fairs had a considerable “radius”, but these events only elevated the respective city
from their “everyday” insignificance for a few days, only. Nevertheless the trade of
crops built out stable spatial relations (procurement districts, “client towns”, sales-
men, competitors etc.).
In the first third of the 19th century, the town with the biggest number of popu-
lation was Debrecen, although this town was considered by many – unjustly, actu-
ally – as a village that had grown big; Buda had 30,000 and Pest 22,000 inhabitants
(Table 1).
Table 1
Hungarian towns with the biggest population in 1825
Name of town
Number of population
1. Debrecen*
45,375
2. Pozsony [Bratislava, SK]
37,180
3. Szabadka* [Subotica, SCG]
34,924
4. Kecskemét*
34,080
5. Buda
30,001
6. Hódmezıvásárhely*
26,166
7. Miskolc
22,910
8. Pest
22,198
9. Újvidék* [Novi Sad, SCG]
20,231
10. Székesfehérvár
20,069
11. Eger
17,782
12. Zombor* [Sombor, SCG]
17,534
13. Makó*
17,148
14. Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK]
17,028
15. Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO]
16,155
16. Jászberény*
15,529
*Country towns in the Great Hungarian Plain.
Source: Magyarország története [History of Hungary] 1790–1848.
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3 Conditions of urban development in the age of capitalism
(until 1914)
3.1 Political, international and general economic conditions of urban
development in the age of the Dual Monarchy
The so-called April Laws of the bourgeois revolution in 1848 eliminated the legal
and economic frameworks of the feudal system in Hungary. The acts aiming at
bourgeois transformation remained in force after the fall of the war of
independence in 1849, in the consequent period of absolutism (1849–1867).
The fundamental transformation of the social and political system created brand
new conditions for settlement development. The most important direct and indirect
effects of the changing conditions included the following:
– The legal positions of the settlements inherited from the feudal era ceased to
exist, the subordination to the landlord was gone, and the chance for the
creation of municipal autonomy was there. (However, the establishment of
the civil public administration and of the adequate municipal statuses only
took place in the 1870s, after the Compromise.)
– The elimination of the feudal restrictions of the economy (e.g. the feudal
ownership systems, the lack of municipal autonomy, industrial development
limited by the guilds [the restriction of “industrial liberty”], the lack of the
legal conditions of the capitalist economy etc.) created the conditions of free
competition for the development of the economy, including the development
of its regional structure. As a consequence of this, “free competition” be-
came a dominant factor in settlement development, as well.
– The capitalising economy created new settlement development factors,
including manufacturing industry, the institutions of civil public administra-
tion, railway junctions etc.
– The liberation of the villeins allowed freer migration.
– Simultaneously with the changing conditions coming from the social
transformation, the achievement of the industrial and technological “revolu-
tion” had their effect, too, e.g. the modernisation of transportation (railway,
steamships, suburban and urban public transport), new possibilities of tele-
communication (telegraph, in the second half of this period telephone),
manufacturing industry that could be concentrated on steam engines (and
later electricity) etc.
The “hereditary provinces” of the Austro–Hungarian Dual Monarchy created by
the Compromise in 1867, and Hungary were legally only bound by the person of
the king. The re-gaining of state sovereignty brought about new settlement
development factors, e.g. the need to create a centre for political life, the urban
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developing effects of the institutional system of an independent state (this effect
was palpable in Budapest predominantly, too), the chance to create an independent
economic policy etc.
The imperial economic policy considered the interests of Vienna before 1867.
The customs regulation enacted in 1851 eliminated customs borders within the
Empire; the single customs area had some favourable effects on the Hungarian
economy – e.g. secured the markets of the Monarchy for the Hungarian agricultural
export, instead of the overseas agricultural products –, but the Hungarian industry
(not protected by customs) had to face the hardly beatable competition of the
manufacturing industry of Austria and Bohemia (which were more developed,
anyway).10
After the Compromise, Hungary had the possibility to formulate an independent
economic policy. The independent Hungarian state – in spite of pursuing a liberal
politics all the time in the last third of the 19th century – took an active and com-
plex role in building out the capitalist economy. In the beginning the state sup-
ported infrastructure developments, with large investment needs and slow turnover,
by interest rate guarantees and credits. The most important activities of the Hun-
garian state included
– support of the promotion of the capital city to become a modern metropolis.
This also met the political objectives of the Hungarian politics that wished to
develop Budapest as the co-centre of the Monarchy, increasing the weight of
Hungary within the Empire;
– the support of the railway constructions by providing interest rate guarantees,
buying out of railway companies gone bankrupt, and the foundation and
development of a state-owned railway company. The support of the railway
was part of the economic development policy and the implementation of the
wider political and economic policy objectives (increasing the weight of
Budapest again, acquisition of an “own” sea port by creating a connection to
Fiume – the present Rijeka – and developing the port of Fiume etc.);
– the provision of credit for flood protection works in order to support one of
the largest Hungarian enterprises of the second half of the 19th century, the
anti-flood and river regulation works;
– contribution to the establishment of the Hungarian credit system.
10 According to the Hungarian economic history, “… the economic unification implemented within
the absolutist conditions resulted in the fact that the Trans-Lajta River areas (i.e. the Austrian,
Czech and Moravian provinces – remark by the authors), as more developed capitalist partners
could not only support and make profit from the introduction of the capitalist production of the less
developed ‘Hungarian provinces’, but actually were also able to monopolise the capitalist devel-
opment of Hungary.”
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At the end of the 1870s – as an effect of the “great economic depression”
starting in 1873 – in many European countries economic liberalism was heavily
criticised and protectionist actions by the states were urged, including direct sup-
port for the industry and protective tariffs. Nevertheless the official Hungarian
economic policy remained liberal all the time, although it directly supported indus-
trial developments after 1881 by tax allowances, and after 1880 the agricultural
sector was entitled for support, too (e.g. credits for planting vineyards after the
phyloxera epidemic, establishment of feature farms and experimental stations etc.).
At the turn of the century even the agriculture of the mountainous regions strug-
gling with agricultural crisis (Northeast Hungary, Székely Land etc.) was sup-
ported.
The social judgement of modern urbanisation was rather unambiguous in Hun-
gary in the age of the Dualism.11 The main target of the anti-urban journalism was
Budapest.12 Even more harmful than the “mere” antipathy for the Hungarian urban
development was the fact that the anti-urban attitude became part of the official
ideology, and although it could not really prevent Budapest from developing and
growing – to the “world outside” Budapest remained a representative of the whole
country –, it led to the subordination of the interests of industrial development and
urban development to the interests of agriculture.
The international conditions for the modernisation and growth of the Hungar-
ian economy and for the birth of its capitalist form were favourable after 1848.
Simultaneously to the establishment of the social and legal conditions for the shift
to the capitalist economy, a world-wide boom started around 1850. The growth of
production and the volume of trade, spurred by the industrial revolution, exceeded
the growth of the population. In the developed countries of the world, significant
capital surpluses had been accumulated by the misd–19th century, and the capital
export of these countries rapidly increased. Hungary – where the bottleneck of
economic development had been the lack of capital already in the feudal times –
received some 2 billion Hungarian Forints of this capital in 1867–1890. In the
years following the Compromise, some 60% of all investments, in the three dec-
11 The most significant Hungarian poet and publicist of the early 20th century, Endre Ady wrote: “In
this country towns have never been cherished. Never has there been such malevolence, on the other
hand, against them…”
12 The following lines were published in a scientific (?) work (in between the two world wars,
though): “Everything that was nice and expensive was spent on our favourite one [i.e. Budapest –
the authors], and our ambitions did not go beyond the outfit, the ornaments, as if we had been vain
parvenus. Nobody thought of what the role of the city, the capital city was for the sake of the whole
nation… an autotelic urbanisation and city mania possessed the nation, and the Hungarians, as if
mesmerised, gave all their treasures to Budapest as a sacrifice on the altar of the adored city… The
nation did not mind if Budapest was the natural blossoming of the Hungarian nation or a foreign
Moloch.” (Mártonffy, K. 1938).
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ades after the Compromise approximately half of them, after the run of the century
a quarter of them came from capital import.
A part of the economic boom was the boom of agriculture: industrial develop-
ment that peaked in England and unfurled in Western Europe further increased the
need for food and agricultural raw materials. This increased the competitiveness
and supported the modernisation of the regions with good agricultural endowments
– above all the Little Hungarian Plain and the Great Hungarian Plain.
The years following the Compromise were the peak of the boom of the world
economy, and in the favourable political climate a very intensive investment fever
took place in Hungary. From 1867 to 1973, 4 thousand kilometres (!) of railway
lines were installed, more than five hundred new credit institutes and 170 industrial
joint stock companies were founded; approximately 900 million Forints were in-
vested in the Hungarian economy. In these years, 10% of the national income was
spent on investments (the biggest part on railway constructions). This extremely
dynamic “Gründerzeit” was shorter than a decade in Hungary; in 1873 an eco-
nomic crisis, so serious as never experienced in the world before, broke out and a
depression lasting for a decade and a half started in Hungary too. The effects of this
depression were alleviated by the fact that the demand for agricultural products
remained the same in the protected market of the Monarchy. From the 1880s an-
other boom started; the last decade of the 19th century was the best decade of the
economy in the Dualist era.
3.2 The economic structure of Hungary: the modernisation
of agriculture, industry and transport
The development of the agricultural boom also had a dominant influence on the
development of the settlement network, at least until 1900, the turn of the century.
The economic (and settlement) development in the Dualist era took place in an
agricultural country all the time, the most important source of internal capital ac-
cumulation was still agriculture and the trade of agricultural products. The focal
point of the economic development in Hungary in the second half of the 19th cen-
tury – despite the spectacular development of mining or industry – was the capital-
ist transformation and the technical, agro-technical modernisation of agriculture:
the buyout, trade and transport of agricultural products (the main motivation of
railway construction was the agro-business), their processing (mill-, spirits and
sugar industry etc.) and export, the construction of credit and insurance institutes
serving agricultural production etc. These factors were also the most important
resources of urban development.
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The share of agricultural earners exceeded 75% in 1870 and was still above
60% before World War I (Table 2). As regards the regional disparities of the em-
ployment structure, the differences between urban and rural settlements were typi-
cal, and disparities among the regions of Hungary less significant; only the above
80% agricultural employment in continuous areas in Croatia, Transylvania and
Northeast Hungary are worth mentioning, together with the birth of a district in the
centre of Upper Northern Hungary: Zólyom, Liptó, Gömör and Kishont, Borsod
counties, i.e. the Szepesség, where the so-called industrial population (engaged in
mining, industry, trade and transportation) reached a 25–50% share in employment
in contiguous areas, induced by the good endowments of mining and heavy indus-
try and the small-scale and itinerant industry in the areas with poor conditions for
agriculture. A smaller “industrial and trading” district appeared by the turn of the
century around Budapest, in the Dorog and Tatabánya mining region, the area
between Pozsony [Bratislava, SK]–Kıszeg–Sopron and the state border and also in
the mining and metallurgy districts of Krassó-Szörény and Hunyad counties (see
Figure 1–2). The dominant part of Hungary was nevertheless still an undisturbed
agricultural region at the turn of the century.
Table 2
Employment structure in Hungary, 1870–1910
Employment category
1870
1890
1910
number
%
number
%
number
%
of earners
of earners
of earners
(thousand
(thousand
(thousand
persons)
Agriculture
5,002
75.9
4,499
67.4
4,656
60.1
Mining and industry
657
10.0
862
12.9
1,418
18.3
Trade and transport
126
1.9
242
3.6
467
6.0
Day labourers
177
2.7
289
4.3
203
2.6
Other earners
633
9.5
780
11.8
1,006
13.0
Total
6,595
100.0
6,672
100.0
7,751
100.0
Source: Magyarország története [History of Hungary] 1848–1890; 1890–1918.
The relationship of agriculture and the settlement system was also influenced by
the fact that after the liberation of the villeins, in the 1860s the peasants’ farms only
made 45–46% of the total of cultivated lands, and the majority of the agricultural
earners had a little holding, were day labourers or farm servants. The unfavourable
breakdown of the agricultural lands resulted in the accumulation of “poverty” in
the villages – because manufacturing industry could not absorb those who did not
find employment in agriculture –, the limited purchasing power of the “country
24
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
25
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Figure 2
Industrial employees in settlements with more than 500 employees, 1910
Keys: Industrial employees per 1000 inhabitants: 1– less than 50; 2 – 50–99. 3 – 100–199; 4 – 200–349; 5 – 350 and more.
Source: designed by Beluszky, P.
26
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
side”, the limited use of urban goods, the slow bourgeois development of the
peasants in many regions of Hungary, the slow modernisation of agricultural
production, and then the large-scale emigration from the agricultural regions with
less favourable endowments.
On the other hand, the agricultural boom created a favourable situation not only
for the medium sized and large and estates but also to peasants’ farms in the Little
Hungarian Plain, the Transdanubian areas on the fringes of the Little Hungarian
Plain, in the Mezıföld, South Baranya, the Bácska, the Bánát regions, in several
meso-regions of the Great Hungarian Plain and around Budapest. Nevertheless the
general situation of agriculture became worse and worse by the end of the century,
due to the competition of the overseas goods; although the markets of the Monar-
chy were kept in order to protect the common tariff area, the prices of the agricul-
tural products decreased.
In the urbanisation of the Dualist era in Hungary, industry played a special, in-
termediate role. While formerly handicrafts had showed a strong concentration of
production – apart from a few activities closely related to agriculture – and directly
joined trading activities (selling goods on the markets), thus fulfilled mostly urban
functions, by the end of the century mass production was more and more taken
over by manufacturing industry, whose system of relations did not consider the
frameworks of the market districts. Thus the connection between industry and ur-
banisation, and even more so between industrialisation and urban hierarchy, be-
came looser. On the other hand, manufacturing industry was able to create popula-
tion concentrations on the basis of which urbanisation and modernisation could
enter a new phase. The general conditions for the development of manufacturing
industry were created by the 1880s (state support for industry, presence of capital
willing to invest in manufacturing industry etc.). Industrialisation accelerated in
Hungary around the turn of the 19th and 20th century: while the number of industrial
earners increased by 31.2% from 1870 to 1890, the growth was already 64.5%
from 1890 to 1910. The different motivations and conditions for the choice of lo-
cation of the industry had different effects on the settlement (urban) development.
When industry located in already existing towns, the local capital participated in
business foundation and the new plant could rely on local resources, too (trained
labour force, consumer market, good transport location etc.) –, industrialisation and
urbanisation could be closely related (population growth, increase of capital, infra-
structure development etc). However, the location of industry in this form was
significant only in a few towns of Hungary at the turn of the century. Only the
manufacturing industry of Budapest was significant at an international level (the
companies employing more than 20 people had a total of 68 and a half thousand
employees in 1900), the capital city was followed in the rank of manufacturing
industry by Pozsony [Bratislava, SK] with its 5,800 employees, whereas the larger
27
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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plants of Fiume [Rijeka, HR], Temesvár [Timişoara, RO], Pécs and Arad [Arad,
RO] employed some 3,000–4,000 workers each.
At the same time, as we have already mentioned, coal and iron ore mining and
the “concomitant” metallurgy and metal industry reached a considerable concen-
tration in several regions of Hungary (the number of employees in manufacturing
industry was 6,418 in Salgótarján, 4,940 in Diósgyır, 2,155 in Ózd, 4,000 in
Stájerlakanina [Anina, RO] and 3,900 in Resicabánya [ReşiŃa, RO]. The population
concentrations “deposited” around mining and industry reached population
numbers comparable to those of the towns (in 1910, 13,746 people lived in Sal-
gótarján, 17,834 in Resicabánya [ReşiŃa, RO], 17,202 in Diósgyır, 12,193 is
Petrozsény [Petroşeni, RO], and over 10,000 in the territory of the later Ta-
tabánya). The traditional mining towns, on the other hand, gradually lost their im-
portance, due to the decline of noble metal extraction in the first place.
The interrelation of railway and prosperity, railway and modernisation, railway
and urban development was evident in the time of the Dualism.
Railway – including its construction, maintenance and the services it offered –
was the glue of the economy in Hungary: the network of the railway lines created
the single national market, it promoted investments, connected vast areas into agri-
cultural goods production, allowed a cheaper and more profitable export; also, it
had huge demands for iron and steel production and mechanical engineering. The
large state mining sites and metallurgy centres (Diósgyır, Krassó–Szörény indus-
trial zone) mostly produced for the railway companies. In the time of the Dualism,
tens of thousands worked at the railway constructions; railway spread a work cul-
ture, technical civilisation and was even a reference of exact time. It tore apart the
boundaries of the closed regions and integrated the local societies into bigger units.
In Hungary the first railway line was opened in 1846 (between Pest and Vác).
Until 1848, only 178 kilometres of railway was built in the current territory of
Hungary, but only half a century later the total length of the Hungarian railway
network almost reached 22,000 kilometres. In the time between the war of inde-
pendence and the breakout of World War I, the most dynamically developing sec-
tor was infrastructure in Hungary, within then mainly rail constructions. There
were times when the annual growth of the railway network exceeded five hundred
kilometres. Railway constructions “absorbed” the biggest part of the investments:
between the Compromise and 1900, railway constructions absorbed eleven times
more investments than manufacturing industry (company) investments and six
times more than the capital spent on the constructions in Budapest.
Until the Compromise Hungary could not have independent railway policy con-
cepts. The Austrian political and the Austrian–Hungarian economic interests urged
the connection of Vienna and Pestbuda, creating this way a connection of the Great
Hungarian Plain and the Austrian markets. The railway connection between Vienna
and Pest was constructed as soon as in 1850, and in the 1850s the railway reached
28
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
the most important towns of the Great Hungarian Plain: Szeged in 1854, Temesvár
[Timişoara, RO] and Debrecen in 1857, Arad [Arad, RO] and Nagyvárad [Oradea,
RO] in 1858 and Miskolc (via Debrecen and Nyíregyháza in 1859). In 1860 the
direct link between the Great Hungarian Plain and the sea was created by the con-
struction of the Buda–Székesfehérvár–Nagykanizsa–Trieste line. Until the Com-
promise, the Miskolc line was extended to Kassa [Košice, SK] and the Wiener
Neustadt–Sopron–Szombathely–Nagykanizsa railway track was constructed too.
No railway connection was built to Transylvania, and Croatia–Slavonia was only
accessible via Austria. Also, the railway only crossed the state borders to Austria.
No direct link was established to Fiume [Rijeka, HR] (Figure 3–4).
The independent Hungarian railway policy after the Compromise wanted to
make Budapest the centre of the Hungarian railway network; it urged the estab-
lishment of the line to Fiume [Rijeka, HR], the Balkans and Galicia. By 1890, the
majority of the principal railway lines were built, then the construction of the side-
lines was given a priority; railway became the most important tool of the mobility
of the population.
It is absolutely clear that the constructed railway network promoted urban de-
velopment in the Dualism, the position reached in the railway network affected the
development chances of the respective towns and cities. However, this relationship
is not automatic by far. The “railway” mostly reinforced the already existing ten-
dencies of the development of the settlement network. Not only “railway” built
towns (this was not frequent) but the towns also built railway for themselves; usu-
ally a railway that met the criteria coming from their functions. It is evident that the
urbanisation of e.g. Szombathely, Nyíregyháza, Kaposvár, Szolnok, Békéscsaba,
Temesvár [Timişoara, RO], Arad [Arad, RO], Zsolna [Žilina, SK], Érsekújvár
[Nové Zámky, SK] and Zólyom [Zvolen, SK] or among the smaller towns, of Barcs,
Celldömölk, Dombóvár, Szerencs, Püspökladány, Mátészalka, Hatvan and Ruttka
[Vrútky, SK] was effectively supported by the railway. On the other hand, a factor
contributing to the stagnation and the decline of the general and economic positions
of Veszprém, Esztergom, Kıszeg, Kalocsa, Eger, Gyöngyös, Szekszárd etc. in the
capitalist era was their disadvantageous transport location, the fact that they were
situated along side-lines with less traffic. The euphoria induced by the construction
of the railway lines was often replaced by complaints about the mass influx of
goods produced in Budapest or abroad, creating a strong competition for the local
handicrafts or smaller manufacturing plants. To sum it up, the effect of the railway
on the respective settlements can only be defined if we examine the economic
weights and character of the respective settlements together with their social fabric,
interest representation capacities and other functions, focusing on the interrelations
of all these factors.
29
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Figure 3
Railway network in Hungary, 1867
Keys: 1 – Border of the country; 2 – Navigable river or canal; 3 – Railway line.
Source: Kovács, E. (chief ed.) 1987.
3.3 The role of public administration in urban development
in the age of the Dual Monarchy
Following the establishment of the civil public administration, in the 1870s the
settlement (urban) development role of public administration increased. The Com-
promise eliminated the legal separation of Transylvania; Croatia–Slavonia with its
43,000 km2 territory remained the country of the “Hungarian Crown” with some
limited autonomy, with Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] as its seat. The civil public admini-
stration brought an end to the administrative complexity of the feudal times: meso-
level public administration was carried out by the counties. On the basis of single
principles, the division of the counties into districts became general; the district
seats became important centres of the operation of state administration (public ad-
ministration, financial administration, jurisdiction etc.). Above the county level no
higher order administrative units, districts or regions were organised, despite the
fact that a large number of state administrative and jurisdiction institutions and
many economic organisations operated within such frameworks (e.g. royal courts
of appeal, public prosecutors’ offices, gendarme districts, public education direc-
torates, post office directorates, public notary chambers etc.).
30
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Figure 4
Railway network in Hungary according to the owners, 1914
Keys: 1 – Hungarian National Railway Company [MÁV] ; 2- Local Railway Line [HÉV] managed by MÁV; 3 – Private
railway line.
Source: Kovács, L.
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At the time of the Compromise, 888 settlements had town rank, of which 81
were free royal towns, 88 corporate towns and over 700 country towns; the major-
ity of them did not have urban functions. Following the Compromise, two legal
categories of the towns were created: the authorities of the towns with municipal
rights were similar to those of the counties (these towns were not parts of the sur-
rounding counties), and the autonomy of the corporate towns approached that of
the municipal towns, too. The number of settlements with town rank significantly
decreased, 131 towns kept their rank, of which only 25 became municipal towns.
Only one town, Miskolc achieved municipal rank until World War I, but the num-
ber of corporate towns rapidly grew around the turn of the century (Rózsahegy
[Ružomberok, SK], Szekszárd, Zsolna [Žilina, SK], Fogaras [Făgăraş, RO] and
Újpest). This way the set of settlements with town rank and those with urban func-
tions approached each other, nevertheless considerable anomalies continued to
exist (e.g. Balassagyarmat, Békéscsaba, Keszthely, Mohács, Kalocsa etc., with a
large population at that time and with significant urban functions – these settle-
ments remained villages in legal sense, whereas there were several corporate towns
that had negligible urban functions).
The choice of the seats of civil public administration promoted urban develop-
ment both in a direct and indirect way:
– The acquisition of the administrative seat rank entailed the location of a num-
ber of institutions with “urban” functions – vice governors and district ad-
ministrators’ offices, tax offices, courts, land registry offices, finance guards,
gendarmerie and police, state architects’ offices, sanitary offices, public edu-
cation directorates and so forth –, which resulted in the settling down and
emerging of a civil servant layer. This layer had a considerable effect on their
place of residence by their consumption, needs, interest representation ca-
pacities and constructions.
– The settling down of the offices promoted the appearance of a large number
of other institutions with central functions (schools, daily press, hospital,
lawyers etc.).
– The attraction of the public offices and the other institutions in their halo cre-
ated a hinterland for the commercial, financial and service functions of the
administrative seats.
The development of the administrative seats of regions with “urban deficiency”
was especially striking (Kaposvár, Szombathely, Nyíregyháza, Szolnok, Márama-
rossziget [Sighetu MarmaŃiei, RO], Beregszász [Berehove, UA], Fogaras [Făgăraş,
RO] etc.). The seats of public administration created specific centres in the regions
with no towns: towns at a high level of hierarchy compared to their population and
economic weight (with hardly any “auxiliary” urban marks), such as e.g. Alsókubin
[Dolný Kubín, SK], Liptószentmiklós [Liptovský Mikuláš, SK], Turócszentmárton
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[Martin, SK], Aranyosmarót [Zlatné Moravce, SK], Csíkszereda [Miercurea-Ciuc,
RO], Ipolyság [Šahy, SK] and Nagyszılıs [Vinohradiv, U]. Especially in the lowest
terrain of urbanisation, administrative seat functions were very important for the
development of the settlements. Without district seat rank it was extremely difficult
for the small local market centres to reach the threshold of the urban quality.
In addition to the institutions of public administration, in the modernisation of
the Dualist era a number of economic, cultural and service institutions with urban
functions were born. These institutions supported urbanisation, increased the
weight and variety of urban functions, promoted the hierarchic breakdown, and
they also shaped the hinterlands of the towns. In these towns – even in the less
important district seats –, banks, bank outlets, savings banks and insurance compa-
nies settled down – their headquarters built in the bigger towns even affected city-
scape and made their presence unmistakeable. The temporary markets were more
and more often replaced by constant shops, in the bigger towns very much special-
ised shops, also having a spectacular influence on the cityscape. Following the
birth of the national market, the outlets, retailers and agents of the faraway facto-
ries and wholesale traders settled down in the towns. The trade of agricultural
products – which function was the basis of the economic prosperity of a number of
towns from the late 18th century – moved to Budapest from several towns, due to
increased role of the stock exchange, the huge economic weight of the capital city
and the construction of the railway network. Some regional centres too were home
to the trade of agricultural products, the rest of the towns only had agents from
Budapest or the regional centres, or the local merchants of agricultural products
became clients of the big cities. The cultural and educational role of the towns ex-
panded too: in the case of the small towns, education appeared as an “urban func-
tion” by the creation and spread of the system of higher elementary schools13; in
bigger towns, daily press became important, together with the publishing of books.
Museums and libraries appeared also in the countryside towns; the hospitals
changed from “poorhouses” to health centres. Although handicrafts lost their im-
portance – making the lives of several towns difficult –, small-scale industry be-
came a service sector in the bigger towns, offering modern “urban” services.
13 In order to demonstrate the “urban hierarchy” of the medieval Hungary, Erik Fügedi used the
spread of the cloisters of the mendicant friars; András Kubinyi found a more sensitive and well
quantifiable index in the statistics of the place of residence of Hungarian students enrolled in the
universities of Vienna and Cracow (for the 1440–1512 period). When exploring the urban hierarchy
of the 18th–19th century, Sándor Gyimesi and Vera Bácskai – Lajos Nagy relied on statistical data
concerning the presence of the network of urban institutions, the economic functions of the
settlements and the size of their hinterlands – “market zones” –, in addition to the legal status of the
settlements.
33
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3.4 The demographic conditions of urbanisation
In Hungary the “demographic transition” (from the traditional demographic be-
haviour to the “modern” demographic behaviour) was a short period, and the “gap”
between the number of births and deaths did not open very wide; the “demo-
graphic boom” remained moderate in Hungary. In Hungary in the narrower sense,
the population growth between 1850 and 1910 was 58%, i.e. 6.7 million people
(the simple annual arithmetical average of the growth was just 1%). In the four
decades of the Dualism (1870–1910), the actual growth was 4.6 million people,
making a 33.7% increase. A factor contributing to the volume of this growth was
emigration at an increasing pace by the end of the century. According to estima-
tions, a total of 1.8–2 million people emigrated from the countries of the Hungarian
Crown overseas.
Nevertheless the number of population in the countries of the Hungarian Crown
was 21 million just before World War I; in Hungary the number of population ex-
ceeded 18 million (Table 3). The population density grew to just 60 persons per
square kilometre. Budapest and its surroundings was the only “region” in Hungary
with a concentration of population.
The different demographic behaviour of the towns and villages resulted in a
considerable migration, which further increased the number and the share of the
urban population. The “village” easily produced this population surplus and al-
lowed urbanisation (“supply-driven” labour force and population market). The
population gain of the settlements with over 5 thousand inhabitants was 1.7 million
people in 1880–1910. The number of urban population – in settlements with urban
rank! – reached 3.7 million people and their proportion exceeded 20% (Table 4).
Table 3
Change of the number of population in Hungary, 1870–1910
Territory
Number of population (thousand people)
1850
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
Countries of the Hungarian Crown
–
15,509
15,642
17,464
19,255
20,886
Hungary*
11,554**
13,664
13,834
15,262
16,838
18,265
In the present territory of Hungary
–
5,011
5,329
6,009
6,854
7,612
Actual increase*
–
–
170
1,428
1,576
1,426
Natural increase
–
–
481
1,636
1,728
1,954
* Without Croatia and Slavonia.
** Civil population.
Source: Hungarian Statistical Yearbook, 1937 – Budapest, 1938.
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Table 4
Change of the number and share of urban population in Hungary, 1857–1910*
Place of
Population
residence
number, share number, share number, share number, share number, share
1000
in per
1000
in per
1000
in per
1000
in per
1000
in per
people
cent
people
cent
people
cent
people
cent
people
cent
1857
1870
1890
1900
1910
Budapest**
187
1.5
271
2.0
492
3.2
716
4.3
880
4.8
Towns
1,439
11.9
1,736
12.8
2,083
13.7
2,307
13.8
2,846
15.6
Villages
10,489
86.6 11,572
85.2 12,588
83.1 13,698
81.9 14,538
79.6
Total
12,124 100.0 13,579 100.0 15,163 100.0 16,721 100.0 18,264 100.0
* Without Croatia and Slavonia.
** Pest, Buda and Óbuda together before 1873.
Source: Beluszky, P. 1990. p. 16.
In Hungary – where the share of the population of Hungarian mother tongue
was only 48.1% in 1910, including Croatia and Slavonia –, the development, com-
position and operation of the urban functions, after all the position of the settle-
ments in the hierarchy was affected by the ethnic (language) composition of the ur-
ban population, and the linguistic “relation” of the towns and their surroundings.
An evident aspect of these relations is the multiplication of certain urban institu-
tions in the towns with mixed ethnic population, on the basis of the mother tongue
(and the religious denominations usually closely related to the ethnic composition).
In Brassó [Braşov, RO] in 1910 e.g. 43.4% of the population declared themselves
Hungarian, the share of German and Romanian speaking population was 28.7%
and 26.4%, respectively; 28.6% of the population belonged to the Greek Catholic
25.5% to the Evangelic, 24.7 to the Roman Catholic and 12.9% to the Protestant
denomination. The city was home to a total of ten (!) secondary education institu-
tions, depending on religion, nationality and the language used in education – a
separate grammar school was operated by the Roman Catholics, the Evangelists
and the Greek Catholics (the latter used Romanian language), also, the state main-
tained a secondary school for modern sciences. Not only other educational and
cultural institutions – libraries, societies, press etc. – were divided by mother
tongue and religion (which is natural, after all), but a lot of other urban institutions,
too; the individual ethnic groups built out their “own” finance institutions in the
bigger towns, preferred the merchants, handicraftsmen, lawyers and physicians etc.
speaking the same language. The linguistic relations of the towns were further
varied and complicated by the ethnic relation of the urban population and the
35
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“countryside”. In the Carpathian Basin, the towns were “more Hungarian” than
the “country” as a whole in the beginning of the 20th century; 73.7% of the popula-
tion in the municipal towns and 70.6% of the population in the corporate towns
(72.5% in the total of the towns) said they were Hungarians by mother tongue, the
national average of the narrower state territory was 54.5%, while in the “country-
side” just over two-fifths of the population was Hungarian (42.4%). This way a
number of towns with Hungarian majority were surrounded by a “non-Hungarian”
countryside. This fact evidently influenced the urban-rural relations; the towns and
their rural surroundings were not only separated by social barriers – a large part of
the urban goods and services were “unimportant” for the contemporary peasant
layer –, but also linguistic and ethnic barriers. In regions with mixed ethnic popu-
lation, the rural inhabitants selected the institutions that they used on ethnic and
language grounds, too; they used the shops and workshops of their “ethnic fel-
lows”, so the hinterlands were partly shaped by linguistic borders. This was how
e.g. Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK] expanded its hinterland based on its position in
the settlement network and became one of the cultural and economic centres of the
Slovaks living in Hungary, similarly to Liptószentmiklós [Liptovský Mikuláš, SK]
or Rózsahegy [Ružomberok, SK]. Balázsfalva [Blaj, RO] became the centre of the
Transylvanian Romanian culture, Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO] was the administrative,
cultural and intellectual centre for the Transylvanian Saxons, and the “Saxon”
towns of Transylvania became the economic and cultural centres of the Romanian
ethnic group, as well (Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO], Brassó [Braşov, RO], Segesvár
[Sighişoara, RO] etc.).
3.5 Regional frameworks of urban development
It is evident that there is a strong correlation between urbanisation, the birth of the
“civil town” and the scale of modernisation taking place in their surrounding
regions. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century there were
significant differences in the development level and the progress of modernisation
of the different regions and territories in Hungary. The index most frequently used
for the “level” of modernisation, the literacy rate within the population aged older
than 6 years, reached 66.7% in Hungary by 1910 (Table 5). However, this figure
was only 25.4% in the Croatian Lika-Krbava county, 26.8% in Máramaros county,
whereas the figures for Moson county and Sopron county along the Hungarian–
Austrian border were 88.9% and 88.7%, respectively (Tables 6– 7).
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Table 5
Literacy rate within the population aged older than 6 years, 1880–1910
Region
Literacy rate, in per cent
1880
1890
1900
1910
Hungarian Empire*
41.8
50.6
59.5
66.7
Hungary
43.5
53.2
61.8
68.7
Counties
39.2
48.6
56.8
64.9
Municipal towns
64.2
72.1
79.6
85.4
*Hungary and Croatia–Slavonia.
Table 6
Counties with high literacy rate, 1880–1910
County
Literacy rate, in per cent
1880
1890
1900
1910
Moson
76.4
83.1
85.9
88.9
Sopron*
71.0
80.8
85.9
88.7
Gyır**
64.9
75.5
81.1
85.4
Veszprém
63.5
72.5
79.5
83.9
Esztergom
58.2
71.2
77.4
83.9
Vas
61.4
72.2
77.2
83.6
* Together with Sopron municipal town.
** Together with Gyır municipal town.
Table 7
Counties with high illiteracy rate, 1880–1910
County
Literacy rate, in per cent
1880
1890
1900
1910
Lika-Krbava
11.8
13.8
21.3
25.4
Máramaros
12.3
17.6
21.8
26.8
Szolnok-Doboka
10.7
15.7
21.6
28.6
Hunyad
15.0
15.8
24.9
33.9
Torda-Aranyos
15.0
21.6
27.1
37.3
Modrus-Fiume
18.0
24.5
34.8
43.2
Source: Hungarian Statistical Yearbooks 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910.
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Similarly great territorial differences can be seen in the distribution of the
“doctor-seen dead”. The temporary Hungarian statistical service published the
proportion of those within all dead who had had a medical treatment before their
death. Professional medical science as an element (index) of modernisation was
also in a phase of “boom”, and showed great territorial disparities: just half
(50.2%) of the dead had received medical treatment in Hungary as a whole, but
only 9.8% of them in Lika-Krbava, 14.9% in Szolnok-Doboka and 13.6% in Árva
county; on the other hand, Békés county in the Great Hungarian Plain had a figure
of 92.2%, Csanád 88.3% and Hajdú 87.4%. The content of the index of “doctor-
seen dead” is of a synthesising character: it reflects the value system and the
financial means of the population, the cultural level of the everyday life, the
accessibility of medical treatment; the latter depended on the characteristics of the
settlement network, the level of urbanisation, the established health care
institutions and the transport possibilities etc.
On the basis of the literacy rates and the share of the “doctor-seen dead”, and 10
further indices we created the modernisation map of Hungary (based on the 1910
conditions) (Figure 5). (The zones were defined in accordance with the level of
relative modernisation in Hungary.)
The map reveals that Budapest played a special role in modernisation in the
Dualist era and in close correlation with that, also in urban development. In the
middle of the 19th century there was a rather wide gap between Hungary and West-
ern Europe, as regards the economic and technical development level, the level of
urbanisation and the bourgeois development of the society. When the possibilities
of “catching up” were created in Hungary, the great “difference of tension” be-
tween the two “poles” induced a very rapid modernisation of the country. The
modernisation process of different sources had a “junction” in Budapest (the re-
gaining of national sovereignty made Budapest the centre of political life, the
“revolution” of transportation and the national railway policy converted the capital
city into the transport centre of Hungary, the railway and the agricultural boom
made Budapest a centre for crop trade and mill industry, national sovereignty
spurred the rivalry with Vienna etc.). When modernisation starts with a charge, in
its first phase it always occupies one single or only a few centres, bridgeheads, and
when the positions are reinforced there, then comes the “attack” on the country or
region to be conquered.
The bridgehead of modernisation in the Carpathian Basin was Budapest, and
the sub-centres of modernisation in Hungary were few in number and “weak” in
character at the beginning of the 20th century. At the turn of the century, Budapest
showed figures exceeding its number of population several times in the field of the
quantifiable indices of “development” (modernisation), and this resulted in “quali-
tative” differences, too; bourgeois society in its complexity only appeared in Buda-
pest by the turn of the century. By the early 20th century Budapest was a bridge
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Figure 5
Zones of modernisation in the early 20th century
Keys: 1 – Main centre of modernisation: Budapest; 2 – Centres of modernisation with attraction;
3 – Centres of modernisation; 4 – Zones of modernisation; 5 – Zones of the second wave of
modernisation; 6 – Zones where modernisation process is in the early phase; 7 – Traditional
regions.
Source: Designed by Beluszky, P.
head of not only foreign capital, technical civilisation and innovations, but also of
the new social ideas and artistic trends. These roles secured a very special position
for Budapest in the Hungarian settlement network and urban hierarchy.
To some surprise, the Great Hungarian Plain was among the regions most ad-
vanced in matters of modernisation. This was attributable to the agricultural boom
and the favourable agricultural endowments of the Great Plain – especially com-
pared to the endowments of the contemporary territory of Hungary! – and tradi-
tions etc., but above all to the special urban structure and the specific way of ur-
banisation in this region. In the early 20th century, in Csongrád 65.2% of the popu-
lation lived in towns at a high level of the urban hierarchy, the same figure was
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58.7% for Pest-Pilis-Solt, 47.6% in Hajdú and 38.5% in Békés. These counties of
the Great Hungarian Plain were among the ten most urbanised administrative units
of Hungary. Looking at the number of population in all settlements with town rank,
in five counties of the Great Hungarian Plain the share of the urban population
exceeded 50%, only in Bács-Bodrog it remained at about 40% (on the other hand,
69.3% of the population of this county lived in settlements with more than 5 thou-
sand inhabitants). The modernisation of the Great Hungarian Plain was supported
just by the high share of the urban population (i.e. living in settlements of urban
size). The boundaries between villages and towns, and also among the different
“levels” of towns became blurred, as did the settlement hierarchy. However, we
cannot accept the statement that in the “backward” Great Hungarian Plain the gen-
eral level of development was an obstacle to urbanisation, to the development of
the urban functions.
In West Hungary, characterised by an advanced modernisation – in Sopron,
Moson, Pozsony, Gyır, Komárom and Esztergom counties, and in the northern part
of Vas and Veszprém counties –, modernisation and the urban-rural relations de-
veloped harmonically, urbanisation used the resources of the rural areas but also
promoted the development of the whole region. The urban functions created a di-
vided hierarchical system. The individual “components” of the towns – economy,
including manufacturing industry; urban institutions; infrastructure etc. – were
balanced.
In the regions just setting off on the path of the modernisation process, mod-
ernisation appeared in the – bigger – towns. (Such regions were the western and
central parts of Upper Northern Hungary – with the exception of Trencsén and
Árva counties –, South Transdanubia, and the zone between the Great Hungarian
Plain and Transylvania.) These were the regions where the typical model of hierar-
chical spread appeared: urbanisation showed up at the higher levels of hierarchy,
but it could be very spectacular there – e.g. in the case of Kaposvár, Nyíregyháza,
Zalaegerszeg, Nagykanizsa, Miskolc and even more so Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO],
Arad [Arad, RO], Temesvár [Timişoara, RO]. The towns in these regions had a
“bridgehead” position, too.
The two great “traditional” socio-economic zones of the contemporary Hun-
garian territory were East Hungary (Northeast Upper Northern Hungary, some
regions of the Partium and Transylvania with Krassó-Szörény county) and Croa-
tia–Slavonia. In these regions modernisation had even less centres, the develop-
ment of the urban hierarchy was mostly influenced by the – “involuntarily” built
out – public administration. A large part of the administrative centres were settle-
ments with a limited number of population, where the functions other than public
administration were modest and “auxiliary” urban signs could hardly be seen (Al-
sókubin [Dolný Kubín, SK], Fogaras [Făgăraş, RO], Csíkszereda [Miercurea-Ciuc,
RO], Dicsıszentmárton [Târnăveni, RO] etc.). However, even in these regions
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there were some very important towns, such as Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], Kolozsvár
[Cluj-Napoca, RO], Marosvásárhely [Târgu Mureş, RO], Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO],
Brassó [Braşov, RO] etc., which proves the fact that the urban functions appear
even in regions with handicapped positions (the Saxon towns of Transylvania
could rely upon their considerable urban traditions).
4 The hierarchy of the Hungarian towns in the early 20th
century
4.1 Method for the definition of the urban hierarchy
In our opinion the towns are the products of the geographical division of labour
emerging within the settlement system; in this division of labour it is the settle-
ments with the central functions where the sufficient quantity and quality of the
basic urban functions is concentrated; these are the settlements where the activities
and institutions fulfilling the non-everyday needs of the population are concen-
trated. Coming from their role in the settlement system and their “mission”, the
towns are the special places of exchange, connections, “encounters” in a world
structured by the territorial division of labour; of course exchange in this case
means not only the exchange of goods but also of knowledge, information, “cul-
tures” and ideas. On the basis of the central functions the towns have a consider-
able spatial organising competency and are often decisionmaking and power cen-
tres.
In other words
– the urban character of the settlements does not depend on their legal status
(although the existence of the town rank itself seems to be a fixed point at the
definition of the features, the urban character of any settlement); in Hungary,
the set of settlements with town rank often considerably differed from those
with urban functions. The number of official towns (139) in the Dualist era
was far from the actual number of towns (settlements which were towns in
the functional sense). A number of county seats did not receive a town rank,
e.g. Balassagyarmat with its 8 thousand population, but neither did Turóc-
szentmárton [Martin, SK], Magyaróvár, Liptószentmiklós [Liptovský
Mikuláš, SK], Ipolyság [Šahy, SK], Aranyosmarót [Zlatné Moravce, SK] etc.).
The archiepiscopal centre of Kalocsa did not have a town rank, either, to-
gether with Békéscsaba, a settlement that had a population of 42 thousand (!);
Szarvas with 26 thousand inhabitants and the important Danubian port town
and commercial centre; or Mohács with its 17 thousand population. The rec-
ognition of the occasional incompatibility of the town rank and the urban
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functions led to the fact that in their town definitions and at the survey of the
urban network, urban historians now need more than the existence of the le-
gal status, they expand the criteria system with social and economic ele-
ments; or at the examination of the urban network they apply criteria, “indi-
ces” other than legal status;14
– the urban status is independent of the number of the population, too, although
towns are evidently population concentrations as well;
– the so-called economic concept of towns looks at the share of economic func-
tions offered by the settlements, and considers the settlements of non-agri-
cultural character as towns. We do not have to spend much time at this defi-
nition of towns: nowadays the share of agricultural population is insignificant
in most regions – and decreased to less than 6.5% in Hungary, too –, the “ur-
ban character” of industry is questionable, the spread of daily commuting
does not allow the “measurement” of the functions of the settlements by the
employment structure, “tertiarisation” has become widespread; to sum it up,
the composition of the functions of the settlements and their employment
structure are not suitable for the separation of the settlements with urban
functions, and even less so for the exploration of the urban hierarchy and the
measurement of the level of urbanisation.
Of course the definition of towns as the special terrains of exchange, and as the
members of the settlement network with central functions only reflects the naked
skeleton of the “genius” of the towns. This “skeleton” is supplemented by a large
number of auxiliary features, and the consideration of them contributes to the en-
richment of the image of the towns. The operation of the varied functions of the
towns requires a significant labour force: the towns have an attraction on the
14 This versatiliy, many-sided “difference” of the towns and the characteristics beyond the mere
settlement network functions made researchers of the towns come to newer and newer statements
and definitions, better approaching the “genius” of the towns. Among this we regularly come across
the notion that defines towns as the places of liberty. B. Oudin, among others, sees the “mission” of
the towns as being the “scenes of liberty”. (“If we had to define the reason for the existence of the
urban concentrations in one single word, we could say that the towns are meant to be the scenes of
liberty.”) This liberty can be interpreted as liberty rights guaranteed by the urban privileges, as the
exemption from the feudal obligations in the feudal societies, the liberty of the urban municipali-
ties, guilds and citizens; but liberty can also be comprehended in a wider sense: the “facelessness”
and anonymity guaranteed by the urban mass, looser social control – but above all the possibility of
choice. “What justifies the word ‘liberty’, when the concept of towns is more often associated with
the bourgeois? Liberty remains theoretical in all fields of life, if not accompanied by the freedom of
choice in practice. And to achieve the freedom of choice, the existence of a supply to choose from
is necessary. It is a serious mistake to see the only obstacle of freedom in force and oppression…
Only the towns allow the individual to find his or her own self, different from others, and meet
other human beings who are just as much different from the others” – this is how Oudin sums up
his opinion about the liberty offered by the towns. (Oudin, B., no year indicated).
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population of their surroundings (centres of migration), their population increases
and so they emerge from their environment with their number of population,
among other things. The operation of the urban institutions requires a higher level
of skills; the urban societies are not only more numerous than the village commu-
nities but also differ in their employment structure, skills and school education. As
a consequence of this and a lot of other factors – e.g. different built environment,
privileged situation, the social psychological effects coming from the “mass exis-
tence” etc. –, a typical urban lifestyle, value system and social psychological be-
haviour pattern emerge within the walls of the towns. The built environment and
the infrastructure are different than in the villages, among other things because of
the demand coming from the large concentration of population.15
The position of a town in the settlement system – in a network (!) – is most di-
rectly determined by the position in the (settlement) hierarchy. This position, on
the other hand, is defined by the composition of the urban functions in the nar-
rower sense, the existence or lack of certain roles and the institutions responsible
for these roles, the supply of urban functions, i.e. hierarchically differentiated
functions and institutions.
When defining the urban hierarchy of Hungary in 1910, we focused on the nar-
rower territory of the country – i.e. we excluded the territory of Croatia–Slavonia –,
especially because of the different nature of the data and the different ways of data
collection.
15 The “meditations” of sociology and cultural anthropology take us from the “concrete”, by statistical
data and topographical coordinates more or less definable “towns” to the towns “existing in the
world of ideas” and town definitions describing this level. The approaches of cultural anthropology
were summarised by Péter Niedermüller, who differentiated between two basic types: the macro-
anthropological approach “…, – which is very closely related to classical urban sociology and
above all to the Chicago school – looks at towns as an actually existing, historically born settlement
type disposing of a given structure of the physical space.” The urban surveys using this approach
examine segregation, ethnic settlement structure, the different types of urbanisation and the major
indices of the urban lifestyle, “… i.e. they describe and demonstrate everything that can be seen
about urban life from the outside.” These surveys, according to the author, are not really original,
their significance lies in the “… theoretical approach, the discussion and the holistic interpretation
of the town as a whole”. The essence of the micro-anthropological “talking style” is that “… it
does not talk about the towns in general, instead it focuses on the experiences of the urban inhabi-
tants about their own towns: it analyses the ‘image’ that the people have of their own towns…”.
Thus the attention of the micro-anthropological surveys is focusing on “… how people living in the
towns move in the urban spaces, with what rules and how they use this relatively complicated spa-
tial structure, and what cultural, social and symbolic functions the respective aspects of the urban
space have. … Space is not only a physical entity but also – and perhaps above all – an entity
bearing cultural meanings and symbolic functions.” (Niedermüller, P. 1994) Towns are also de-
fined by other authors as a “state of mind”, a behaviour pattern, a “general human life structure”
and so forth.
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Of the several methods available for the definition of an urban hierarchy we
chose the so-called “inventory method”, i.e. we enumerated each of the urban in-
stitutions and activities in the individual towns.16 Two practices – and the theoreti-
cal considerations behind them – emerged as to whether the “level of centralisa-
tion” (hierarchical position) can be determined by the existence, volume and supply
of the functions and institutions of the towns, or by the share of the urban services
“sold to the countryside”, – i.e. the “extra value”. The latter concept starts from the
fact that the towns are the “suppliers of the rural areas” in the geographical division
of labour, thus their role in the settlement network – their rank in the hierarchy –
can be defined by the volume of the services offered for the rural areas. This ap-
proach goes back to the classical examination by W. Christaller.
We took the existence or the lack of 88 urban institutions into consideration in
each settlement (this number does not include the national functions and institu-
tions). The selected indices were classified into categories, on the basis of the fre-
quency of their occurrence.
The levels are as follows:
National level
I
Regional level: institutions that can be found in settlements 2–20 (e.g.
postal directorates, gendarmerie district centres, a total stock of bank de-
posits in excess of 22 million crowns, more than 50 lawyers, 6 or more sec-
ondary schools and colleges etc.)
II Institutions of developed county seats: in settlements 21–39 (e.g. lawyers’
chambers, offices of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, 30–49 lawyers, regimen-
tal headquarters etc.)
III Institutions of county seats: in settlements 40–80 (e.g. county seats, courts,
number of lawyers between 17 and 29, stock of bank deposits in a value of
at least 8 million crowns etc.)
IV Middle towns institutions: in settlements 81–180 (e.g. gendarmerie squads,
bank deposits in a value of at least 4 million crowns, treasury post office
etc.)
V
District level (small town) institutions: in settlements 181–450 (e.g. civil
schools – 4 classes of elementary school followed by a 4-class secondary
school –, public notaries, tax offices, district courts, a stock of bank depos-
its in a value of at least 2 million crowns etc.)
16 The “inventory method” has several versions, according to how much the enumeration of urban
functions strives for complexity or it is happy with representative level indicators, and how it sum-
marises the selected indices. Some surveys wish to contemplate the weight and significance of the
considered institutions, arriving at issues very difficult to compare, e.g. how many lawyers are
equal to one bank office or how many dentists are worth one bookstore.
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On the basis of the threshold values defined for the respective groups of func-
tions and hierarchy levels, the respective settlements were classified into the fol-
lowing hierarchy levels:
I
(Capital city)
II
Regional centres
III
County centres
IV
Middle towns
V
Small towns
VI
Settlements (also) with district level functions
4.2 The urban hierarchy of Hungary in 1910
4.2.1 Settlements with town rank – settlements with urban functions
The results achieved are demonstrated in Table 8 and Figure 6. The figures in Ta-
ble 8 show that in the early 20th century there were much more towns in the func-
tional sense in Hungary than settlements recognised with the town rank by the state
administration. As opposed to the 139 settlements with town rank, a certain con-
centration of urban functions could be seen in some 420–430 settlements. The
boundary between villages and towns cannot be precisely drawn even if we
Table 8
Hierarchic division of the towns in the functional sense
Hierarchy level
Number
Of which centres with
Number
of centres
full
deficient
partial
of centres,
including the
functions
previous levels
I
Capital city
1
1
–
–
1
II
Regional centres
12*
6
4
2
13
III County centres
50
17
12
21
63
VI Middle towns
65
29
31
5**
128
V
Small towns
204
88
52
64
332
VI Settlements (also) with
93
93***
425
district level functions
Total: I–V
332
141
99
92
–
Altogether
425
–
–
–
–
* At the regional level we included Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] in this place, but the towns of Croatia–
Slavonia are excluded from the other levels.
** Actually small towns with county level functions (see below).
*** Within the hierarchy level we did not make a further division.
Source: calculated by the authors.
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know the results of the hierarchy surveys, because even besides the existence of
certain urban institutions, the urban character of some settlements were
questionable, due to their small population and the lack of more limited presence of
“auxiliary urban signs” (lack or urban traditions, village-like cityscape and
“society”, lack of an urban lifestyle, deficiencies of the infrastructure etc.). On the
basis of these considerations, we can omit the category of “settlements with district
level functions” at the definition of the urban system (see below), although some
settlements in this category could be qualified as towns even if we are more
rigorous with their evaluation (Pöstyén [Piešt’any, SK], Modor [Modra, SK],
Moson, Érmihályfalva [Valea lui Mihai, RO], Poprád [Poprad, SK] etc.). Also,
some settlements on the verge between villages and towns are included in the
category of small towns with partial functions. Even after such a correction,
approximately 300 settlements are supposed to have had urban functions, and this
figure is more than twice the number of the officially acknowledged towns.
The correlations between settlements with town rank and those with urban
functions, and between administrative functions and urban hierarchy show several
important characteristics of the contemporary urban network. The numerical com-
parison of the two “sets” clearly demonstrated their incompatibility, despite the fact
that in the 1870s the complicated feudal legal statuses of the settlements were
“simplified” at the creation of the civil public administration, approaching the legal
status to the actual functions. Table 9 allows a more detailed look at the correla-
tions.
Table 9
Legal status and administrative centre functions of the settlements in the
respective hierarchy categories
Hierarchy level
Number
Legal status
Administrative centre
of
functions
settlements municipal
corporate
villages
county
district
towns
seats
I
Regional centres
12*
11
1
–
11
11
II County centres
50
14
34
2
39
46
III Middle towns
65
2
40
23
13
54
IV Small towns with full
88
–
169
72
–
82
deficient or partial functions
116
107
110
Settlements with district
93
–
8
85
–
74
level functions
Total
424
27
108**
289
63
377
* With Zágráb [Zagreb, HR]. **Some corporate towns did not even reach the lowest hierarchy level.
Source: calculated by the authors.
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As regards regional centres, the coincidence of the function and the “rank” is
almost complete. Only Brassó [Braşov, RO] did not require a municipal right and
Szeged did not have administrative centre functions. Among the county centres, the
corporate towns made the majority, and two settlements with village status ap-
peared here: Balassagyarmat – with county seat functions – and a Great Plain
country town, Békéscsaba with its population of 42,000. Although the majority of
the county centres are county seats, several towns managed to “climb up” to this
hierarchy level without administrative centre functions (e.g. Fiume, a town in a
special position; Szabadka [Subotica, SCG] – not even a district centre! – with
almost 100,000 population and a huge surrounding area; Kecskemét in a similar
situation; the real urban centre of Zala county, Nagykanizsa; Pápa, a town in a
similar situation in Veszprém county; the already mentioned Békéscsaba with vil-
lage status etc.). The middle town hierarchy level was the transitory phase in the
field of legal status: two municipal towns were included in this hierarchy level
“humiliating” for them (Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK], a formerly rich but
for a long time declining mining town, and the huge country town, Hódmezıvásár-
hely). Most of the towns in this category were corporate towns, and this set also
contains two dozens of villages that should have been given corporate towns status
in the contemporary conditions; in addition, several of these villages were county
seats. For example, the lively commercial town with a population of 17,000, Mo-
hács still had a village status, as did Kalocsa, an archiepiscopal centre with a
population of 12,000; Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK] and Liptószentmiklós
[Liptovský Mikuláš, SK], both being less populated but busy county seats in Upper
Northern Hungary; Magyaróvár or Nagyszılıs [Vinohradiv, UA], both being
county seats too; Orosháza and Szarvas, two Great Plain country towns, each with
a population over 20,000 etc. The award – undertaking? – of town rank becomes
especially disputable if we consider that settlements with a population of 1,500–
4,000, without hardly any urban functions were included among the corporate
towns, such as Kolozs [Cojocna, RO], Leibic [L’ubica, SK], Szentgyörgy [Svätý
Jur, SK], Ruszt [Rust, A], Felsıbánya [Baia Sprie, RO] etc. The settlements with a
full range of small town functions can rightly be classified to the urban network,
but the majority of them only had a village status. Many of the settlements with
village status in this category could have justifiably demand town rank, for exam-
ple the Great Plain country towns with a large number of population, such as Békés
(almost 27 thousand inhabitants), Csongrád (25 thousand inhabitants), Óbecse
[Bečej, SCR] (19 thousand inhabitants), or market centres with long traditions and
relatively large population – Vágújhely [Nové Mesto nad Váhom, SK], Huszt [Hust,
UA], Tata, Tapolca, Csáktornya [Čakovec, HR], Körmend, Bonyhád, Szigetvár,
Apatin [Apatin, CRG], Sárvár, Dunaszerdahely [Dunajská Streda, SK], Dunaföld-
vár, Paks etc. –, transport junctions and industrial centres, such as Hatvan or Sal-
gótarján. At the same time, in the lower regions of the urban hierarchy we see set-
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tlements with town rank, too. The “legal source” of the town rank of the settle-
ments in the lower hierarchy levels is definitely “tradition”, the formerly possessed
free royal town status, or the mining town status. On the other hand, the correlation
between district seat functions and the urban network is tight: 94% of the small
towns had district centre functions. Anyway, the simple numerical comparison of
the settlements with town rank and urban functions clearly demonstrates that there
are great differences between the two “sets”, so the surveys of the urban network in
Hungary in the Dualist era cannot be restricted to the settlements with town rank.
Justifiable statements – scale of urbanisation, the size of the urban network, “sup-
ply of towns”, density of towns – can only be made with the consideration of the
set of functional towns.
The comparison of the administrative functions fulfilled by the towns and the
hierarchical order suggests that the urbanisation process of the Dualist era was
largely attributable to “external factors” (i.e. external factors from the aspect of the
urban network), the interventions of the state. The most important tool of this in-
tervention was the location of state and public administration functions after the
Compromise. (Similarly important were the railway constructions influenced by
the state, the state-financed industrial developments or the designation of the bases
of the military forces etc.). During the establishment of the civil public administra-
tion – especially at the designation of the districts and their centres – some rational
criteria had to be met, i.e. the lower and the upper limit of the number of public
administered population, the accessibility of the centres – especially of the district
seats – (they should be “manageable” from the villages of the districts within one
day even on foot), the possibilities of the establishment of the most basic institu-
tional system etc. The consequences of this process are manifold.
– Because administrative centres were needed in weakly urbanised or urban
deficient regions as well, in these areas administrative centre functions – in
some cases even county seat role – were awarded to several settlements with
very weak urban traditions, small population and either deficient or missing
other urban functions, i.e. to settlements where no “real urban life” unfurled
within the respective municipality. The awarded administrative centre status
then “brought” many institutions into the settlement – especially to the
county seats –, lifting these settlements to a higher level of the hierarchy,
while the formation of the “auxiliary” urban features and the location of
other, non-administrative institutions followed the award of the administra-
tive centre functions with a significant delay. This way a number of county
seats were less populated settlements, actually “central places” with primar-
ily administrative functions but mostly lacking other urban functions even at
the end of the Dualist era. Among the county seats such a settlement was the
seat of Árva county, Alsókubin [Dolný Kubín, SK], whose population was
50
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only 1,800 in 1910 (with position 123 in the urban hierarchy, but on the basis
of the population living from trade it was not included in the first 300 settle-
ments of Hungary); Aranyosmarót [Zlatné Moravce, SK] with a population of
approximately 3,000 (at the 91st place of the hierarchy, but only at position
273 when looking at the population employed in trade), together with
Ipolyság [Šahy, SK], Dicsıszentmárton [Târnăveni, RO], Liptószentmiklós
[Liptovský Mikuláš, SK], Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK] or Csíkszereda
[Miercurea-Ciuc, RO], but Magyaróvár, Nagyszılıs [Vinohradiv, UA],
Fogaras [Făgăraş, RO] etc. also belonged to this category.
– Despite the fact that 13 Hungarian county seats were not among the so-called
“county centres” and 94 of the Hungarian district seats were excluded from
the settlements with urban functions, the urban development role of public
administration in the Dualist era is still evident. The settlements that were
awarded the district seat status did not only gain a few district level institu-
tions; these attracted further “urban elements” into the settlement, as well –
the district courts attracted lawyers, the district’s general practitioner at-
tracted the location of a pharmacy, the district offices promoted the settling
down of a post office etc. –, the attraction of the administrative offices en-
tailed the visits to other institutions that promoted the settling down of mer-
chants, industrial entrepreneurs etc. In cases where a respective district seat
had already fulfilled central functions beforehand, other factors – e.g. favour-
able transport location – promoted the urban development; the district seat
could develop into a small town with versatile functions.
– Another component of the relations between the administrative centre role
and the development of the urban hierarchy is that without administrative
functions – county seat function – very few Hungarian towns managed to
gain a good position in the hierarchical order of the towns in Hungary, and at
the establishment of the civil public administration very few “real towns”
were omitted, could be omitted from the list of the administrative centres
(Table 9.). The relation of Szeged and Csongrád county is an exceptional
case when in a county it was not the strongest town in the economic sense –
in fact, also when it comes to administrative and cultural institutions – that
was awarded the county seat role. This fact shows the efficiency of the civil
public administration’s aiming at “rationality”. Among the few exceptions we
find Szatmár county where not Szatmárnémeti [Satu Mare, RO] – a town
with municipal rights – was the county seat; it was Nagykároly [Carei, RO],
in a peripheral location, with a smaller population and more limited urban
functions; in Nógrád county the county nobility chose the “gentry-like”
Balassagyarmat as the county seat back in the feudal times, instead of the
more bourgeois Losonc [Lučenec, SK]. Nagykanizsa, very rapidly developing
after the railway constructions, had a higher position in the hierarchy than
51
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Zalaegerszeg, a town supported by county institutions but with a bad trans-
port location and insignificant economic role. The situation was similar in the
case of Pápa and Veszprém.
– In addition to the above-mentioned towns, the Great Plain country towns with
extended outskirts and large population were county seats, even without cen-
tral roles at county level: Szabadka [Subotica, SCG], Újvidék [Novi Sad,
SCG], Kecskemét, Békéscsaba, Versec [Vršac, SCG], Pancsova [Pančevo,
SCG] and Baja.
– The “network” of administrative centres created by the needs of public
administration, and the circle of centres shaped by the requirements of the
settlement network appeared (driven by the demand to supply the respective
regions with administrative functions and urban services) even when com-
plex urban development could not keep up with these demands, even when
very much lopsided, functionally deficient centres were “available”. Urban
hierarchy thus had broader frameworks than the “complex” urban functions
were able fill out even at the end of the Dualist era. These “relations” are the
consequence of the fact that at the time of the creation of civil public admini-
stration, a “medieval” urban network existed in Hungary, which was only
partially transformed by the bourgeois urban development; this process had
not finished by the beginning of the 20th century. This is why the acquisition
of the administrative functions could be important in the promotion of urban
development. (A similar relationship existed between the establishment of the
railway network and urban development – at the time of the construction of
the railway system there was no network in Hungary consisting of influential,
“unavoidable” towns –, although the urban development effect of the railway,
as we have already mentioned, is overrated in our opinion by the Hungarian
urban historians.) The overweight of the administrative roles, the dominance
of the civil servant layer and the negligible weight of the “real” bourgeois
class, together with the strong dependence on the central state made the Hun-
garian towns with administrative centre functions a bit akin to the Eastern
European type of towns.
– Although the circle of towns in the functional sense went beyond the “legal
frameworks” – i.e. the circle of the settlements with town rank –, these towns
did not fulfil out these frameworks completely; some of the Hungarian set-
tlements with town rank lost their significance and were void of urban func-
tions.
– The circles of town in legal sense, based on the hierarchy and those in the
socio-economic functional sense were rather different, which is attributable
to the “immaturity” of the urban network (Figure 7).
52
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Figure 7
Relationship between settlements with legal status of cities, characterised
by urban functions and urbanised society, early 20th century
Keys: 1 – Towns with municipal rights and corporate towns; 2 – Settlements with Urban Functions;
3 – Settlements with Urban Role and Urbanised Society; 4 – District Centres with Legal Status
of villages.
Source: designed by: Beluszky, P.
4.2.2 The proportion of urban population – urbanisation level – sizes of
the towns
The large difference between the settlements with town rank and those with urban
functions modifies the formerly published figures indicated for the number and the
proportion of the urban population (these figures were based on the population of
the settlements with town rank). Considering all settlements with urban functions
in Hungary, in 1910 the number of urban population was 5.362 million, making
29.2% of the country (if the last category that we take into consideration down the
urban hierarchy is the small towns, the number of urban citizens was 4.965 million,
i.e. 27.0% of the Hungarian population). This figure is approximately 1.610 million
53
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
more than the number of inhabitants in settlements with town rank; the “urbanisa-
tion level” of Hungary is immediately “improved” by almost ten percent if we
consider the settlements with urban functions (the proportion of the inhabitants in
the settlements with town rank was 20.4% in 1910). Just below one-twentieth
(4.8%) of the urban population lived in Budapest, but the 11 regional centres fol-
lowing the capital city together were home to only 4% of the population. In one
regional centre the average number of population was 66,000, which is only 7.5%
of the population of the capital city (Table 10). These figures suggest that at the
end of the Dualist era the weight of the capital city, at least when calculated with
the number of population (!), was not outstanding, despite the population boom
taking place after the Compromise (the population of Budapest was only 271,000
in 1870 – making 2.0% of the total population of Hungary –, it was 492,000, i.e.
3.2% in 1890). At the same time, there was a deep gap between Budapest and the
regional centres – the “rural cities” of that time – among other things in the number
of population; big city development was restricted almost exclusively to Budapest,
the “rural cities” of 60,000–70,000 population were just above the category of
small towns, at least by a European standard; several of them had less than 50,000
inhabitants by the end of the 19th century (Brassó [Braşov, RO] – 41 thousand,
Kassa [Košice, SK] and Gyır – 44 thousand, Pécs – almost 50 thousand inhabi-
tants); in the most populated Szeged – with 118,000 inhabitants –, two-fifths of the
dwellers lived in the scattered farms belonging to the town.17 At the examination of
the urban character of the settlements, as we have already mentioned in the intro-
ductory part, it is often the number of population that is taken into consideration.
From Table10 we can draw conclusions concerning the correlation between the
hierarchical order and the number of population of the towns. This relationship is
contradictory. It is true that the average number of population in the different hier-
archy classes is monotonously decreasing. The pace of the decrease, however, from
one hierarchical category to the other is rather different; in the regional centres, on
the average only 7.5% of the population of the capital city lived, and the population
of the county seats is only approximately one-third of that in the regional centres,
17 The “scattered farms” are a special type of sporadic settlements: they are “auxiliary” settlements,
originally not more than the economic backyard of the agricultural population living in the Great
Plain country towns, in the faraway places of their estates. There were towns that had areas cover-
ing tens of thousands of hectares, some of them may have been 10–20–25 kilometres away from
the centres, making it impossible to cultivate them by daily commuting. In the “scattered farm” –
which was a stable, stalls, a well and a temporary dwelling in the beginning –, the working mem-
bers of the family lived in the peak seasons of agricultural works. After the intensification of the
agricultural production – e.g. the spread of stabling –, the owners spent more and more time in their
scattered farms, finally they became constantly inhabited places. Nevertheless the families usually
kept their homes in the towns, where the elderly family members, the children in school age etc.
lived. Administratively the scattered farms still belonged to the towns.
54
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
while the middle towns follow the county centres with a much smaller gap.
Table 10
Typical numbers of population in the towns belonging to the different hierarchy
levels, 1910
Hierarchy level
Number Number Averag In per
Number of
Standard Relative In per
of
of
e
cent of
population
deviation standard
cent
centres populati populati
the
,
deviation
of the
maximu minimu
on
on
previou
%
,
total
m
m
s level
%
populatio
n
of
Hungary
I. Budapest
1
880,371 880,37
–
–
–
–
–
4,8
1
II. Regional
11
729,367 66,306
7.5
118,32 41,056
288.2 33.7
4.0
centres
8
Of which:
5
348,526 69,705
44,211
209.7 23.6
a) full a)
6
380,841 63,474
92,729 41,056
288.2
b) deficient b)
118,32
8
III. County
50
1,196,7 23,936 36.1
94,610
6,912
1,369.2 68.0
6.5
centres
86
Of which:
17
33,126
94,610 10,776
877.6 57.7
a) full
12
563,135 25,763
66,834 10,884
616.5 61.2
b) deficient
21
309,156 15,462
42,146
6,912
609.9 54.6
c) partial
324,695
Middle towns
65
956,742 14,719 61.5
62,445
3,701
1,687.7 82.3
5.2
Of which:
a) full
29
466,752 16,095
55,197
3,701
1,491.8 77.2
b) deficient
31
464,458 11,983
62,445
4,223
1,478.7 81.9
c) partial c)
5
25,532 5,106
8,423
1,821
462.8 60.0
55
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
continuoing Table 10
Hierarchy level
Number Number Averag In per
Number of
Standard Relative In per
of
of
e
cent of
population
deviation standard
cent
centres populati populati
the
,
deviation
of the
maximu minimu
on
on
previou
%
,
total
m
m
s level
%
populatio
n
of
Hungary
Small towns
204
1,201,7 5,891 40.0
26,875
977
2,750.8 72.9
6.5
Of which:
62
a) full
88
7,269
64.0
b) deficient
52
632,423 5,736
70.9
c) partial
64
304,009 4,146
76.1
265,319
V. Settlements
93
397,323 4,319 73.3
17,202
587
2,930.5 85.2
2.2
with district
centre
functions
I–V. total
331
4,965,0 15,000
–
118,32
977
12,111.
27.0
28
8
4 d
I–VI. total
424
5,362,3 12,647
–
118,32
587
20,158.
29.2
51
8
1d
a) Without Zágráb [Zagreb, HR];
b) Deficient and partial centres together;
c) Actually small towns with county level functions;
d) Excluding Budapest.
Source: Calculated by the authors.
56
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Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
The “leaps” of different magnitude at the boundaries of the respective categories is
a sign of the immaturity of the urban hierarchy on the one hand; on the other hand
it is due to the fact that the role of the different urban development functions is
different at the various levels of hierarchy. The “rise” of the county seats in the
hierarchy was often supported by the administrative institutions located to the
county seats, but the population concentrating effect of these institutions is rather
limited, especially when compared to manufacturing industry or the agricultural
activities in the country towns of the Great Hungarian Plain. This is why the county
seats had such a small population compared to the regional centres. Within the
individual hierarchy levels, the standard deviation of the numbers of population of
the towns is rather big, usually increasing as we are descending down the
hierarchy. Among the county seats the standard deviation already reached 68%;
this hierarchy level includes Szabadka [Subotica, SCG] with its 95,000 population,
Kecskemét with 68,000, Miskolc with 51,500 and Békéscsaba with 42,000
inhabitants. At the same time, in Rimaszombat [Rimavská Sobota, SK] just over
7,000 people lived in 1910, the number of inhabitants was 7,500 in Lıcse [Levoča,
SK], just over 8,000 in Trencsén [Trenčín, SK] and somewhat more than 8,000 in
Balassagyarmat. Standard deviation is even bigger at the lower levels; among the
middle towns we find – at position 101 in the hierarchy! – Hódmezıvásárhely that
had a population of 62,500, Újpest – a town of special situation – that was home to
55,000 people, Kiskunfélegyháza with 35,000 and Csíkszereda [Miercurea-Ciuc,
RO] with a mere 4,000 population, or Dicsıszentmárton [Târnăveni, RO] and
Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK] with a population of the same magnitude.
To sum it up: despite the fact that there are marked differences in the numbers
of population across the hierarchy levels, the population number is still unsuitable
for drawing conclusions concerning the urban character of a settlement and the
development level of the urban functions.
The assessment of the average size of towns at the individual hierarchy levels is
rather uncertain when we look at how much these population concentrations
supported the evolvement of a complex urban life. It is a fact that most of the
Hungarian towns were small towns by European standards in the early 20th century.
We also have to take into consideration the fact that the average towns sizes are
significantly increased by the Great Plain country towns with their large population
numbers: if we omit the Great Plain country towns e.g. when examining the middle
towns with a full range of urban functions, the average number of population de-
creases from 16,000 to less than 10,000. Such a settlement size, however, excludes
– coming from the mere size – the appearance of a more differentiated urban soci-
ety and a larger layer of upper and middle bourgeois class and also of a versatile
cultural life – permanent theatre, daily papers, versatile “leisure activities” etc. (If
we – rather subjectively – presume that in addition to the county centre functions, a
57
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
population of at least 20,000, or besides middle town function, a minimum popula-
tion of 25,000 is necessary for an “urban milieu”, in the early 20th century not more
than 53–55 Hungarian towns offered conditions for a complex urban life.) We can-
not draw unequivocal conclusions for the value of the urbanisation threshold in the
early 20th century from the average number of population of the respective hierar-
chy levels, either, among other things because this threshold varied across the dif-
ferent regions of the country; it was much higher in the Great Hungarian Plain. The
average population numbers of the small towns (4 thousand for the small towns
with partial and around 7 thousand for those with a full range of functions) might
suggest that this threshold is around 5,000 people. However, one can say that the
population of many towns does not come near this figure – e.g. the population of
Aranyosmarót [Zlatné Moravce, SK], Csíkszereda [Miercurea-Ciuc, RO], Lip-
tószentmiklós [Liptovský Mikuláš, SK], Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK] was around
3,000 to 4,000 persons –, also, several settlements with a population larger than
10,000 did not have any urban function at all. Nevertheless in Upper Northern
Hungary and in Transdanubia the threshold value above which most settlements
had acquired urban functions was about 4,000 population (in Upper Northern Hun-
gary there were approximately 20 such municipalities, in Transdanubia 18–19 of
them). In the Great Hungarian Plain this threshold was about 8,000 people, not
forgetting the fact that approximately three dozens of villages with a larger popula-
tion did not have urban functions.
Returning to the issue of the urbanisation level of Hungary – the proportion of
the urban population – and its regional disparities, in only one region, the Great
Hungarian Plain we find urban figures different – but very much different – than
the national average (Figure 8 and Table 11). In the Great Hungarian Plain more
than half, 55.8% of the population lived in settlements qualified as towns, but even
if we focus on the unequivocally urban settlements, only – regional centres, county
centres and middle towns –, more than two-thirds of the population (as opposed to
the national average of 20.2%). In addition, a significant part of the population
lived in settlements with over 5,000 inhabitants but without urban functions. De-
spite the fact that these settlements were void of urban functions, the basic provi-
sion was definitely better than in the typical “rural” settlements (these settlements
already had a physician, veterinary, pharmacy, post office, telegraph office, maybe
even a savings bank, the supply of the shops was wider than small groceries etc.).
This peculiar settlement structure was even more extreme in some counties: in
Csongrád, 71.5% of the population lived in settlements with urban functions
(62.5% of them in middle towns or above this level in the urban hierarchy), the
same figure for Hajdú county was 69.7%, for Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun – although
calculated with Budapest – it was 62.8% and in Békés it reached 59.2% (Table 12).
The urban character, “urbanisation level” of the country towns of the Great
Hungarian Plain is disputed; it is true that some of their population lived in the
58
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
scattered farms, but in the early 20th century the majority of the scattered farms
were organically integrated to the country towns, i.e. the classical principle of the
scattered farms still existed. The classical researcher of Hungarian settlement geog-
raphy, Tibor Mendöl differentiated among three types of settlements within the
Great Plain country towns: he only accepted as “towns” the city centres that were
home to the public buildings, shops, workshops and the “industrial and trade em-
ployees”, surrounded by the outskirts inhabited by peasant citizens and the urban
poverty that Mendöl considered as a (separate) settlement with village functions;
the third one was the total of scattered farms in the hinterland of the towns.
Figure 8
Level of urbanisation in the counties, 1900
(All settlements with urban functions are taken into consideration)
Keys: 1 – 0.0-7.0%; 2 – 7.1-12.0%; 3 – 12.1-16.0%; 4 – 16.1-20.0%; 5 – 20.1-30.0%; 6 – 30.1% and
more.
Source: designed by Beluszky, P.
59
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Table 11
Major indices of the urbanisation level of the regions, 1910
Region
Area,
Population
Number of
Number of settlements with
Number of
Share of urban
m2
settlements
urban functions*
population
population,
with town
in settlements
%
rank
levels I–III.
levels IV–V. with town rank
Transdanubia
45,661
3,175,181
16
17
57
360,266
11.35
Upper Northern Hungary
54,135
3,574,288
41
29
71
481,663
13.47
Northeast Hungary
24,210
1,191,354
5
8
20
88,437
7.42
Partium
26,626
1,687,461
8
9
31
210,551
12.48
Great Hungarian Plain
45,447
4,527,587
31
30
48
2,045,921
45.19
Tisza–Maros area (Banat)
28,507
1,582,133
8
11
24
212,875
13.45
Transylvania
57,243
2,678,367
29
22
47
350,268
13.07
Total
282,297**
18,416,371
138
126
298
3,749,981
20.36
60
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
continuing Table 11
Region
Number of population in set-
Share of urban population,
Number of
tlements with urban functions
%
in towns
in towns
in towns
altogether
settlements
settlements in
all towns
belonging to
belonging to
belonging to
with town rank levels I–III.
levels I–III.
levels IV–V.
levels I–III.
per 10 thousand km2
Transdanubia
385,500
265,017
12.14
20.49
3.5
3.7
16.2
Upper Northern Hungary
437,366
313,648
12.24
21.01
7.6
5.4
18.5
Northeast Hungary
106,876
75,888
8.97
15.34
2.1
3.6
9.4
Partium
226,295
147,466
13.41
22.15
3.8
4.0
15.0
Great Hungarian Plain
1,953,104
633,369
44.02
55.80
6.8
6.6
17.2
Tisza–Maros area (Banat)
240,180
124,433
15.18
23.04
2.8
3.9
12.3
Transylvania
323,120
153,975
12.06
17.80
5.0
3.8
12.1
Total
3,712,441
1,613,796
20.16
28.92***
4.9
4.5
15.0
* In the following breakdown: capital city, regional centres, county centres and middle towns in
categories I-III. and small towns and towns “with district level functions”.
** Without Fiume.
*** With Fiume: 29.12%.
Source: Calculated by the authors.
61
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Table 12
Major indices of the urbanisation level of the counties, 1910
Counties
Number
Share of
Number of settlements
The share of their
of towns
population
with urban functions population from the total
in settle-
in levels
population of the county
ments with
town rank
I–III
IV–V
I–III
I–V
I Transdanubia
Baranya
1
14.1
2
5
19.0
23.5
Fejér
1
14.6
1
4
14.6
24.1
Gyır
1
32.5
1
2
32.5
37.8
Komárom
1
11.1
1
4
11.1
19.2
Moson
-
-
1
3
5.6
18.2
Somogy
1
6.6
1
7
6.6
14.8
Sopron
3
13.6
1
6
12.0
21.2
Tolna
1
5.6
1
7
5.6
20.8
Vas
2
9.0
2
8
9.0
16.9
Veszprém
2
15.2
2
3
15.2
20.2
Zala
2
8.0
3
7
9.6
15.8
Esztergom
1
19.7
1
1
19.7
23.1
II Upper Northern Hungary
Árva
–
–
1
3
2.3
9.2
Bars
3
10.7
2
3
7.2
14.0
Hont
2
14.5
2
2
14.6
19.0
Liptó
1
14.1
2
1
17.8
18.6
Nógrád
1
5.0
2
4
8.2
16.0
Nyitra
3
8.2
4
8
10.2
19.8
Pozsony
5
27.4
2
7
24.0
32.1
Trencsén
2
5.5
2
6
5.5
11.3
Túróc
–
–
1
2
7.4
22.6
Zólyom
3
17.8
1
2
6.9
16.6
Szepes
9
24.1
3
9
14.0
26.6
Sáros
3
15.0
1
5
9.4
16.4
Gömör and Kishont
5
12.4
2
5
7.2
15.5
Abaúj-Torna
1
21.9
1
4
21.9
28.5
Borsod
1
17.8
1
6
17.8
36.2
Heves
2
16.6
2
5
16.6
30.2
III Northeast Hungary
Zemplén
1
5.8
3
7
8.9
18.0
Ung
1
10.4
1
3
10.4
13.7
Bereg
2
12.8
2
4
12.8
17.0
Ugocsa
–
–
1
1
8.5
12.3
Máramaros
1
6.0
1
5
6.0
16.0
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
continuing Table 12
Counties
Number
Share of
Number of settlements
The share of their
of towns
population
with urban functions population from the total
in settle-
in levels
population of the county
ments with
town rank
I–III
IV–V.
I–III
I–V
IV Partium
Szatmár
4
17.2
3
7
16.1
23.7
Szilágy
2
6.5
2
4
6.5
13.2
Bihar
1
9.9
3
10
13.0
21.5
Arad
1
15.2
1
10
15.2
26.6
V Great Hungarian Plain
Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun
9
58.1
9
11
58.4
62.8
Bács-Bodrog
6
27.2
5
12
25.2
40.7
Csongrád
3
65.2
3
6
65.2
71.5
Csanád
1
24.0
1
3
24.0
45.7
Békés
1
8.1
4
4
38.5
59.2
Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok
6
35.8
4
7
28.7
53.4
Hajdú
4
60.5
2
4
47.6
69.7
Szabolcs
1
11.9
2
4
15.0
22.5
VI Tisza-Maros area (Banat)
Torontál
3
12.0
5
8
15.5
21.4
Temes
3
22.2
3
9
22.2
32.0
Krassó-Szörény
2
6.0
3
7
7.3
15.8
VII. Transylvania
Lower Fehér
4
12.3
3
5
10.1
18.4
Beszterce-Naszód
1
10.4
1
2
10.4
16.8
Brassó
1
40.7
1
1
40.7
46.7
Csík
2
8.7
2
1
8.7
11.4
Fogaras
1
6.9
1
2
6.9
10.1
Háromszék
2
10.0
2
2
10.0
14.7
Hunyad
4
7.0
1
9
2.5
13.7
Little Küküllı
2
7.6
1
2
3.8
9.0
Kolozs
2
22.6
1
4
21.2
25.2
Maros-Torda
2
14.9
2
1
14.9
15.6
Great Küküllı
2
13.6
2
3
13.6
19.9
Szeben
2
23.7
1
4
18.9
27.5
Szolnok-Doboka
2
7.3
2
5
7.3
11.0
Torda-Aranyos
1
7.7
1
4
7.7
14.2
Udvarhely
1
8.2
1
2
8.2
11.2
Source: calculated by the authors.
63
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Despite its shortcomings, this peculiar Great Plain settlement structure had
several advantages: the larger part of the population actually lived in the proximity
of the urban institutions and had access to the basic institutions in their place of
residence; in fact, in the Great Hungarian Plain settlements with large population –
not only in towns – institutions unknown in the “regular” urban regions settled
down (book clubs, societies, public libraries, local press, but even the agrarian so-
cialist movements originated from the huge villages and country towns of the Great
Hungarian Plain). In other words, despite the fact that the urbanisation of the
country towns of the Great Hungarian Plain was peculiar – characterised by a low
level of technical infrastructure, predominantly rural cityscape, high proportion of
agricultural population etc.–, the settlement structure of the Great Hungarian Plain
in the early 20th century was favourable for the provision of the population and
even for the operation of the economy.
In four other regions of Hungary – Transdanubia, Upper Northern Hungary, the
Partium and the Tisza–Maros area (Banat) –, the figures of the urbanisation level
were quite close to each other, at the same time the proportion of urban population
may have been very low in some of their districts; not only in some counties of
Upper Northern Hungary (Table 12), e.g. Árva, Bars, Trencsén, Turóc, Zólyom,
Gömör, where less than one-tenth of the population of the respective counties lived
in towns at higher levels in the urban hierarchy, but also in Transdanubia, where in
Somogy, Moson, Tolna, Vas or Zala county the population of the major towns did
not reach 10% within the population of the respective counties, either, and the
population of all settlements with town rank remained below one-fifth of the total
population of these counties. The proportion of urban population was even lower in
Northeast Hungary and Transylvania, despite the fact that the number of population
in the settlements with urban functions exceeded the population of the settlements
with town rank in all of these regions.
4.2.3 Spatial distribution of the towns
It is evident that the threshold values of the number of population to be supplied by
the respective hierarchy levels, the distance and accessibility, the capacities of the
urban institutions etc. show certain regularity, a quantifiable structure in the settle-
ment hierarchy. However, there is practically no correlation between the well-
know theoretical model of W. Christaller and the findings of our survey (Table 13).
At the top of the hierarchy, the difference among the individual levels below Buda-
pest “blurred”, and the findings of our survey can also be interpreted in a way that
one hierarchy level “below” the capital city was absent in Hungary – see the gap in
the number of population –, and this is the level of the “real countryside large cit-
ies”. Of course we can assume that “natural” urban development would have cre-
64
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
ated this urban level, had the Dualist state formation existed for a longer time.
Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] and Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] were “potentially” suitable
for this role. Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], as the capital city of Croatia–Slavonia with
limited autonomy, grew up to its legal status at an extremely rapid pace (also, its
population number tripled in the years of the Dualism); in 1910 Zágráb [Zagreb,
HR] was at the top of the regional centres in the volume of each of the urban func-
tions taken into consideration in our survey, despite the fact that its “country” was
a backward, the least modernised region of the Carpathian Basin. Kolozsvár [Cluj-
Napoca, RO] could have found a hinterland in Transylvania, a region of 2.8 million
inhabitants and legally separated from Hungary until the Compromise, which could
have “elevated” the city from among the regional centres. These processes, how-
ever, did not lead to the elevation of a few regional centres, allowing them to make
a separate level of the hierarchy. Christaller’s model and the actual hierarchy did
not coincide at the lower levels, either; at the latter, the “multipliers” belonging to
the towns in the respective hierarchy levels varied, showed no regularity.
Table 13
Number of centres by hierarchy levels according to W. Christaller
and our survey
Number of settlements in the respective
Total number of settlements in the respective
hierarchy levels by
and the higher hierarchy levels by
Christaller’s model
our survey
Christaller’s model
our survey
1
1
1
1
2
11
3
12
6
50
9
63
18
65
27
128
54
204
81
332
162
93
247
425
486
–
729
–
Nevertheless it is not surprising in the light of our findings that we were not
able to demonstrate any regularity, geometrical order in the spatial distribution of
the hierarchically divided urban system. In the density of the urban network, espe-
cially if we consider the hierarchy levels and the numbers of population in the
towns, significant regional differences can be seen. In Table 11 we demonstrated
the density of towns by regions in Hungary. These figures show that if all hierarchy
levels are taken into consideration, the density of towns is strikingly low in North-
65
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
east Hungary, and the density of towns in Transylvania and the Tisza-Maros region
is well below the average, too; on the other hand, in the Great Hungarian Plain and
in Upper Northern Hungary, the density of towns is high – for different reasons.
The picture is slightly different if we look at higher order centres, only (excluding
towns below the middle town category); in this case the density of towns falls be-
low the average in Transdanubia, too, the density of major towns only exceeds the
average in the Great Hungarian Plain and in Upper Northern Hungary. If we in-
clude the number of population, too, the picture of the “urban density” by regions
looks as follows: east of the Versec [Vršac, SCG]–Temesvár [Timişoara, RO]–
Arad [Arad, RO]–Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO]–Szatmárnémeti [Satu Mare, RO]–
Kassa [Košice, SK] line, in Transylvania, Northeast Hungary and in the eastern
zone of the Partium, the urban network is scarce, and the density of major towns is
below the average, too (in Transylvania only 4 county seats – of the total of 15 –
reached at least the level of the county centres with deficient functions); the popu-
lation of the centres is strikingly low; the number of population in the higher order
towns – regional and county centres, middle towns – remained below 15 thousand,
where the average population of the smaller towns was only 3,300. This area is
home a strikingly high number of district centres that did not even reach the lowest
hierarchy level, and where the volume of urban functions was very low; in these
towns, with a few exceptions, urbanisation was primarily due to the needs of public
administration.
The “density” of towns in Transdanubia is equal to the eastern part of Hungary
as regards the higher hierarchy levels, the density of smaller towns even exceeds
that; the main difference is that the Transdanubian towns have a larger population –
above 22,500 at higher levels and 4,500 at lower levels – and their urban functions
are much more varied, their administration-economic-service roles are more bal-
anced; the higher hierarchy levels of several towns (Nagykanizsa, Pápa, Dunaföld-
vár, Mohács etc.) was primarily due to their economic and service functions. De-
spite the fact that the share of urban population was not high in Transdanubia, ei-
ther (settlements with town rank were home to 11.4%, those with urban functions
to 20.5% of the population), Transdanubia we can see as a harmonically urbanising
region where the majority of the centres grew and developed rapidly.
Upper Northern Hungary had the densest urban network among the Hungarian
regions, if we look at all settlements with urban functions, but the density of set-
tlements at a higher level of the hierarchy was above the national average, too.
Also, settlements with town rank showed the highest density in Upper Northern
Hungary. The share or urban population, however, did not exceed the figures in the
other regions of Hungary, which suggests that the population numbers in these
centres were rather small (just over 15,000 at the higher hierarchy levels and al-
most 4,500 at the lower levels). The towns in Upper Northern Hungary lived from
their “traditions”; the (noble metal) mining towns of medieval origin, and the
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
privileged settlements of the Szepesség area, in close proximity to each other; the
former royal towns living from wine production on the slopes of the Little Carpa-
thians; small towns of medieval origin pursuing traditional handicrafts and old-
style iron manufacturing; and the commerce towns of the Vág valley dominated
Upper Northern Hungary. However, the majority of them lived from their past;
noble metal manufacturing had declined, the small metallurgy centres were re-
placed by modern large-scale enterprises – Ózd, Diósgyır, Salgótarján etc. –,
handicrafts were annihilated by manufacturing industry. Also, a significant part of
these small towns had not been touched by the modernisation of the bourgeois
development, either. (Even the regional centre of Upper Northern Hungary, Kassa
[Košice, SK] showed definite signs of feudal remnants.) Several former small
towns had neither urban functions nor town rank by the early 20th century [Podolin
[Podolínec, SK], Szomolnok [Smolník, SK], Mecenzéf [Medzev, SK], Korompa
[Krompachy, SK], Felka [Veľká, SK], Szepestapolca [Spišská Teplica, SK], Gnézda
[Hniezdne, SK], Csetnek [Štítnik, SK] etc.). Also, among the settlements with town
rank there were many that were losing their urban functions (Szentgyörgy [Svätý
Jur, SK], Leibic [L’ubica, SK], Szepesolaszi [Spišské Vlachy, SK], Szepesbéla
[Spišská Belá, SK], Felsıbánya [Baia Sprie, RO], Modor [Modra, SK), Bazin
[Pezinok, SK], Jolsva [Jelšava, SK], Dobsina [Dobšiná, SK] etc.), including some
“great losers”, such as Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK] or Bélabánya [Banská
Belá, SK]. The latter had been one of the most populated and richest towns of Hun-
gary from the middle ages until the 18th century, but, despite the state support –
granting of municipal right, maintenance of a mining academy etc. –, it had gradu-
ally lost its importance and population, consequently its rank in the urban hierar-
chy. A similar fate was suffered by Körmöcbánya [Kremnica, SK], whose popula-
tion remained below 5,000 in 1910, and so the towns just fit in the first two hun-
dred in the hierarchical order of the Hungarian towns.18
In the Great Hungarian Plain not only the share of the urban population was
high but also the density of the towns, coupled with a large number of population
in the towns (at higher levels of the hierarchy it was 66,500 (!) on the average, and
over 11,000 in the towns at the lower levels of the hierarchy in 1910). From the
aspect of urbanisation, the Great Hungarian Plain can rightly be regarded as a very
special region.
18 Körmöcbánya in Upper Northern Hungary was one of the Hungarian centres of gold mining in the
Middle Ages and the early new age, with a mint. It was a significant member of the contemporary
urban network.
67
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
4.2.4 Transformation of the urban hierarchy and the urban network
in the Dualist era
In Europe, the capitalist urban development resulted in the exchange of a signifi-
cant part of the former urban network. Our survey can only partly answer the ques-
tion to what extent the Hungarian urban network transformed in the bourgeois era.
We have no adequate surveys for the “original” conditions. The examination of the
Hungarian urban historians – Sándor Gyimesi (1975) and Vera Bácskai–Lajos
Nagy, who all worked with a census of 1828 – only concerned the higher levels of
the urban hierarchy (Transylvania was omitted from their survey, for lack of a
similar census). The findings of the hierarchy survey in themselves cannot give a
complete answer to the question raised, because they do not “measure” directly the
weight of the economy in the towns, the change of the number of population, the
transformation of the urban societies, the development level of infrastructure etc.
Bearing these reservations in mind, we compared the findings of Sándor Gyimesi
from a survey concerning 1828 with the “top” of our urban hierarchy of 1910 (Ta-
ble 14). (The method used by Sándor Gyimesi was similar to the method that we
chose, although he did not differentiate between hierarchy levels, he only compiled
the order of the towns.) Table 14 suggests that the “movement” of the urban net-
work at the hierarchical scale was very lively; the positions of approximately 45%
of the towns changed considerably. Modor [Modra, SK] e.g. fell from the top of the
urban hierarchy – according to S. Gyimesi, Modor [Modra, SK] was among the
“best fifty” by its functions in the early 19th century – to position 376, to the cate-
gory of towns with hardly any urban functions. The loss of positions of Sárospatak
was also spectacular (a “fall” by almost 140 positions down the hierarchy), but the
decline of Rozsnyó [Rožňava, SK], Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK],
Nagyszombat [Trnava, SK] and Nagykırös is evident, too. The improvement in the
positions of the ambitious towns is less striking – at least at the top of the urban
hierarchy –, but Arad [Arad, RO] and Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] developed from
among the “better county centres” to the level of regional centres. From correlation
calculations we can draw the conclusion that there is practically no correlation
between the urban hierarchies of the two times (the correlation coefficient is
+0.11). We have to consider, however, that the changes in the hierarchy order, if
they do not result in the migration of towns from one hierarchy level to another,
cannot be interpreted as the “exchange of the urban network”, or at least these
changes are not significant from the aspect of the urban hierarchy. The disparities,
on the other hand, reveal the reasons for the transformation of the urban hierarchy,
e.g. the appreciation of the role of public administration in urban development. The
majority of the “declining” towns had considerable economic role compared to
their environment and population, but this was not accompanied by significant
administration functions after the Compromise, which decreased their relative
68
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Table 14
Comparison of the urban hierarchies in Sándor Gyimesi’s survey
of 1828 and the present examination of 1910
Town
Position
Town
Position
1828 1910* difference
1828 1910* difference
Buda + Pest
1
1
Kecskemét
26
31
Pozsony
2
2
Szabadka
27
16
+11
Debrecen
3
4
Arad
28
10
+18
Gyır
4
8
Újvidék
29
25
Temesvár
5
5
Ungvár
30
39
Szeged
6
6
Kalocsa
31
70
–39
Kassa
7
3
Esztergom
32
33
Eger
8
23
–15
Losonc
33
51
–18
Pécs
9
8
Máramarossziget
34
14
+20
Szatmárnémeti
10
15
Baja
35
48
–13
Miskolc
11
12
Nagybecskerek
36
20
+16
Komárom
12
34
–22
Zombor
37
28
Székesfehérvár
13
17
Jászberény
38
59
–21
Sopron
14
11
Sárospatak
39
177
–138
Eperjes
15
24
Hódmezıvásárhely
40
79
–39
Besztercebánya
16
18
Nagykároly
41
40
Rozsnyó
17
76
–59
Makó
42
52
Veszprém
18
26
Modor
43
376
–333
Vác
19
54
–35
Nagykırös
44
88
–44
Szombathely
20
13
Nagykanizsa
45
29
+16
Selmecbánya
21
73
–52
Sátoraljaújhely
46
30
+16
Nagyvárad
22
7
+15
Lugos
47
27
+20
Nagyszombat
23
71
–48
Lıcse
48
43
Pápa
24
45
–21
Keszthely
49
63
–14
Nyitra
25
21
*Excluding the towns in Transylvania.
Source: Gyimesi, 1975; Beluszky, 1990.
significance (Nagyszombat [Trnava, SK], Rozsnyó [Rožňava, SK], Vác, Losonc
[Lučenec, SK] etc.). Another proof of the importance of public administration cen-
tre functions is that towns of lesser economic importance, when awarded county
centre functions in the beginning of the Dualist era, considerably improved their
positions in the urban hierarchy; among the settlements in Table 14., this category
involves Máramarossziget [Sighetu MarmaŃiei, RO], Nagybecskerek [Zrenjanin,
SCG], Lugos [Lugoj, RO], Szombathely, Sátoraljaújhely, and also Kaposvár, Zala-
egerszeg, Balassagyarmat, Trencsén [Trenčín, SK] and Beregszász [Berehove, UA]
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
– these towns had not been at the top of the hierarchy in the early 19th century and
consequently are not present in the Table, either – and so on. The progress of
Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] and Arad [Arad, RO], in addition to the increase of their
economic weight, was due to the demand for regional centres.
Taking all these into consideration, in our opinion we cannot talk about an “ex-
change” of the Hungarian urban system during the decades of Dualism (or since
the foundation of the legal background of the civil society in 1848); apart from the
spectacular fall or rise of a small number of towns, the urban network was rather
stable. In Hungary – as opposed to e.g. England or the western provinces of Ger-
many –, the former urban system modernised, and the feudal towns in better posi-
tions shifted to a bourgeois (capitalist) development track. However, since the ma-
jority of the Hungarian towns had an economy of medieval character (their main
functions being manufacturing industry pursued by guilds, market centre roles and
moderate retails distribution), their upper and middle bourgeois class was negligi-
ble, the property of the urban citizens was little, the towns of the feudal age were
mostly nothing more than settlement (technical?) frameworks for modern urban
development, the “shift” did not come from their own “organic” development. The
institutions of the bourgeois era, the capital and a significant part of the bourgeois
class came “from outside”. An “organic” development only occurred in a few
Hungarian towns where already in the early 19th century a modern bourgeois class,
free of guild restrictions – corn dealers, wholesale traders, shipping entrepreneurs
etc. – had appeared, such as in Gyır, Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], Pest, Szeged, Te-
mesvár [Timişoara, RO] etc. In these towns we could witness the flow of the for-
merly accumulated (commercial) capital into manufacturing industry, or financial
institutions. Thus, even though the urban network – or at least the larger part of it –
was not exchanged, a “shift” within the urban network occurred, both as regards
functions and the composition of the local societies. Even in large cities such as
Pest, where a considerable economic basis and a layer of well-off bourgeois had
emerged before 1848, there is no or hardly any continuity between the bourgeois of
the early and late 19th century, either as regards their persons or character.19 In the
modernising towns, in addition to the bourgeois of the feudal times – handicrafts-
men with guild traditions, retail traders, feudal lateiner layer –, in the early years of
the Dualist era mainly state bureaucracy, the layer of civil servants increased sig-
nificantly, later – or parallel to it – a narrow bourgeois class appeared, too, as did
“necessarily” industrial proletariat especially in the bigger towns. The urban poor,
on the hand, made a significant part of the population in almost each town (day
labourers, servants, junior officers, agricultural workers etc.). The functional and
social shift from feudal to capitalist towns is only evident at the top of the urban
19 It is a characteristic example, from the 1184 tax payers in 1888 of the capital city 15 years earlier in
1873 only 347 were included in the list (himself or his ancestor). (Vörös, 1978).
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
hierarchy, it can only be considered general and complete in the regional centres.
This does not mean that the lower levels do not feature towns belonging to the
cutting edge of modernisation – e.g. Fiume [Rijeka, HR], Miskolc, Szombathely,
Nagykanizsa, Kaposvár, Újvidék [Novi Sad, SCG] etc. –, but many towns even
among the county centres were only at the beginning of this process, bearing some
characteristics of the urban development of the feudal times (e.g. Veszprém, Eger,
Esztergom, Balassagyarmat, Trencsén [Trenčín, SK], Lıcse [Levoča, SK], Zilah
[Zalău, RO], Szekszárd, Nagyenyed [Aiud, RO], Nagykároly [Carei, RO] etc.). Our
statement that the formation of the capitalist urban system used and transformed
the frameworks inherited from the feudal times does not mean that the feudal urban
system remained unchanged. A number of towns had already fallen from the top of
the urban system in the late 18th and early 19th century, and this process accelerated
after 1848, partly because of the loss of the “support” provided by the town rank –
the number of settlements with any sort of town rank dropped to one-sixth –, and
partly because the urban development forces of capitalism neglected some of the
towns, also, the weight of the “inherited” urban functions – e.g. handicrafts – de-
creased. This group contained the already mentioned towns in Upper Northern
Hungary and Transylvania, the small centres of the declining noble metal mining –
Vízakna [Ocna Sibiului, RO], Felsıbánya [Baia Sprie, RO], Újbánya [Nová Baňa,
SK], etc. –, several small country towns – such as Kunmadaras, Hajdúdorog, Haj-
dúhadház, Szabadszállás, Fülöpszállás, Kiskundorozsma, Jászárokszállás etc. –,
former wine producing small towns and country towns (most of the wine-produc-
ing country towns of the Hegyalja region had already lost their urban functions in
the beginning of the 19th century) etc.
Exclusive products of the capitalist urban development are those industrial and
population concentrations that grew on the locations of the “modern” sectors, i.e.
coal and iron ore mining, metallurgy and metal processing, mostly totally irrespec-
tive of the former urban network. The plants of mining, metallurgy and metal proc-
essing in the first step created colonies of large population; their societies had
nothing to do with the society of the “feudal towns”, the majority of the population
was miners, factory workers and officers; as the majority of the factories and plants
were state-owned – in the hand of either state companies or the Hungarian Railway
Co. –, the officers too were sate employees. The bourgeois class in these towns was
negligible; a few merchants and handicraftsmen settled down to supply the large
concentration of population; in some cases a few “urban institutions”, a higher
elementary school, or a savings bank settled down, maybe some towns became
administrative centres, district seats. According to our survey, some towns, small
towns belonged to the category of settlements with urban functions, such as Resi-
cabánya [ReşiŃa, RO] (17,384 inhabitants), Diósgyır, a town of special situation (a
”suburb” of Miskolc; 17,202 inhabitants), Salgótarján (13,746 inhabitants),
Petrozsény [Petroşeni, RO] (12,193 inhabitants), Ózd (5,981 inhabitants) and
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Oravicabánya [OraviŃa, RO] (4,079 inhabitants). In other words, the number of
“new”, “capitalist” towns was limited, their hierarchy level was low; in the early
20th century they were negligible elements of the Hungarian settlement network.
As a summary we emphasise again that the five or six decades of bourgeois ur-
ban development in Hungary did not “exchange” the urban system inherited from
the feudal times, but started to transform that as regards functions and society; a
fundamental transformation had only occurred by the beginning of the century in a
limited number of towns, mostly at the top of the hierarchy. The number of settle-
ments falling out from the circle of towns is considerable, but only a few “new”
towns were born in the decades of the Dualist era.
4.2.5 The weight of urban functions in the settlements
Hierarchy in the narrower sense only registers one aspect of the role of the towns in
the settlement hierarchy. We have already mentioned that e.g. most of the towns in
Great Hungarian Plain have no large hinterland even if they have a high rank in the
hierarchy, the urban goods produced in these towns are usually for the provision of
their own population. In other words, even in the case of the same position in the
hierarchy, the share of the urban services “sold to the countryside” can signifi-
cantly vary. We have also mentioned that the urban functions of more or less the
same level and weight are almost completely lost among the many agricultural
functions of the Great Plain towns (which makes even the urban character of these
towns questionable), whereas these urban functions are “purely” present in the case
of the traditional towns, giving these settlements a definitely urban character. We
can say that the “density” of the urban functions is different. Although there is a
strong correlation between the position in the urban hierarchy and the quantity of
the urban functions, even at the same level of hierarchy we can see considerable
differences among the quantity of the urban functions of the respective towns. In
addition to the quantity of the urban functions thus we pay attention to the qualita-
tive data of the urban services, as well. From these data we can make conclusions
as regards the size of the population using the services, thus indirectly the size of
the (theoretical) urban hinterlands. (The exploration of the relationship between the
respective towns and their surroundings is one of the most important aspects of
settlement network researches. According to some approaches20 this is what basi-
cally determines the urban character of the settlements [the town as a “central
place”].)
20 To refer only to the most prominent geographer representing this concept: T. Mendöl 1963.
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For the analysis of the quantitative aspects of the urban functions, we took the
following indices into consideration:
– Number of earners in trade (persons) in 1910;
– Number of earners in public services (persons) in 1910;
– Number of household servants (persons) in 1910;
– Number of lawyers (persons) in 1910;
– Bank deposits of the financial institutions (in crowns) in 1910;
– Number of secondary school students (persons) in 1910;
– Number of telephone stations in 1911.21
In order to make the indices of different character comparable and compatible,
we calculated the number of population provided with urban functions. This is
allowed by the information on the national figures of the earners in trade and public
services, the national data of bank deposits and lawyers etc. per “unit” of popula-
tion, and the consequently calculated number of inhabitants “served” by one
tradesman, household servant, lawyer or one crown of bank deposit. If we draw the
number of urban population from the above data, we get the number of rural
population provided with these services, i.e. the “added value” of the town – in
some geographers’ view, the “real” index of the urban hierarchy. The measurement
of the weight of the urban functions with the number of population served allows
the comparison of the respective functions and institutions, and the definition of
their weights.
We have to emphasise that the results achieved by these calculations are “ab-
stract figures”; they do not reflect the real situation, i.e. the number of population
served is not equal to the size of the hinterlands of the towns and the number of
population living there. The reasons for this are manifold. The regional penetration
of certain functions can differ from the national average; in regions with better
commercial provision e.g. one trader serves less inhabitants than their counterparts
in worse endowed areas. The concentration of urban functions, more exactly the
sectors that we considered varies across the different regions – in regions domi-
nated by large villages e.g. the “rural” settlements too have some of the institutions
that we took into consideration in the calculations, whereas in areas where small
villages are more typical, the majority of the trading, public service, finance insti-
tution etc. activities is concentrated in the towns –; in fact, even the villages can
have certain activities that we took into consideration. The frequency of the use of
urban functions is higher among the urban citizens than at rural inhabitants, so the
21 Sources of the data: Directory of the Officers of Hungary 1910. Statistics of Credit Institutes of
1894–1909. Hungarian Statistical Yearbook 1910. Census of 1910. Employment of the population
and large industrial companies by municipalities. Register of the telephone subscribers of Hungary
1911.
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mechanical division of the number of population served into urban and rural cate-
gories, on the basis of the population numbers of towns, definitely does not reflect
the real situation.
The hierarchical order that we get by the calculations can be compared to the
total number of citizens served and the number of rural population served, to the
proportion of urban and “rural” population served, the number of inhabitants of the
settlements and the density of the functions, but of course the interrelations of
these indices can also be examined. These comparisons can give us a lot of infor-
mation on the role of towns in the settlement network; here we only refer to some
spectacular characteristics.
The correlation between the hierarchical order and the order calculated by the
total number of population served is very tight, the correlation coefficient is +0.94.
(We have to remark that the correlation is even tighter between the population of
the towns and the number of population served, reaching +0.98 if we look at the
total of the towns; it is weaker at the lower levels of the urban hierarchy, still it re-
flects a close correlation – 0.58 – at regional centres, 0.79 at county seats, 0.77 in
the case of middle towns and 0.51 at small towns. (In other words, within the urban
hierarchy the group of county seats and middle towns is the most “coordinated”;
the hierarchy level, the population of the towns and the number of population pro-
vided with urban goods show a tight correlation.) Looking at the total of the urban
network, these two manifestations of the concentration of urban functions mostly
coincide, whereas the weight of the urban functions at the different hierarchy levels
showed significant differences (Table 15).
The average number of population served by hierarchy levels allows the draw-
ing of several conclusions concerning the urban network. First of all it is clear that
despite the fact that the Hungarian urban network was in the beginning of the mod-
ernisation process in the early 20th century and that the settlement network peculi-
arities of the Great Hungarian Plain – including e.g. the negligible hinterlands – did
not favour the clear separation of the urban and rural regions and consequently the
concentration of the urban functions, the Hungarian towns still served a significant
number of population with urban goods, and the majority of the users, down to the
level of the middle towns, were “rural citizens”. Even if Hungary had very small
towns mostly serving the rural areas, the data of the table above reveal that the
higher hierarchy level a town had, the higher the proportion of its participation in
the provision of the countryside. Thus in the provision of the Hungarian population
or of the rural population of the country with urban goods, the dominant role was
played by the settlements at the higher levels of hierarchy, despite their much
smaller number. The weight of the 12 regional centres exceeds that of the institu-
tions in the just 300 small towns or district centres. As opposed to our presumption
that the rural population had more regular connections to their district centres, the
fact is that the supply with urban goods was the responsibility of the settlements at
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the higher levels of hierarchy in the first place. The outstanding opposition of Bu-
dapest can also be seen in the number of population supplied: the capital city, only
concentrating 4.8% of the total population of Hungary, “supplied” 22.6% of the
Hungarian citizens with urban goods, and the average weight of the urban institu-
tions of the regional centres was not more than 6% of that in Budapest.
Table 15
Average number of all citizens and of the rural population served
by the tons at the different levels of hierarchy
Hierarchy level
Number
Average
Population
of
number
number
number
share
served, in
settlements
of
of
of rural
of rural
per cent of
population* inhabitants inhabitants
citizens
the previous
served
served
served, %
category
Budapest
1
863,735
4,098,618
3,234,883
78.9
–
Regional centres
12
67,367
248,382
181,015
72.9
6.1
County seats
50
23,940
74,992
51,052
68.1
30.2
Middle towns
65
4,718
32,189
17,470
54.3
42.9
Small towns
204
6,004
9,801
3,798
38.7
30.4
Settlements with dis-
95
4,275
4,202
–74
–
42.9
trict centre functions
* Civil population.
Source: calculated by the authors.
Despite the fact that a close correlation can be demonstrated between the
hierarchical order and the number of population supplied (the volume of the urban
institutions), the occasionally occurring discrepancies mark typical urban types, or
refer to the special situation of some towns. E.g. a definitely separate group of
towns are those settlements with a low number of population that were “elevated”
to the urban hierarchy by the need of public administration for centres in town-
deficient areas and where administration located institutions of high hierarchy
level, but neither the growth of the population nor complex urbanisation, the “aux-
iliary” signs of urban development – trade, cultural institution, financial institutions
etc. – followed the sudden promotion in the order of hierarchy. Apart from the
officers, the weight and number of “real” bourgeois was low. These settlements
represent a special type, when comparing the hierarchy order and their number of
population. Dicsıszentmárton [Târnăveni, RO], for example (with a population of
4,417 in 1910) had the 83rd position in the order of hierarchy, whereas it was only
the 163rd in population. Even bigger towns, if they were mainly administrative
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centres and void of “modern” functions, had usually low weight of urban functions
compared to their positions in the urban hierarchy. Zalaegerszeg, Trencsén
[Trenčín, SK] or Déva [Deva, RO] belonged to this group, among others, but such a
“discrepancy” was typical even of Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] and Kassa
[Košice, SK], indicating the slow penetration of modern functions and the over-
weight of the public administration and cultural functions.
Disparities in the other direction are usually seen in the Great Hungarian Plain,
a region with towns of large population; there is a large number of “own” popula-
tion to be supplied, but this only locates lower level urban institutions into these
country towns, the institutional pyramid remains “distorted”, large city institutions
are absent, so the hierarchy level remains low. Hódmezıvásárhely has the 93rd po-
sition in the order of hierarchy, e.g. whereas it has the 33rd biggest number of
population supplied. “Incompatibilities” of the same direction can be seen in e.g.
Kiskunfélegyháza, Kecskemét or Baja, or in the case of Újpest and Újarad [Aradu
Nou, RO], both in a special situation (satellite towns, with very large population
compared to their position in the urban hierarchy). It is remarkable that in the case
of Debrecen or Szeged the two “projections” of the urban functions perfectly
match, i.e. the different aspects meet at the top of the hierarchy in the Great Hun-
garian Plain, too. Fiume [Rijeka, HR] was one of the most important trading towns
of Hungary, a significant financial centre whose special legal situation led to its
relatively low position in the hierarchy (a town “without” a county). Considerable
differences can also be seen in the case of the major trading cities, if their adminis-
trative functions were modest, e.g. if they were not county seats (Pápa, Munkács
[Mukacheve, UA] etc.). In the case of Nyíregyháza, a county centre, it is its county
with a large number of population but few towns, and the large hinterland to be
supplied with “basic urban goods” that elevated the quantity of urban functions
above the hierarchic position.
The map showing the number of population supplied by the towns (Figure 9) is
not surprising if we consider the close correlation between the urban hierarchy and
the number of population supplied. It is understandable then that the Great Hun-
garian Plain cannot “remain empty” in the map demonstrating the quantity of urban
goods, and the often supposed “under-urbanisation” of the Great Hungarian Plain,
the “backwardness” of the towns in this region does not mean at all the lack or
limited volume of functions and institutions, similarly to the regional appearance of
the hierarchical division. The special position of the Great Plain country towns is
manifested in other relations, mainly in their role that they played in the provision
of the countryside.
Even if we look at the number of rural population supplied, we cannot see the
clear “disintegration” of Hungary into the Great Hungarian Plain and the rest of the
country in the field of the characteristics of the urban network. In the case of the
non-country towns of the Great Hungarian Plain, their positions in the urban
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Figure 9
Total and rural population supplied by urban functions
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hierarchy and that in the order defined by the number of rural population supplied
mostly coincide. As regards Temesvár [Timişoara, RO], Arad [Arad, RO], or
Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] at the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain, then e.g. Újvi-
dék [Novi Sad, SCG], Nagybecskerek [Zrenjanin, SCG], the number of rural
population served is more or less equal to their hierarchical positions; in some
cases it is even higher. The consideration of this aspect of the urban functions un-
derlines that the settlement network of the Bánát region developed according to the
“regular” model and that Baja or Újvidék [Novi Sad, SCG] are “Transdanubian”
towns by character. Even Debrecen, Szeged, Szabadka [Subotica, SCG], Zombor
[Sombor, SCG] or Nyíregyháza (all being country towns) managed to gain a hin-
terland compatible with their hierarchical positions – more exactly theoretically
supplied rural population –, reinforcing again the fact that the integration of the
elements of urbanisation started at the higher levels of the urban hierarchy, urbani-
sation was able to overcome the differences coming from the regional situation or
the varied urban historical past. It is also remarkable that among the towns with
negative values (e.g. in those cases when the calculated number of population sup-
plied is lower than the own population of the given town), we find many small
towns of the Great Hungarian Plain.
A more reliable conclusion than the one we can draw from the individual cases
is gained if we compare at each hierarchy level the typical data of the Great Plain
country towns and the towns in the other regions of Hungary (Table 16).
The data of the table demonstrate two basic trends: on the one hand, the Great
Hungarian Plain towns, even more so the country towns (the “Great Plain” towns
also include the towns of the Bánát and the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain, not
typically of agricultural history) supplied less rural inhabitants at each level of the
urban hierarchy than the non-Great Plain towns did; on the other hand, the differ-
ence becomes really considerable at the lower levels of the hierarchy. While the
number of rural inhabitants attracted by the regional centres of the Great Hungarian
Plain made 87%! of the number of population attracted by non-Great Plain regional
centres – and the same figure is 85%! at the county seats –, the difference is very
marked between the middle towns, the attraction of the Great Hungarian Plain
country towns is less than half of the centres in the other regions of Hungary. As
regards the small towns, the “widening of the gap” is evident: in the other Hungar-
ian regions the small towns too played a significant role in the provision of the
countryside – more than half of the population they supplied were “rural citizens”
–, whereas the small towns of the Great Hungarian Plain were not even able to sup-
ply themselves. This is a sign of a basically different function in the settlement
network – and also of a different settlement system.
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Table 16
Average number of rural citizens supplied in the towns of the Great Hungarian
Plain and in the other
Hungarian regions, by hierarchy level
Hierarchy level
Average number of rural citizens supplied
Share or rural citizens from all supplied population, %
at national
in the non-
in the Great
in the
at national
in the non-
in the Great
in the
level
Great Plain
Plain towns
country
level
Great Plain
Plain towns
country
towns
towns
towns
towns
Regional centres
181,015
183,300
176,446
160,081
72.9
76.1
67.0
60.3
County seats
51,052
52,477
46,997
47,044
68.1
72.9
56.3
52.7
Middle towns
17,470
20,778
11,430
9,063
54.3
68.0
32.5
23.9
Small towns
3,798
5,058
625
–553
38.7
52.7
6.1
–
Settlements with district
centre functions
–74
685
–2,197
–3,727
–
18.4
–
–
Source: Calculated by the authors.
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Nevertheless we can conclude one characteristic feature of the country towns on
the basis of the – presumed – number of rural inhabitants supplied: on the streets
and markets, and in the shops and offices of e.g. Hódmezıvásárhely, Hajdú-
böszörmény or Szentes – usually not country towns “belonging to the uppermost
circles” – there must have been a significantly smaller number of “rural people”
than the local inhabitants; as opposed to e.g. Rimaszombat [Rimavská Sobota, SK],
Balassagyarmat, not to mention Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK] or Csíkszereda
[Miercurea-Ciuc, RO], where the rural inhabitants actually invaded the town and
dominated the urban spaces. (The real situation might be reflected in an anecdotic
report that in the multi-lingual towns of the regions inhabited by ethnic groups, the
official language changed in the course of the day: the German speaking merchant
or handicraftsman talked in the daytime in Slovakian or Romanian to his custom-
ers, these were the most frequently used languages on the market and fairs – at
dusk he spoke German again, maybe Hungarian or Yiddish.) This is the reason
why the country towns of the Great Hungarian Plain were much more isolated, left
to their own devices and more closed than the towns in Transdanubia or Upper
Northern Hungary.
Apart from the towns of the Great Hungarian Plain, we hardly find any other
town in Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century that played a limited role in
the provision of their hinterlands and were not organically integrated into the set-
tlement network. Such a position was occupied by e.g. the newly grown industrial
towns (Resicabánya [ReşiŃa, RO], Ózd or Diósgyır), the formerly important towns
that had hopelessly fallen behind (e.g. Szepesbéla [Spišská Belá, SK] or Vízakna
[Ocna Sibiului, RO]), and a lot of small administrative centres – district seats –,
where the administrative functions had not yet been accompanied a more compre-
hensive urbanisation, similarly to the county seats with small population, men-
tioned before. These small centres appear in the map by dozens. Despite the many
“gaps”, the correlation between the hierarchical order and the number of rural
inhabitants supplied seems to be quite close – the correlation coefficient being 0.83
–, but we must not forget that the difference between the towns at the higher hier-
archical level and the small towns are so great that they partly conceal the non-
compatibilities coming from the regional situation.
While the number of rural population supplied by the respective towns mainly
measures the role of these towns in the countryside, the weight of the position they
had in the settlement network, the proportion of the rural and the own population
supplied partly reflects how important role urban functions played in the lives of
the towns, what role the towns played – compared to their size – in the supply of
their surroundings, to what extent they “dominated” the countryside. The “country-
side share” is high in the case of towns where the urban institutions are large-scale
compared to the number of population, or where the urban functions are very
“purely” present (e.g. the overwhelming majority of the population is employed by
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the urban institutions and the share of industrial or agricultural functions is lim-
ited). The “picture” drawn by this index is fundamentally different from the aspects
of the urban network discussed so far, from the image defined by the hierarchy or
the total number of population supplied and the number of the countryside inhabi-
tants served (Figure 10). At the top of the order we find small and medium sized
towns with marked profile, especially from the western counties of Upper Northern
Hungary and Transylvania, occasionally Transdanubia. Most of them are small
county seats or centres with special functions, such as Balázsfalva [Blaj, RO], the
Greek Catholic clerical centre of only two thousand inhabitants, or Liptóújvár
[Liptovský Hrádok, SK] and Szepesszombat [Spišská Sobota, SK], both being dis-
trict seats with less than one thousand inhabitants. Also in the higher regions of this
order we find those county seats that have slightly more population, higher hierar-
chical level but fulfilling political and administrative functions in the first place:
these are Trencsén [Trenčín, SK], Balassagyarmat, Lıcse [Levoča, SK] and Déva
[Deva, RO] (all below the threshold of 10 thousand population), and Eperjes
[Prešov, SK] and Veszprém with their 14–16 thousand inhabitants.
At the top of the urban hierarchy, among the regional centres there were three
towns with extremely high share of the countryside supplied: they were Zágráb
[Zagreb, HR], Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] and Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO]. The
former was assisted in its concentration of urban functions by its vice-capital rank,
Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] by its county with a total of 600,000 inhabitants, while
Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] had an extended hinterland in the also less urbanised
North Transylvania. The further hierarchical order is characterised by the strong
mixing of towns of different size, character and regional position, although typi-
cally there are rather few Great Plain towns among the settlements with a higher
share of rural population served, and even they are “extraordinary” in some sense,
e.g. Kalocsa, an archiepiscopal centre, a “regular” town of a region dominated by
small and middle-sized villages (even though the scattered farms of Kalocsa be-
came independent villages by the turn of the century), or towns outside the region
where settlements followed a country town development path (e.g. Temesvár
[Timişoara, RO], Nagybecskerek [Zrenjanin, SCG] or Kisvárda). The towns in the
Great Hungarian Plain, despite their country town past, were in the fist half of this
hierarchy, supporting the concept that the settlements at the top of the hierarchical
pyramid are able to overcome their “regional disadvantages”, the consequences of
their country town past; e.g. the number of population served by Debrecen was
almost twice as much as the own population of the town, but Zombor [Sombor,
SCG], Szolnok, or Nyíregyháza served more rural inhabitants than the number of
their own population, too. Even Szeged – despite the huge outskirts with scattered
farms, pulling down statistics – “supplied” more rural inhabitants than its own
number of population was.
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The undoubtedly most peculiar towns of Hungary are those that have no visible
hinterlands, and where the share of the rural inhabitants served is negative. We deal
with this group in more details. The researchers who consider towns as central
places do not even regard these settlements as towns (on the other hand, putting
them in the hinterland of other towns is not justifiable, either). In our opinion the
majority of such towns have special hinterlands (because they have urban institu-
tions and functions whose “quantitative” dimensions are measurable), but these
hinterlands can be found within the administrative boundaries of the respective
settlement. The word ‘administrative’ should be emphasised here because a large
part of the population lived in the outskirts – the scattered farms could be consid-
ered as a hinterland.22 The number of such towns is not negligible: the survey of
the hierarchy demonstrated urban functions in 425 settlements, of which 72 fall
into this category (with a total population of 652 thousand!). They are small towns
and district centres, with only one middle town (Hajdúböszörmény). These are
usually extended Great Plain country towns with a large population, but this group
also includes centres, with often large population, of Upper Northern Hungary, also
a few weak district centres and industrial-transport centres of Transylvania, the
Partium and Transdanubia. The country towns of the Great Hungarian Plain had
the largest numbers of population within this group: Hajdúböszörmény had over 28
thousand inhabitants, but Békés, Törökszentmiklós and Csongrád also had more
22 The already cited Tibor Mendöl (who was a consistent representative of the „central place” theory)
did not consider these settlements as towns. He solved the contradiction by saying that the Great
Hungarian Plain country towns consisted of three functionally separate settlements that were
spatially integrated. E.g. Hódmezıvásárhely means the scattered farms of Hódmezıvásárhely
(lonely agricultural settlements), that surrounded the village of Hódmezıvásárhely (a collective
agricultural settlement), which ran around the urban core; the third settlement was the city of
Hódmezıvásárhely, whose inhabitants were engaged in non-agricultural production but supplied
the demand of the agricultural population (Mendöl, T. 1963). The real size of the towns can be
estimated if the corrected number of agricultural earners is drawn from the number of population
(For more details see Mendöl, T.: Városaink valódi nagysági és a helyzeti energiák típusai [The
real size of the Hungarian towns and the type of locational energies]. – Földrajzi Közlemények.
1935. 63. pp. 361–366. and Mendöl, T.: Néhány szó az alföldi városok kérdéséhez [Some words
about issue of the towns in the Great Hungarian Plain]. – Földrajzi Közlemények. 1939. 67. pp.
217–232.). His model was criticised for not considering the existing social unity of the settlements
(i.e. the fact that the large part of the population on the outskirts only temporarily used the scattered
farms, they “lived” in their house in the city, attended religious services and had a social life in the
city etc.) To cite only the most renowned of Mendöl’s critiques, see Erdei, F.: A tanyás település
földrajzi szemlélete [A geographical approach to the scattered farms]. – Földrajzi Közlemények.
1941. 69. pp. 78–95. (Mendöl’s reply to the criticism can be read in Mendöl, T.: Megjegyzések
Erdei Ferenc “A tanyás települések földrajzi szemlélete” c. cikkéhez. [Remarks about Ferenc
Erdei’s article titled “A geographical approach to the scattered farms”]. – Földrajzi Közlemények.
1941. 69. pp. 113–115.) For a detailed analysis of the opposing views see Tímár, L.: A szociológia
és geográfia pörlekedésének egy lezáratlan fejezete [An unfinished chapter of the quarrel between
sociology and geography]. – Tér és Társadalom. 1988. 2. 2. pp. 86–94.
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than 25 thousand inhabitants each. In addition to them, 20 towns of the Great Hun-
garian Plain had more than 10 thousand inhabitants. Moe than 10 thousand people
lived in Mór, a Transdanubian town with a lively agricultural activity (viticulture).
The industrial and mining centre of the Bánát region, Resicabánya [ReşiŃa, RO],
and the industrial suburb of Miskolc, Diósgyır had 17 thousand inhabitants each.
There are several similar settlements in this circle with industrial and transport
functions but less than 10 thousand inhabitants (e.g. Ózd). We have to mention
separately the group of small towns–district seats in east Upper Northern Hungary,
where a part of the population lived on the outskirts, in scattered mountain farms
and sawmills, pulling down the (negative) values of the share of the countryside.
These are a group of settlements where we do not find a significant number of
population supplied with urban goods even within the public administrative
boundaries. All over Hungary we find such weak centres, in between the villages
and the towns, situated at the bottom of the urban hierarchy. As regards the ques-
tion whether there were regions in Hungary where the population was only able to
see the advantages offered by the towns from a distance, this survey cannot give an
exact answer. One thing is sure if we enumerate the settlements without urban
functions: these will not be found in the Great Hungarian Plain. In this region, the
settlements with urban functions “are close at hand”. On the other hand, in some
areas of the eastern part of Upper Northern Hungary, of Transylvania (or South
Transdanubia!), with bad traffic endowments, there were territories as big as dis-
tricts too far from the urban centres.
Finally we can look at the weight of the urban functions in comparison with the
population of the respective settlement (what specific values the individual urban
institutions have) (Figure 10). The figures gained this way influenced to a large
extent the image of the urban character, the urbanisation levels of the respective
settlements, and contributed to the negligence of the urbanisation of the Great
Hungarian Plain (both in qualitative and quantitative aspect), to which many refer-
ences can be found in the geographical literature. In the Great Hungarian Plain the
“specific” values are low; the urban functions were lost in the plethora of agricul-
tural functions. It is evident that the density of the urban functions was related –
although not always in a cause and effect relationship – to the village-like cityscape
and the development – or backward – level of infrastructure in the country towns of
the Great Hungarian Plain, to its peasant-like society etc. At the same time, when
creating the urban types, the primary aspect is the weight of the urban functions
within the settlement; on the basis of this can administrative centres, school towns,
cultural-religious centres etc. be designated.
Looking at the different aspects of the urban functions, the multi-side approach
made the existence of a few marked types of centres probable. The more exact
delineation of these can be done in many ways (e.g. cluster analysis, comparison of
ranks etc.); we used a relatively simple method, the “cross-table analysis” for the
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definition of the different types. In order to secure the manageability of the method
and the results, each time we included three aspects in the survey and we catego-
rised the “indices” into three levels at each aspect (values above average, around
the average and below the average). Thus the settlements were categorised into a
3x3x3 cross-table. From among the many possible groupings of the indices we
briefly evaluate hereby the results of the version done with the inclusion of the
three most characteristic “aspects”.
The indices for typifying were as follows:
– Position in the urban hierarchy
– Regional centres and county seats
– Middle towns and complex small towns
– Deficient small towns and significant centres
– Total number of population supplied
– Number of population supplied above 50 thousand inhabitants
– Number of population supplied between 50 thousand and 10 thousand inhabi-
tants
– Number of population supplied below 10 thousand inhabitants
– Percentage value of the share of the rural areas (extra value)
– The quotient above 150%
– The quotient between 0% and 150%
– The quotient below 0%
Using the 3x3x3 cross-table, theoretically we can have 27 types; in our case, 18
“boxes” contained settlements (12 boxes had five or more settlements). Below we
are briefly introducing these 12 types.
Type 1
High hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
39
10
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
36,487
1,422,976
Population supplied (persons)
136,656
5,329,591
Rural population supplied (persons)
100,170
3,906,615
Significance surplus (per cent)
274.5
Source: Type 1–11 calculated by the authors.
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Type 1 contains the elite group of the Hungarian towns, including 39 towns that
show an above-average figure in all three indices. All regional centres, with the
exception of Szeged, are in this category, together with the most developed county
seats with balanced administrative and economic functions (Szombathely, Sopron,
Székesfehérvár, Marosvásárhely [Târgu Mureş, RO], Miskolc, Nagyszeben [Sibiu,
RO], Komárom [Komarno, SK], Zombor [Sombor, SCG] etc.), also some major
economic and trading centres (Nagykanizsa, Fiume [Rijeka, HR], Baja, Pápa).
Their average number of population exceeds 36 thousand people and they supplied
more than 100 thousand “rural” (i.e. not own) inhabitants. They are located quite
proportionately all over Hungary (Figure 11), especially if we also consider those
six towns of the Great Hungarian Plain that were classified into another group
(Type 2) only because of their low “significance surplus” (e.g. Szeged, Kecskemét,
Szabadka [Subotica, SCG]).
Type 2
High hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
6
6
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
64,581
387,486
Population supplied (persons)
120,581
723,487
Rural population supplied (persons)
56,000
336,001
Significance surplus (per cent)
86.7
Type 3A
High hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
16
0
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
10,667
170,671
Population supplied (persons)
39,670
634,721
Rural population supplied (persons)
29,003
464,050
Significance surplus (per cent)
271.9
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Type 3B
High hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
1
1
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
24,248
24,248
Population supplied (persons)
42,377
42,377
Rural population supplied (persons)
18,129
18,129
Significance surplus (per cent)
74.8
A marked group are made by those county seats in Upper Northern Hungary,
Transylvania and Transdanubia whose population is relatively low compared to
their hierarchy level (less than 11 thousand on the average), accordingly the range
of their urban functions is more limited than in the case of the most prestigious
group (40 thousand people supplied on the average). However, their “centre char-
acter” is marked, the share of urban goods sold to the countryside is high (e.g.
Nagykároly [Carei, RO], Zalaegerszeg, Segesvár [Sighişoara, RO]). The “Great
Plain” subcategory of this type contains only one town, Gyula. Gyula has a dual
character: on the one hand, it is a Great Plain country town, with 34% of its earners
working in agriculture; on the other hand, the share of those employed in industry
is not negligible, either (29%). Also, it is an administrative and trading centre, a
town of offices.
Type 3C
Medium hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
3
0
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
15,126
45,377
Population supplied (persons)
53,923
161,770
Rural population supplied (persons)
38,798
116,393
Significance surplus (per cent)
256.5
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This type contains no more than three settlements: Nagyszombat [Trnava, SK],
Losonc [Lučenec, SK] and Munkács [Mukacheve, UA]. These three towns, with
their population around 15 thousand (and with hinterlands with two or three times
more population) are examples for the most developed middle towns. None of
them is county seat, but they are important centres of one part of their respective
counties, with advanced trade and service functions. Their central role is especially
important in secondary school education and the bank sector.
Type 4
Medium hierarchy level – high number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
2
1
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
58,821
117,642
Population supplied (persons)
86,644
173,288
Rural population supplied (persons)
27,823
55,646
Significance surplus (per cent)
47.3
This group contains only two settlements: Újpest and Hódmezıvásárhely. They
are towns of different character and history: Újpest was home to 55 thousand,
Hódmezıvásárhely to 62 thousand inhabitants at that time, but in Újpest 67% of
the population worked in industry, whereas in Hódmezıvásárhely 61% were agri-
cultural employees. The urban, middle town institutions were rather modest for
their size and mostly supplied the local population. Újpest was the most populated
settlement of the Budapest agglomeration growing at an “American speed”,23 while
Hódmezıvásárhely was one of the biggest country towns in the Great Hungarian
Plain.
23 Beluszky, P: Az elıvárosok útja Nagy-Budapesthez [The way of the suburbs to Greater Budapest].
Essays from the Past of Budapest XXX. Budapest Archives, Bp. 2002. pp. 121–152. p. 123, 126,
134.
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Type 5A
Medium hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
66
7
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
5,996
395,747
Population supplied (persons)
21,758
1,436,039
Rural population supplied (persons)
15,762
1,040,292
Significance surplus (per cent)
262.9
The group – of the middle towns and the “better” small towns with developed
urban functions – contained 66 settlements (with an average population of 6 thou-
sand inhabitants); their position in the urban hierarchy and the weight of the urban
functions did not exceed the average, but they had a high, sometimes very high
“rural” share, and their role in the settlement network was very important (e.g.
Turócszentmárton [Martin, SK], Csíkszereda [Miercurea-Ciuc, RO], Kıszeg, Ka-
locsa, Muraszombat [Murska Sobota, SLO]). This type also involved those county
seats of Upper Northern Hungary and Transylvania that had a small population,
one-sided administrative functions and a rather low position in the urban hierarchy.
They make an extreme group, no matter how we examine them. However, no
country town of the Great Hungarian Plain shows up in this group, maybe some
towns in a special situation and at the edge of the region, such as Kisvárda, Kalocsa
etc.
Type 5B
Low hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
2
0
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
3,631
7,261
Population supplied (persons)
10,764
21,528
Rural population supplied (persons)
7,134
14,267
Significance surplus (per cent)
196.5
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This group contains only two settlements again, Privigye [Prievidza, SK] from
Nyitra county and Felsıır [Oberwart, A] from Vas county. Both settlements are at
the hierarchy level of small towns with deficient functions; this is why they were
omitted from Group 5A, where they should be, on the basis of their character.
Type 6A
Medium hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
54
28
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
14,424
778,909
Population supplied (persons)
22,428
1,211,119
Rural population supplied (persons)
8,004
432,210
Significance surplus (per cent)
55.5
It is a group of many towns – 54 of them –, towns of a similar hierarchy level
and similar weight of urban functions but a “modest” share of the non-urban
population supplied. They include many towns of the Great Hungarian Plain, from
the “middle group” that did not belong to the elite group of the towns but had a
large population; their urban functions were unquestionable and preserved several
characteristics of their country town history. Such towns are, among others,
Kiskunhalas, Cegléd or Makó. Due to them, the average number of population in
this category is over 14 thousand. Besides the towns of the Great Hungarian Plain,
the appearance of some towns in this group is surprising at the first glance, but they
are towns akin to the country towns on the basis of their position in the settlement
network. Such a town is Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK], a constantly declin-
ing mining town that had grown on its own resources and had a large number of
industrial earners; Rózsahegy [Ružomberok, SK] and Salgótarján, also industrial
towns; Paks and Dunaföldvár, both with a “Great Plain” character, and a few small
towns of Transdanubia whose limited role in the life of the countryside is difficult
to explain. In some cases, behind the more limited “significance surplus” we find a
large number of rural population served, so the belonging of these towns to this
category is disputable (e.g. Vác, Mohács, Selmecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK]).
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Type 6B
Medium hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – no share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
7
6
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
19,408
135,855
Population supplied (persons)
15,527
108,686
Rural population supplied (persons)
– 3,881
– 27,169
Significance surplus (per cent)
–20,0
These seven settlements are already among those whose institutions and service
providers were unable to completely supply even their own population with urban
goods. However, they are undoubtedly the most populated members of this group,
at the highest hierarchy level (their average number of population was almost 20
thousand). Five of them are situated in the middle region of the Great Hungarian
Plain (two of them are Hajdú towns), one is a small town in Transdanubia: Mór.
Their common feature is the very high share of agricultural earners, over 70%. Mór
has the most Great Plain and Hegyalja region features in Transdanubia.
Type 7A
Medium hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
3
0
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
3,226
9,677
Population supplied (persons)
8,916
26,747
Rural population supplied (persons)
5,690
17,070
Significance surplus (per cent)
176.4
This group contains three small towns, only; to from Transylvania and one from
Upper Northern Hungary. Actually they should be put in group 5A; what differen-
tiates them from the members of Group 5 A is the low number of population (on
the average, only 3200 people lived in these settlements), consequently the total
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number of the population supplied remains below 10 thousand. The role in the
supply of their surroundings is more important; on the average they provided some
5,700 “rural inhabitants” with urban services at a certain level.
Type 7B
Medium hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
11
3
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
4,778
52,555
Population supplied (persons)
7,659
84,245
Rural population supplied (persons)
2,881
31,690
Significance surplus (per cent)
60.3
This group involves 11 settlements, with an average population of 4,700. They
are small towns with weak central functions, mostly from Upper Northern Hungary
and Transylvania, including towns with more advanced industrial functions (e.g.
Szerencs or Vajdahunyad [Hunedoara, RO]). There are a few towns in this cate-
gory in the Great Hungarian Plain too (Fehérgyarmat, Titel [Titel, SCG]), but they
are not typical Great Plain country towns.
Type 7C
Medium hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – no share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
2
2
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
12,207
24,413
Population supplied (persons)
8,700
17,399
Rural population supplied (persons)
– 3,507
– 7,014
Significance surplus (per cent)
–28.7
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This group contains only two small towns of the Great Hungarian Plain: Jász-
apáti and Battonya. They hardly fit into the group of complete small towns;
actually the institutions of these towns are unable to supply even their own popula-
tion completely.
Type 8A
Low hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
11
6
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
8,206
90,269
Population supplied (persons)
12,717
139,882
Rural population supplied (persons)
4,510
49,613
Significance surplus (per cent)
55.0
The settlements in this group are mostly small towns with deficient functions,
but a relatively large average number of population (8,200); their significance sur-
plus is limited. Their central functions are weak; they are more of agricultural and
small town character. Half of the 11 settlements can be found in the Great Hun-
garian Plain (more exactly at the edge of the Great Plain), but there are towns from
Transdanubia (Csorna, Tolna), the Partium (Borosjenı [Ineu, RO]) and also Tran-
sylvania. There is only one where the industrial character is dominant (Petrozsény
[Petroşeni, RO]), and one that used to be a settlement with central functions but
had already lost its former importance and some of its functions (Barcs).
Type 8B
Low hierarchy level – medium number of population supplied – no share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
6
5
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
17,381
104,283
Population supplied (persons)
13,333
80,001
Rural population supplied (persons)
– 4,047
– 24,282
Significance surplus (per cent)
–23.3
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These six settlements are also small towns with deficient functions, all from the
Great Hungarian Plain, with only one exception. They are not so much country
towns, rather giant villages (e.g. Mezıberény, Törökszentmiklós), their population
is outstandingly high (17,400 people on the average!), their urban character is
weak. This group also contains Resicabánya [ReşiŃa, RO], a mining and industrial
centre of the Bánát area (where the share of industrial earners was 68%!). This is a
proof for the fact that the industrial activity in itself is not an urbanising factor.
Type 9
Low hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – high share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
36
0
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
1,867
67,199
Population supplied (persons)
5,757
207,247
Rural population supplied (persons)
3,890
140,048
Significance surplus (per cent)
208.4
The total of those small towns that have both low hierarchy level and volume of
urban functions, but very much different “rural share” can be divided into three
groups. These types involve almost half of all settlement that we registered as
towns: a total of 197 small towns. Group 10 involves 36 settlements, district cen-
tres and small towns with deficient functions. The number of their population is
very low (usually below 2,000, in some cases less than one thousand people), on
the average they supply another 3,900 people in their surroundings with urban
goods. They are small centres that seem to be insignificant within the total of the
urban network, but their role should not be underrated, since they are located in
regions without urban centres. There is not one such town in the Great Hungarian
Plain, very few within the present territory of Hungary, they are more typical in the
townless areas of Transylvania, in the present Burgenland, the Partium and in the
northern part of Upper Northern Hungary.
This group involves over a hundred settlements, district centres that can hardly
be called towns and small towns, with deficient functions. This is a varied group of
settlements, besides some municipalities grown on industry and transport most of
them have an agricultural character and the majority of them have central functions
with restrictions. The average number of their population is only 3,500 people, and
they offer their limited range of services to not more than 2,000 inhabitants in their
surroundings. These settlements can be found in all regions of Hungary (quite a
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few of them in Transdanubia), less than one-fifth in the Great Hungarian Plain.
They are mostly elevated from anonymity by the district centre role that they had
been awarded at the creation of the bourgeois administration; the majority of them
fell back to their former insignificance; but we also find declining, formerly more
prosperous small towns and rural centres in special situation in this group. These
are settlements among which only a few managed to become real towns in the sec-
ond half of the 20th century (e.g. Ráckeve).
Type 10
Low hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – medium share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
104
18
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
3,564
370,648
Population supplied (persons)
5,435
565,276
Rural population supplied (persons)
1,871
194,628
Significance surplus (per cent)
52.5
Type 11
Low hierarchy level – low number of population supplied – no share
of non-urban residents supplied
Number of settlements
Total
Of which in the Great Plain
57
32
Average
Total
Population of towns (persons)
6,803
387,762
Population supplied (persons)
4,520
257,650
Rural population supplied (persons)
–2,283
–130,112
Significance surplus (per cent)
–33.6
Finally the settlements on the brink of urban existence made the third sub-type,
settlements that were at the bottom of any rank, the capacity of their urban institu-
tions – according to theoretical calculations – were not even enough to supply their
own population. These 57 settlements that make the last group (together with the
104 settlements of the former category) have a character that may not even be
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called urban. Our designation must have been quite generous, when we set the
lower limit at a very limited number of urban institutions. This group of settlement
at the bottom of the urban hierarchy, with less than 10 thousand inhabitants sup-
plied and without a share in the provision of the rural population, nevertheless de-
serves our attention; not only because it contains several settlements with urban
rank (which, considering the fact that the number of settlements with urban rank
was less than 140 in Hungary, something that should not be overlooked), but also
because it is a complex group, with a territorial heterogeneity. The average number
of population in the settlements making this group is 6,800, but there are quite a
few settlements with over 10 thousand inhabitants. More than half of these settle-
ments are country towns and giant villages in the Great Hungarian Plain, although
not necessarily with typical country town history; also, some suburbs of industrial
and agglomeration character and a few industrial and mining centres can be found
here. This group also involves the weak district centres of east Upper Northern
Hungary that have no significance surplus. In order to demonstrate the versatility it
is enough to make a list of the settlements with urban rank in this group. An exam-
ple of the country towns of the Great Plain is Túrkeve in the Nagykunság region
(with 13 thousand inhabitants), where the urban rank reminds of the former be-
longing to the privileged areas, but the urban rank had no real content at the time
that is the focal point of our survey. The formerly important Transylvanian and
Upper Northern Hungarian mining towns are also represented in this group
(Vízakna [Ocna Sibiului, RO], Felsıbánya [Baia Sprie, RO], Újbánya [Nová Baňa,
SK]), they claimed right to their urban rank only by their more glorious past. In
addition to them there is one Saxon town of the Szepesség area, Szepesbéla
[Spišská Belá, SK], with modest district centre roles.
5 A brief description of the respective hierarchy levels
5.1 Budapest
Buda and Pest approached the development level and significance (but not the
number of population) of the European big cities by the end of the 15th century,
especially as regards its power and political weight. The large economic and re-
gional rearrangement taking place on the beginning of the New Era pushed Hun-
gary and Pest-Buda to the periphery of Europe, and after the Turkish conquest (in
1541) it ceased to be a “European” city for a long time. After being taken back
from the Turks in 1681 it was reborn as a provincial town and it only became the
evident centre of Hungary in the late 18th century. Its legal status was not unambi-
guous: the royal seat and some of the government offices were in Vienna, the Hun-
garian Parliament usually had its sessions in Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], but the gov-
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ernor representing the king and the centre of the executive power of Hungary, i.e.
the council of governor-general were located in Buda. The capitalist development
connected to the boom of agriculture, the bourgeois development and the inde-
pendence efforts – demand for an “own” national institutions, university, museum,
theatre, library and academy and the location of these in Buda and Pest – made
these towns the most important economic, trading and intellectual centres of Hun-
gary by the mid–19th century. Their population increased from just 50 thousand in
the late 18th century to over one hundred thousand by 1831 and 173 thousand by
the civil revolution (data from 1851). At the end of the 18th and the beginning of
the 19th century, the baroque Pest of ground floor or one-storey houses was slowly
re-built by two- and three-storey classicist public buildings, tenement homes,
mostly within the city walls. The defeat of the war of independence only set back
the development temporarily, the bourgeois era opened up enormous development
possibilities for Pest-Buda. In the middle of the 19th century there was a rather wide
gap between Hungary and Western Europe as regards the economic and technical
development, the urbanisation level and the bourgeois development of the society.
When the possibilities of “catching up” were finally created in Hungary, the large
“difference of tension” between the two “poles” launched a very rapid modernisa-
tion in Hungary. The temporal coincidence of the new conditions and motivations
of catching up also promoted rapid modernisation. In Hungary, after 1848 and
1867 the social, political and legal conditions of bourgeois development were born
almost parallel, the creation of the legal and organisational frameworks of the soci-
ety mostly preceded the real processes; the international conditions of economic
development were favourable (surplus of capital in Western Europe, agricultural
boom); the regaining of the (limited) national sovereignty, the acquisition of the
tools of technical-technological (industrial) “revolution” etc. all contributed to the
development. These modernisation processes of different origin had a “junction” in
Budapest: the regaining of national sovereignty made Budapest the centre of politi-
cal life, a “counter-pole” of Vienna; the revolution of transport and the national
railway policy made Budapest the transport centre of Hungary; the splendid trans-
port location and the agricultural boom made Budapest the centre of crops trade
and mill industry. By 1870, each Hungarian region had direct links to the capital
city. This created the most important condition for Budapest to rule the national
market. The leading position in crops trade gave Budapest a dominant share in
finance institutes activities, in the credit market and the foundation of industrial
companies.
After the Compromise Budapest became the capital city of a state with almost
20 million inhabitants (the population of Hungary – including Croatia – was 15.5
million in 1870, and it exceeded 20 million by 1910). Budapest became the centre
of the political life and the civil public administration, a seat of a large number of
institutions and bureaus. The Hungarian state leadership had a conscious effort to
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increase Hungary’s economic and political weight within the Monarchy; part of
these efforts was the “catching up” of Budapest to the level of Vienna, the rivalry
between the two cities.
This is how Budapest became the bridgehead of foreign capital, technical civili-
sation, modern economy, bank capital, manufacturing industry, innovations, new
social concepts, and artistic trends, in another word, modernisation in the Carpa-
thian Basin by the beginning of the century, when the “sub-centres” of modernisa-
tion were limited both in number and quality in Hungary. Thus the “disproportion-
ately big weight” of Budapest compared to Hungary, even more to the urban net-
work is not linked to Trianon. At the turn of the century, Budapest showed multiple
figures compared to its population in the measurable indices of “development”
(Table 17). As we have already seen, the capital city is high above the other Hun-
garian towns as regards the number of population supplied with urban goods and
also the number of rural population supplied. This outstanding position led to the
extremely rapid growth of the population of Budapest (Table 18), the transforma-
tion of the city and its rapid expansion, and also the appearance of technical inno-
vations early (1878: electric public lighting; 1881: telephone; 1887: tram; 1896:
underground etc.). In the Dualist era, all national functions and institutions chose
Budapest as the centre (with the exception of the church organisation). The out-
standing position of Budapest in the urban network is reflected in the character of
its society. The most characteristic and still tangible feature of the society of Buda-
pest is difference, being other than the rest; it can be demonstrated by many statis-
tical data. Budapest was an almost purely industrial – public services – intellectual
city in an agricultural country, with a young age pyramid and good indices of
school education.
Table 17
Budapest’s weight within Hungary, 1910
(Without Croatia and Slavonia)
Indices
In
Budapest’s
share in %
Hungary
Budapest
Number of population
18,064,533
880,371
4.8
Telephone calls, 1000 calls
171,951
71,396
41.5
Stock of savings, 1000 crowns
3 861,277
768,496
19.9
Telegrams sent, 1000 pcs.
9,209
2,427
26.4
Mortgage on buildings, 1000 crowns
1,196,376
733,373
61.3
Employees on industrial companies
392,939
128,358
32.7
Earners in trade
278,104
64,881
23.3
Number of higher education students
14,021
8,675
61.9
Source: Statistical Yearbook, 1910.
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Table 18
Change of the population of Budapest in 1851–1910**
1851
1857
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
Number of population
172,935
191,796
269,293
360,551
492,237
717,681
880,371
Share from the Hungarian
1.5
1.5
2.0
2.6
3.2
4.3
4.8
population, %
Annual growth, persons
–
3,144
5,961
9,126
13,169
22,544
16,269
1851 = 100%
–
110.9
155.7
208.5
284.6
415.0
509.1
* Without Croatia and Slavonia; ** Civil population.
Source: Vörös, K. 1978.
However, an element of being different even more important than the differ-
ences in employment statistics is the fact the bourgeois society only appeared in
Budapest in its entirety by the turn of the century. On the other hand, the develop-
ment of the capital city was only partly “organic”; foreign capital played a signifi-
cant role in this process, but the population of the capital city was also “foreign” to
large extent; at the time of the first census (in 1870), of 1,000 Budapest inhabitants
633 had not been born in the capital city and 151 of them had moved to the capital
city from abroad. The case of Budapest is peculiar in the sense that the immigrants,
and also a large part of the local residents were of “foreign” origin; either German
speaking or citizens of other nationality of the Monarchy, or Jewish. In 1870, only
46% of the population designated Hungarian as their mother tongue. A special role
was played in the development of the bourgeois society of the capital city by the
population of Jewish origin. Their proportion reached 20% by 1880 and 23% by
1910. Their population increase was faster than the growth of the otherwise rapidly
growing population of the whole of the capital city. Their share from the typical
bourgeois occupations is two or three times higher than their proportion in the
population; also, in some districts of Budapest, two-fifths of the population was of
Jewish origin.
The consequences of the difference coming from the foreign origin of the citi-
zens, and the development of the bourgeois society in entirety are varied. Because
it was only Budapest where the complete structure of the bourgeois society was
built out, and the institutions and “culture” etc. of this etc. could only develop here,
the other cities and towns of Hungary, the citizens living elsewhere had a sort of
subordinate relationship to the capital city; this relationship is manifested in the
institutional relations (e.g. at the turn of the century almost all financial institutions
of Hungary were dependant on the finance institutions of Budapest; the Budapest
commodity exchange controlled cereal market etc.). In “cultural consumption” too
the countryside was doomed to “follow the example of Budapest”.
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5.2 Regional centres
As soon as in the early 19th century, in addition to Pest-Buda there were a few cit-
ies emerging from the “usual” rural cities; e.g. Pozsony [Bratislva, SK], the trading
city with a large number of population, home to the national assemblies, and an
administrative centre; Debrecen that can be seen as the centre of a large region,
with its handicrafts since the Turkish occupation, its fairs attracting the whole of
the eastern part of Hungary, and its protestant college; Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca,
RO], the spiritual centre of Transylvania; and maybe Szeged, the crops trading city
of the South; Kassa [Košice, SK], the cultural and administrative centre of Upper
Northern Hungary, with some “medieval” touch. However, the attraction of these
cities did not “cover” the whole of Hungary, and their functions attracting large
regions were one-sided and “accidental”.
The Dualist era, on the other hand, systematically selected a few cities from
among the settlements in each large region, and these settlements made a definitely
separate hierarchy level by the early 20th century. The birth of regional centres was
promoted on the one hand by the selection of the seats of administrative institutions
with authority over several counties, although this effect was lessened by the fact
that the general administration did not recognise administrative units bigger than
the counties (i.e. “districts”) in the Dualist era. Probably the most important conse-
quence of the location of these high prestige institutions was not that they added a
few building blocks to the “construction” of the urban functions; what was more
important is that they offered orientation points for the “location” of other – mar-
ket-based – urban functions. On the other hand, the hierarchical penetration model
of the urban functions of high hierarchy value contributed to the rise of the regional
centres; these urban functions were systematically descending on the urban slope,
making the settlements that they “reached” rather uniform. The regional centres of
the 20th century thus had more or less the same functions; the urbanisation elements
of them had been more or less integrated, indicating that these cities were parts of
an integrating national system.
The “separation” of the first ten settlements in Table 23 from the lower levels is
evident, on the basis of the presence of regional functions (institutions). However,
the positions of Arad [Arad, RO] and Brassó [Braşov, RO] are transitory: they did
not possess half of the regional institutions that we considered in our survey. When
assessing their situation, we have to consider that some of the settlements
categorised as county seats also had regional institutions; most such institutions
could be found in Szombathely, Sopron and Marosvásárhely [Târgu Mureş, RO],
Miskolc, Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO] and Szabadka [Subotica, SCG], and another 24
towns where institutions of regional importance operated, but usually only one of
them.
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Arad [Arad, RO] can be categorised among the centres of large regions mostly
by its economic role and services of regional importance, but first of by the volume
of its urban functions; following Budapest and Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], the financial
institutions of Arad [Arad, RO] kept the largest amount of deposits. In the order
given by our method used for measuring the volume of the urban functions – see
above –, Arad [Arad, RO] has the 8th position, with just 250,000 inhabitants sup-
plied, while the same figure for Fiume [Rijeka, HR] – at the 9th position – is only
181,000. However, Arad [Arad, RO] could only have relatively few regional ad-
ministrative institutions – in a region surrounded by centres such as Temesvár
[Timişoara, RO], Szeged and Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO]. (We have to remark that a
former survey of ours, on the basis of data from 1900, also placed Arad among the
regional centres, although at the last position.) The position of Brassó [Braşov, RO]
is disputable, although the number of its regional institutions is similar to that in
Arad [Arad, RO]. Brassó [Braşov, RO] was made a significant centre mainly by its
three-lingual character; this language feature doubled and tripled several of its in-
stitutions, mainly in the field of culture and education, publishing newspapers and
books, but even of finance institutions, insurance companies and trade. The volume
of its urban functions lagged behind those of the regional centres, several towns
categorised into a lower hierarchy level (Fiume [Rijeka, HR], Miskolc, Szabadka
[Subotica, SCG], and Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO]) preceded Brassó [Braşov, RO] that
only had the 16th position behind them. Finally we decided to list Arad [Arad, RO]
and Brassó [Braşov, RO] among the regional centres, emphasising their transitory
situation between the “large regional centres” and the county seats.
If we also consider the amount of urban functions, the following differentiation
can be made among the regional centres:
Zágráb
Pozsony
Temesvár
Kolozsvár
Nagyvárad
Debrecen
Szeged
Kassa
Pécs
Gyır
Arad
Brassó
When assessing the position of Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], we have to consider that
during our survey we did not consider the “national” institutions, and that Zágráb
[Zagreb, HR], the capital city of Croatia–Slavonia with restricted sovereignty, was
home to the Sabor (the Croatian Parliament), the Croatian Ban (Head of Croatia-
Slavonia, appointed by the king upon the recommendation of the Hungarian prime
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minister, and responsible to the Sabor), ministerial institutions in the field of reli-
gious and education affairs and jurisdiction, the Croatian Academy of Sciences, the
national museum etc., so the hierarchical rank of Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] is well
above the other regional centres of Hungary, as it was revealed by the figures of
our survey.
The average population of the regional centres was just 66 thousand in 1910,
i.e. they were not more than middle towns by the contemporary European measure.
It is also true, on the other hand, that they had just exceeded the threshold of
30,000 inhabitants in the beginning of the Dualist times, and many had 20-21 thou-
sand inhabitants, only. In 1910 Brassó [Braşov, RO], Kassa [Košice, SK] and Gyır
had a population below 45 thousand, and Pécs had less than 50 thousand inhabi-
tants, too. The smaller number of population of the regional centres limited the
possibilities of a complex urban life (i.e. a life beyond the operation of the “com-
pulsory” institutions, mainly in the field of culture, arts, entertainment institutions
etc.), although the signs of this were already visible in the early 20th century in the
bigger countryside towns of Hungary: some institutions appeared (e.g. the scien-
tific life, theatre culture and film industry of Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO], the
literature activity, and the press of Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO], the “modern” enter-
tainment facilities of Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] – swimming pool, ice rink etc.).
Lacking contemporary surveys and data, we can only estimate how big the
background – hinterland – was on which these cities could rely on for their “sub-
sistence” and development and which they served with big city functions. As re-
gards the latter, we have to remark that probably a very narrow layer of the popu-
lation used the services of the institutions with regional functions in these large
regional centres. The respective “administrative institutions” of regional compe-
tence usually did not even have relationships with their hinterlands that were based
on personal connections; the “subjects” of the attraction were thus state officers in
the first place. The attraction of most of the other institutions of regional hierarchy
level – some large banks, insurance companies, secondary schools, wholesale trad-
ers etc. – was also limited to very narrow layers of the “rural” society: the more
well-off actors of the economy, freelance persons, more qualified intellectuals, or
they kept in touch with the population of the small towns and villages via “media-
tors” (the small groceries, or small towns’ tradesmen “distributed” the goods of the
wholesale traders, the faraway crop traders had commission-agents in the larger
villages and smaller towns, the “cultural radiation” was spread by the press prod-
ucts etc.). This way the attraction of the regional functions was of low intensity and
the boundaries of these attractions blurred. The designation of the hinterlands of
the big cities is not alleviated by the consideration of the operational territories of
the state bureaus, either, because although the operational territories of these insti-
tutions were of course precisely delimited, the territories ordered to the respective
institutions rarely coincided – which is understandable, anyway, given their differ-
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ent numbers –, resulting in a rather complicated territorial division (Figure 12).
Thus we can say that the population in the “potential” hinterlands of the regional
centres rarely exceeded one million. In the “core” of the regional hinterland of
Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] one and a half million people lived, but this hinterland was
almost completely a traditional agricultural area, with negligible level of urbanisa-
tion. The whole of Croatia–Slavonia can be considered as the potential hinterland
of Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] – the operational territory of some institutions of national
competence did cover the whole of the “associate state”, but the Szerémség region
and Verıce county gravitated to Hungarian cities: Pécs, Szeged or Újvidék [Novi
Sad, SCG] etc., at least in an economic sense. The regional hinterland of Kolozsvár
[Cluj-Napoca, RO] could include the whole of Transylvania, too, despite the fact
that Brassó [Braşov, RO] was categorised at the bottom of the regional centres, but
the population of Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO], situated in a part of Hungary di-
vided in linguistic, cultural and religious aspect and also in a bad transport situa-
tion, did not exceed one million. Around the same number of population lived in
the hinterlands of Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], Szeged, Kassa [Košice, SK], Debre-
cen, Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] and Pécs, whereas the hinterlands of Nagyvárad
[Oradea, RO], Arad [Arad, RO] and Brassó [Braşov, RO] were home to even less
inhabitants (Table 19). This also means that in Hungary, a country of 18 million
people (over 20 million with Croatia-Slavonia), surprisingly enough, there were no
regions with 2.5–3 million inhabitants, integrated around a given big city, which
could have guaranteed the growth of “real” countryside big cities. (In the changed
state territories some of the former regional centres of course had a new situation,
especially Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] and Pozsony [Bratislava, SK]; they were the capi-
tal cities of not regions but of macro-regions, later of independent countries. Nev-
ertheless this does not contradict our statements above.)
The urban history of the regional centres was rather varied, but the “location” of
regional functions among the city walls still made these cities similar to each other
in many respects. Their employment structure was quite uniform, apart from
Szeged and Debrecen (Figure 13), two cities of country town past: in 1910 the
share of agricultural activities among the earners was 34% and 23% in Szeged and
Debrecen, respectively (however, the majority of the agricultural earners lived in
the scattered farms on the outskirts, so the employment structure of the inner areas
of these two cities resembled those of the other cities). In all other towns, the share
of agriculture from employment remained below 10%. The majority of the active
earners of the regional centres, on the average 52.8% of them were employed in the
tertiary sector already in 1910 (Table 19).
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Figure 12a
Headquarters and Scope of Gendarme Districts
ÁRVA
TRENCSÉN
SÁROS
SZEPES
LIPTÓ
TURÓC
UNG
ZÓLYOM
GÖMÖR ÉS
Kassa
NYITRA
KISHONT
ABAÚJ-TORNA
BEREG
BARS
ZEMPLÉN
POZSONY
MÁRAMAROS
T i s z a
HONT
UGOCSA
Pozsony
D
NÓGRÁD
u n a
SZABOLCS
SZATMÁR
BORSOD
MOSON
-
t ó
ESZTERGOM
HEVES
e
r
t ı
F
KOMÁROM
SOPRON
GYİR
HAJDÚ
Budapes JtÁSZ-NAGYKUN-
SZILÁGY
BESZTERCE-NASZÓD
Debrecen
FEJÉR
SZOLNOK
PEST-PILIS-SOLT-
VAS
VESZPRÉM
SZOLNOK-DOBOKA
KISKUN
BIHAR
Székesfehérvár
Kolozsvár
KOLOZS
MAROS-TORDA
CSÍK
B a l a t o n
BÉKÉS
ZALA
TORDA-ARANYOS
CSONGRÁD
TOLNA
UDVARHELY
KIS-KÜKÜLLİ
SOMOGY
CSANÁD
ARAD
ALSÓ-FEHÉR
NAGY-KÜKÜLLİ
VARASD
HÁROMSZÉK
Szeged
BELOVÁR-KİRÖS
S z á v
BARANYA
a
FOGARAS
Brassó
HUNYAD
D r
SZEBEN
BRASSÓ
á v a
Zágráb
VERİCE
TEMES
BÁCS-BODROG
TORONTÁL
T
FIUME
ZÁGRÁB
i s z a
KRASSÓ-SZÖRÉNY
POZSEGA
MODRUS-FIUME
SZERÉM
1
S z á v a
LIKA-KRBAVA
D u n a
2
Keys: 1 – Headquarter; 2 – Border of Gendarme District; 3 – Borders of Counties.
Source: Designed by Beluszky, P.
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Figure 12b
Headquarters and Scope of Notary Chambers
ÁRVA
TRENCSÉN
SÁROS
SZEPES
LIPTÓ
TURÓC
UNG
Kassa
ZÓLYOM
GÖMÖR ÉS
NYITRA
KISHONT
ABAÚJ-TORNA
BEREG
BARS
ZEMPLÉN
POZSONY
T i s z a
MÁRAMAROS
Pozsony
HONT
UGOCSA
D u
NÓGRÁD
n a
SZABOLCS
SZATMÁR
BORSOD
MOSON
-
t
ó
ESZTERGOM
HEVES
e
r
t ı
F
KOMÁROM
SOPRON
GYİR
Debrecen
HAJDÚ
BudapestJÁSZ-NAGYKUN-
SZILÁGY
BESZTERCE-NASZÓD
Szombathely
FEJÉR
PEST-PILIS-SOLT-
SZOLNOK
VAS
VESZPRÉM
SZOLNOK-DOBOKA
KISKUN
BIHAR
KOLOZS
Kolozsvár
MAROS-TORDA
CSÍK
BÉKÉS
B a l a t o n
ZALA
TORDA-ARANYOS
CSONGRÁD
TOLNA
UDVARHELY
KIS-KÜKÜLLİ
SOMOGY
CSANÁD
ARAD
ALSÓ-FEHÉR
Arad
NAGY-KÜKÜLLİ
VARASD
Szeged
HÁROMSZÉK
Pécs
S
BELOVÁR-KİRÖS
z á v a
BARANYA
FOGARAS
HUNYAD
D r á
SZEBEN
Temesvár
BRASSÓ
v a
VERİCE
TEMES
BÁCS-BODROG
TORONTÁL
FIUME
ZÁGRÁB
T i s z a
KRASSÓ-SZÖRÉNY
POZSEGA
MODRUS-FIUME
SZERÉM
1
S z á v a
LIKA-KRBAVA
D u n a
2
Kesy: 1 – Borders of Scope of Chambers; 2 – Headquarters.
Source: Designed by Beluszky, P.
Figure 12c
Headquarters and Scope of Commercial and Industrial Chambers
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ÁRVA
TRENCSÉN
SÁROS
SZEPES
LIPTÓ
TURÓC
Breznóbánya
Kassa
UNG
ZÓLYOM
GÖMÖR ÉS
NYITRA
KISHONT ABAÚJ-TORNA
BEREG
BARS
ZEMPLÉN
POZSONY
T i s z a
MÁRAMAROS
Pozsony
HONT
UGOCSA
Miskolc
D
NÓGRÁD
u n
SZABOLCS
a
SZATMÁR
BORSOD
MOSON
-
t ó
Gyır
ESZTERGOM
HEVES
e
r t ı
Debrecen
F
KOMÁROM
SOPRON
GYİR
HAJDÚ
Sopron
BudapestJÁSZ-NAGYKUN-
SZILÁGY
BESZTERCE-NASZÓD
FEJÉR
Nagyvárad
PEST-PILIS-SOLT
- SZOLNOK
VAS
VESZPRÉM
SZOLNOK-DOBOKA
KISKUN
BIHAR
Kolozsvár
KOLOZS
MAROS-TORDA
CSÍK
B a l a t o n
BÉKÉS
ZALA
TORDA-ARANYOS
CSONGRÁD
Marosvásárhly
TOLNA
UDVARHELY
KIS-KÜKÜLLİ
SOMOGY
CSANÁD
ARAD
ALSÓ-FEHÉR
Arad
NAGY-KÜKÜLLİ
VARASD
Pécs
Szeged
HÁROMSZÉK
S
BELOVÁR-KİRÖS
z
Brassó
á
BARANYA
v a
FOGARAS
HUNYAD
D r
SZEBEN
BRASSÓ
á v
Temesvár
a
VERİCE
TEMES
BÁCS-BODROG
TORONTÁL
T
FIUME
ZÁGRÁB
i s z a
KRASSÓ-SZÖRÉNY
POZSEGA
MODRUS-FIUME
SZERÉM
1
S z á v a
LIKA-KRBAVA
D u n a
2
Kesy: 1– Borders of Scope of Chambers; 2 – Headqarters.
Source: Designed by Beluszky, P.
Figure 12d
107
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Headquarters and Scope of Royal Suppreme Courts
ÁRVA
TRENCSÉN
SÁROS
SZEPES
LIPTÓ
TURÓC
UNG
Kassa
ZÓLYOM
GÖMÖR ÉS
NYITRA
KISHONT
ABAÚJ-TORNA
BEREG
BARS
ZEMPLÉN
POZSONY
MÁRAMAROS
T i s z a
Pozsony
HONT
UGOCSA
D
NÓGRÁD
u n a
SZABOLCS
SZATMÁR
BORSOD
MOSON
-
t
ó
Gyır
ESZTERGOM
HEVES
Debrecen
e
r t ı
F
KOMÁROM
SOPRON
GYİR
HAJDÚ
Budapest JÁSZ-NAGYKUN-
SZILÁGY
BESZTERCE-NASZÓD
FEJÉR
SZOLNOK
PEST-PILIS-SOLT-
Nagyvárad
VAS
VESZPRÉM
SZOLNOK-DOBOKA
KISKUN
Kolozsvár
BIHAR
KOLOZS
MAROS-TORDA
CSÍK
B a l a t o n
BÉKÉS
ZALA
TORDA-ARANYOS
Marosvásárhely
CSONGRÁD
TOLNA
UDVARHELY
KIS-KÜKÜLLİ
SOMOGY
CSANÁD
ARAD
ALSÓ-FEHÉR
Pécs
NAGY-KÜKÜLLİ
VARASD
HÁROMSZÉK
Szeged
BELOVÁR-K
Temesvár
İRÖS
S z á v
BARANYA
a
FOGARAS
HUNYAD
D r
SZEBEN
á
BRASSÓ
v a
VERİCE
TEMES
BÁCS-BODROG
TORONTÁL
T
FIUME
ZÁGRÁB
i s z a
KRASSÓ-SZÖRÉNY
POZSEGA
1
MODRUS-FIUME
SZERÉM
2
S z á v a
LIKA-KRBAVA
D u n a
Keys: 1 – Borders of Scope of Suppreme Courts 2 – Headqarters.
Source: Designed by Beluszky, P.
108
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Table 19
Main characteristics of the regional centres, 1910
City
Legal
Value of regional
Number
Population
From
Earners Earners in
Volume
status,
functions
of population
supplied
which:
in trade
public
of deposits
adminis-
with urban share of
services
in finance
trative admini- services
total
1870
1910
goods
rural
institu-
role*
stration
population
tions*●
I. Full centres
Zágráb
Mc Cs-Ds
13
15
28
20,402
79,038
447,042
368,004
4,425
5,103
117.6
Pozsony
Mc Cs-Ds
12
15
27
46,540
78,223
297,058
218,835
3,552
3,154
70.4
Kolozsvár
Mc Cs-Ds
12
15
27
26,638
60,808
252,166
191,358
2,618
3,150
35.2
Kassa
Mc Cs-Ds
13
14
27
21,742
44,211
170,463
126,252
1,833
1,926
23.4
Debrecen
Mc Cs-Ds
11
14
25
46,111
92,729
272,468
179,739
3,281
2,648
42.8
Temesvár
Mc Cs-Ds
12
13
25
36,844
72,555
273,395
200,840
3,413
2,848
56.0
II. Centres with deficient functions
Szeged
Mc
11
11
22
71,022 118,328
261,168
142,840
3,165
2,552
40.7
Nagyvárad
Mc Cs-Ds
9
12
21
28,698
64,169
290,976
226,807
3,488
2,760
50.5
Pécs
Mc Cs-Ds
9
11
20
23,863
49,822
172,468
122,646
1,808
1,852
24.5
Gyır
Mc Cs-Ds
7
11
18
26,225
44,300
161,859
117,559
1,989
1,566
28.0
III. Centres with partial functions
Arad
Mc Cs-Ds
3
10
13
32,725
63,166
250,326
187,160
2,691
2,096
77.7
Brassó
Ct Cs-Ds
5
8
13
27,766
41,056
143,569
102,513
1,772
1,431
23.6
Average
–
–
–
–
34,048
66,306
249,413
179,046
2,836
2,596
49.2
*Mc = municipal city; Ct = corporate town; Cs = county seat; Ds = district seat. ** Million crowns.
Source: Calculated by the authors, Hungarian Statistical Yearbook.
109
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Table 20
Employment structure at the respective hierarchy levels, 1910
Hierarchy level
Average Number of
Earners in
Standard deviation of the earners in
number
earners in agriculture industry
tertiary
industry agriculture industry
tertiary
industry
of earners industry
sector
& trade
sector
& trade
& trade (?)
%
by levels
I. Regional centres
33,328
16,902
10,8
36,4
52,8
50,7
88,2
14,4
12,9
11,2
II. County seats
11,051
4,763
21,0
30,1
48,9
43,1
59,7
20,7
19,0
20,7
III. Middle towns
6,418
2,491
35,5
29,1
35,4
38,8
58,5
39,9
37,7
36,1
IV. Small towns
2,493
826
45,6
24,7
29,6
33,1
44,1
46,1
39,9
42,5
V. Settlements with
district centre
1,718
546
49,4
24,6
26,0
31,8
39,9
57,8
37,5
51,9
functions
Source: Calculated by the authors.
110
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Figure 13
Structure of employment in regional centres, 1910
90
0
1
80
0
2
70
0
3
60
0
4
5
0
0
5
4
0
0
6
7
3
0
0
7
5
2
0
0
8
1
0
0
9
3
9
10
12 11
1
8
2
6 4
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Keys: 1 – Zágráb [Zagreb, HR]; 2 – Pozsony [Bratislava, SK]; 3 – Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO];
4 – Kassa [Košice, SK]; 5 – Debrecen; 6 – Timisoara; 7 – Szeged; 8 – Nagyvárad [Oradea,
RO] 9 – Pécs; 10 – Gyır; 11 – Arad [Arad, RO]; 12 – Brassó [Braşov, RO].
Source: Designed by Beluszky. P.
Croatia did not return to the state territory of Hungary in the narrower sense
even after the end of the Turkish occupation. The bigger part of its territory was a
military frontier region administered directly from Vienna until the mid–19th cen-
tury. Its natural centre was Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], dominating the Zágráb Basin, in
the broader sense the historical Slavonia. Its growth into a big city as the capital
city of Croatia–Slavonia, with limited sovereignty, only started after the Austro-
Hungarian Compromise, the legal settling of the Hungarian-Croatian relations.
Between 1870 and 1910 Zágráb tripled its number of population. The situation and
role of Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] within Croatia was similar to that of Budapest within
111
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
Hungary. In the beginning of the 20th century, Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] was not only
an administrative centre and the centre of the Croatian intellectual life but also the
most significant “countryside” city of Hungary by its economy and the volume of
its high level urban functions (if we can consider Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] in a survey
of the Hungarian urban network at all). The hinterland of its urban development –
as we have mentioned – is an “associate country” of 2–2.5 half million population,
the bigger part of which was only linked to Budapest by the loose administrative
ties. Nevertheless the number of population supplied with urban goods was the
highest in the case of Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], and this city also played and out-
standing role in the supply of the “countryside”, as well. Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] is
also an example that the spread of the urban functions of high hierarchy level, ac-
cording to the hierarchy model, is capable of creating a large city – by the contem-
porary standards – even if the level of economic development in its environment is
rather modest, its modernisation is in its infancy and the urbanisation level of
Croatia is low; i.e. it was not the need of a large region that produced a “big city”;
the urban institutions coming “from above” found themselves a place of operation.
Pozsony [Bratislava, SK] had been probably the most important gateway city of
Hungary since the foundation of the state, a ferry crossing place on the Danube
River, the centre of the Hungarian state administration in the time of the Turkish
occupation, the place of the Hungarian national assemblies and coronations before
1848 and the cradle of the Hungarian press. Built on cereals trade, a modern and
bourgeois class rich in capital appeared within its walls, so its development was
harmonic in the bourgeois era. Merchant capital founded a significant manufactur-
ing industry, and its offer and volume of regional institutions also put Pozsony
[Bratislava, SK] to the third place in Hungary, right after Zágráb [Zagreb, HR] (and
the second in the order of the countryside cities). The attraction of its big city in-
stitutions covered the western part of Upper Northern Hungary. South of the Da-
nube, Pozsony [Bratislava, SK] only had a major attraction on Moson county, but
was not able to cope with the competition of Gyır and Sopron. Its role in the set-
tlement network was influenced by the proximity of Vienna; the former coronation
city had intensive relations with the imperial city of Vienna, only an hour’s dis-
tance away. Maybe only the intellectual and cultural role of Pozsony [Bratislava,
SK] was somewhat weaker than it could have been by its position in the urban net-
work. Probably this was partly due to the proximity of Vienna – the mainly Ger-
man speaking citizens of Pozsony [Bratislava, SK] consumed culture in Vienna –,
and also to the multi-lingual character of the city. The German-speaking citizens of
Hungary were less and less willing to create an “own” cultural life – as opposed to
e.g. Bohemia –, but the number of Hungarian-speaking population living in Po-
zsony (Bratislava, SK] was relatively small, only 30–32 thousand; they were the
potential clients of the Hungarian-speaking educational, arts and cultural institu-
tions.
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The range of the big city institutions of Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] was similar
to that of Debrecen, they had the 5–6th position in the hierarchy order; the volume
of urban functions was slightly bigger in Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] than in Debre-
cen (and we must not forget, either, that Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] had 20 thou-
sand less population). Looking at the quantity of the urban functions we can see
that the sectors and indices of “economic character” had higher values in Temesvár
(Timişoara, RO]. Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] is thus a “modern” city, with big city
appearance, well built-out infrastructure, with an industry employing approximately
7 thousand people (the “Hungarian Manchester”);24 it is a “genuine” bourgeois
city, the product of capitalist urbanisation forces, even though the origins of its big
city development are to be found in the second half of the 18th century, not sooner.
The city is situated in the centre of the fertile Bánát region, and became a cereals
trading city after the Temes and the Béga Rivers had been canalised and made
navigable. Because the time of the Turkish occupation eliminated the historical
continuity of all “medieval” features, the leading social elite of the city was the
bourgeois class getting rich from cereals trade and shipping, already in the first half
of the 19th century. After the recession of the Turks, who left behind a “tabula
rasa”, i.e. a “clean slate”, the boundaries of the city were set by the Emperor’s offi-
cers, according to the Western European practice (the administrative area of city
was not more than 85 km2 in 1910), so the accumulated capital could not be in-
vested in purchasing lands or vineyards; after the construction of the railway side
lines all over the Bánát region (in the early 20th century, the railways ran out from
Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] in ten directions), local capital flowed into finance in-
stitutions, manufacturing industry, city real estates and infrastructure. The total
volume of bank deposits in Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] were only surpassed by the
amount of capital in the banks of Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], Arad [Arad, RO] and
Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], the majority of the industrial earners worked in modern
sectors – mechanical engineering, textile and chemical industry –, the local bour-
geois class created the Lloyd Company, serving as the local stock exchange.25 The
above described development track of Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] is an example
that a big city – a regional centre – could also grow up relying on the demands and
economic resources of a large region of the country, in this case the Tisza-Maros
region. The “natural” operational area of the big city functions of Temesvár
[Timişoara, RO] was the Bánát, together with Torontál and Temes counties, and
24 L. Szász, Z.: A “magyar Manchester”. A modern Temesvár építése [The “Hungarian Manchester”.
The construction of the modern Temesvár]. – História. 1992. 1.
25 Gál, Z.: A pénzintézetek szerepe az alföldi városok modernizációjában. (Az alföldi városok pénzin-
tézeti funkciói a 20. század elején) [The role of finance institutions in the modernisation of the
towns in the Great Hungarian Plain. The finance institution functions of the Great Plain towns in
the early 20th century]. In: Frisnyák, S. (ed.): Az Alföld történeti földrajza. College of Nyíregyháza,
Department of Geography, Nyíregyháza, 2000. pp. 321–343. (Hereinafter: Gál, Z. 2000.)
113
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
also Krassó-Szörény county with its shaping mining and heavy industrial region.
This territory had a population of approximately 1.3 million people.
Transylvania enjoyed more or less legal independence before the Compromise,
its orographic features also clearly separated this region from the other parts of the
Carpathian Basin. Also, it was far from Pest-Buda (Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO]
was 8 and a half, Nagyenyed [Aiud, RO] 11, Segesvár [Sighişoara, RO] 13 and a
half, Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO] 14, while Brassó [Braşov, RO] 16 and a half hours
away from Budapest by train in the early 20th century]. However, this large region
of Hungary, very much divided in orographic, ethnic and linguistic, religious and
economic sense, had no unambiguous centre. Usually Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca,
RO] had been the most important city of this region since the foundation of the
Hungarian state, although economically Brassó [Braşov, RO] had usually surpassed
it – in the field of trade and handicrafts –, while the rather isolated Saxons had
other intellectual and economic centres – Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO] and Segesvár
[Sighişoara, RO]. As regards the supply of its regional functions, Kolozsvár [Cluj-
Napoca, RO] was among the very first cities of the hierarchy, in scientific and cul-
tural life; with its university, theatre culture, libraries, museums and book publish-
ing it directly followed Budapest and Zágráb [Zagreb, HR], standing out from the
other regional centres. Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] is undoubtedly the intellec-
tual centre of the Hungarian speaking population of Transylvania. It was an almost
unique feature of Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] among the Hungarian cities that
85% of the citizens paying the most tax had intellectual occupations in the early
20th century. Its economic connections, on the other hand, were rather loose to
South Transylvania (having lost its importance after the railway constructions), and
being a city with mostly Hungarian population (their share reached 83.4% in 1910),
Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO] could not become the centre of the Romanian and
Saxon population of Transylvania. These factors explain its more modest position
by the volume of its urban functions.
Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] was one of the regional centres with deficient func-
tions by its supply of institutions. As the city was “squeezed” among Debrecen,
Arad [Arad, RO] and Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO], several of the state adminis-
trative institutions of regional authority had not been located to Nagyvárad
[Oradea, RO]. On the other hand, it was only surpassed by Zágráb [Zagreb, HR]
and Pozsony [Bratislava, SK] when it came to the volume of the urban functions,
and Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] even preceded Kassa [Košice, SK], Kolozsvár [Cluj-
Napoca, RO], Debrecen and Temesvár [Timişoara, RO], all being cities with full
range of the institutional system. The rise of Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] in the Dual-
ist era is a bit mysterious. It is true that the city was located along an important
market line, it was the gateway of the most important route leading to Transylvania
(which role was weakened by the construction of the railway line in the Maros
valley), its county was one of the most populated counties of Hungary (650 thou-
114
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
sand inhabitants lived in Bihar county in 1910), but the attraction of its big city
functions could not reach beyond the boundaries of its county, partly due to oro-
graphic obstacles and partly to the competition of the neighbouring regional cen-
tres. It is also thought-provoking that before the construction of the railway, Nagy-
várad [Oradea, RO] had had hardly any crops trade or wholesale trade – the most
effective “producer” of the modern large bourgeois class in Hungary. Nevertheless
Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] had one of the biggest institutional networks in the whole
of Hungary by the early 20th century, an the manifestations of its fizzy, “modern”
intellectual, literature and in general, urban life could make a long list; at the turn
of the century, Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] had 11 daily newspapers, 62 societies
worked in the city and there was a tram service in Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] after
1906.26 Also on the basis of economic “indices”, Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO] had the
3rd–6th position in the national orders.
Debrecen is one of those few Hungarian cities that had already been the centre
of an area much larger than a county in the time of the Turkish occupation. Its fairs
were visited not only by the people of the North Trans-Tisza area but also by those
living in the Partium, the northeast part of Upper Northern Hungary and even of
North Transylvania. These areas were also markets for the handicraftsmen of De-
brecen (where the dictated the “fashion”); the tradesmen of Debrecen travelled to
the Balkan peninsula as well as to Poland; the Reformed College made the “cívis”
city27 the educational and cultural centre of not only the Great Hungarian Plain, but
also served secondary education in a few country towns of Transdanubia. Mean-
while Debrecen remained a genuine country town, the majority of the population of
the city were the peasant bourgeois. In the middle of the 19th century, the develop-
ment of the city came to a halt, its agriculture was reluctant to change from animal
husbandry to cereals production, and intensive farming – production of vegetables
and fruits, viticulture – was something that the population of Debrecen only ex-
perimented with in their home gardens. The development of the city only acceler-
ated in the late 19th century, partly due to the location of a large number of state
institutions. The modern economy entered the city after these “trust-building”
measures; in 1910 Debrecen already had the major part of the regional institutions;
as regards the volume of its urban industry, Debrecen was among the first five
Hungarian cities. The hinterland of its regional functions reached out to the north
and north-eastern direction in the first place; the designated operational territory of
some of the institutions of Debrecen reached from Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county
to Máramaros and Bereg counties. However, the society and the cityscape of De-
26 For more details see: Fleisz, J.: “A kultúra metropolisa” – Nagyvárad 1867 és 1918 között [“A
metropolis of culture” – Nagyvárad between 1867 and 1918]. Limes.1998. 11. 2–3. pp. 115–132.
27 “Cívis” means citizen; in Debrecen this category actually means a peasant bourgeois class, which
emerged due to the special development history of the city: all citizens had pieces of lands on the
outskirt of the city, so they had a civic profession and were “farmers” at the same time.
115
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
brecen were much less bourgeois than e.g. in Pozsony [Bratislava, SK], Nagyvárad
[Oradea, RO] or Arad [Arad, RO]. (A real big city atmosphere could only be felt in
a small area, in the densely built-up inner city, dominated by densely built one-
story houses, where the majority of the inhabitants were peasant bourgeois, small
traders and officers.)
Kassa [Košice, SK] and Szeged were at one “step” lower in the urban hierarchy.
Although Kassa [Košice, SK] is undoubtedly a regional centre by its range of re-
gional institutions, the volume of the urban functions is definitely modest for its
hierarchy level. Although the society of Kassa [Košice, SK] had decent patrician
traditions, the city was only at the brink of the modern bourgeois development of
the late 18th and early 19th century (due the decease in the importance of the Buda–
Kassa [Košice, SK]–Poland route, the loss of the positions in cereals trade and the
lack of cereals producing hinterland and adequate “export” routes); it was still ba-
sically an administrative, military, educational and cultural centre, with “tradi-
tional” bourgeois class and traditional functions (handicrafts, distribution trade) but
with modest manufacturing industry. Its regional attraction covered the eastern part
of Upper Northern Hungary.
The situation of Szeged is opposite in the sense that it was among the deficient
centres by its supply of regional institutions, but it was the 6th city of Hungary by
its quantitative indices, whereas it was the second biggest city in Hungary in mat-
ters of population – it had 120 thousand inhabitants in 1910 –, right after Budapest.
Szeged had been characterised by a “double economy” since the medieval times:
on the one hand, it was a typical country town with lively animal husbandry and
trade, a network of scattered farms emerging soon, already in the “Turkish times”;
on the other hand, it had “regular” big city functions as well (and was the only
country town of the Great Hungarian Plain that had acquired the free royal city
rank before the defeat in the battle of Mohács in 1526). One of the heydays of its
“regular” big city life was the late 18th and the 19th century. At the junction of two
waterways – the Tisza and the Maros rivers –, its traffic positions were splendid –
this was a time when the only economical means of long-distance cereals transport
was shipping–, it was the centre of the cereals trade of the South Trans-Tisza re-
gion, the Bácska and the Bánát areas, a location of shipping entrepreneurs, a logis-
tics, manufacturing and sales centre of the goods arriving on the waterways (wood,
construction material, salt, wool etc.). It was also the main beneficiary of the goods
exchange with Transylvania by the waterway of the Maros River. This develop-
ment path was not broken by the big flood (in 1879); the re-built city was a modern
city with its cityscape and infrastructure. It was the construction of the railway that
worsened the positions of Szeged; the waterways gradually lost their importance,
and by the railway Temesvár [Timişoara, RO], Arad [Arad, RO], Szabadka
[Subotica, SCG], Békéscsaba or even some smaller towns could become more and
more active in the trade of agricultural goods and capital accumulation. It was es-
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Discussion Papers, No. 46.
pecially the extremely rapid economic growth, at an almost American pace, of
Temesvár [Timişoara, RO] and Arad [Arad, RO] – trade, credit institutions, manu-
facturing industry – that slowed down the further boom of Szeged, mainly in the
field of the economy. From the late 19th century Szeged paid more and more of its
attention to its vast outskirts, and abandoning the former extensive farming –
grazing –, it supported intensive farming (leasing of small pieces of city-owned
lands, construction of business railways, the creation of the basic institutions in the
scattered farms etc.). Parallel to this, its regional functions lost some of their rela-
tive importance.
Pécs, Gyır and Arad [Arad, RO] represented the least developed versions of the
regional centres. Pécs, the quiet city of handicraftsmen and wine producers, was
similar to Kassa [Košice, SK] to some extent; it had a bourgeois class of “tradi-
tional” composition – but with more modest traditions and fortunes compared to
Kassa [Košice, SK], unfavourable traffic location and the lack of “modern” func-
tions. The “big city” development was initiated partly by the location of institutions
with regional authority in the beginning of the bourgeois era, partly the movement
of the – limited amount of – capital accumulated by the handicraftsmen and wine
producers and traders, as well as the mining of coal which started around the city.
On the other hand, both the local society, the character of the economy and the
cityscape still resembled the situation between a feudal city and a bourgeois city.
The development history of Gyır is the opposite: it had soon become a trading and
business centre along the waterways and roads towards Vienna and “the West”, a
bourgeois class free from guild restrictions emerged within the city walls, and
when crop trading lost the competition against Pest and the significance of the Da-
nube as a waterway also decreased, the accumulated capital sought a new place for
investment. This was partly found in manufacturing industry – and it was the mod-
ern sectors that had dominated the industry of Gyır since the foundation of the
manufacturing industry –, partly the capital was invested in other cities, mostly in
the capital city, but also in a number of smaller towns, e.g. Nagykanizsa or Szom-
bathely. The economically strengthened Gyır received “ex post” a few regional
administrative and cultural institutions, but these functions were divided in North
Transdanubia among Gyır, Sopron, Szombathely, and even Székesfehérvár, so in
the field of “centrally located” functions Gyır has never been (and still is not!) able
to compete with the other regional centres. Our survey relating to the year 1900 did
not even list Gyır among the regional centres, whereas the city was a deficient
centre in 1910; it only preceded Brassó [Braşov, RO] by its weight of urban func-
tions among the regional centres.
Brassó [Braşov, RO] is the last city that can be enumerated among the regional
centres of the Carpathian Basin, but it is actually a transitory city between the re-
gional and the county centres, both as regards the range of its institutional system
and the volume of its urban functions (also, it is the “smallest” regional centre by
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its number of population, only 41 thousand inhabitants). Although its Saxon popu-
lation had created a high level of urbanisation within the walls of Brassó [Braşov,
RO] and it had a considerable foreign trade at the junction of passes leading to
Wallachia, it only had a slight attraction in Transylvania. Brassó [Braşov, RO] was
not even given a municipal right at the building out of the bourgeois public admini-
stration, and was not a selected location of state administrative institutions, either.
The range of its urban institutions was extended by the triplication of the institu-
tions serving its trilingual population.
5.3 County seats
In our survey the number of county seas was just 50, and 39 of them had county
seat functions in the early 20th century. Since Hungary had 63 counties in 1910, not
considering Croatia-Slavonia – Fiume [Rijeka, HR] and its region was a “separate
body” attached to the Hungarian Crown in the time of the Dualism –, this means
that 11 county seats of Hungary were not listed among the county seats by their
role in the settlement network. This way, however, 11 towns of the county centres
were actually not county seats (e.g. Fiume [Rijeka, HR] in a special legal situation,
but also Szabadka [Subotica, SCG], Szatmárnémeti [Satu Mare, RO], Újvidék
[Novi Sad, SCG], Nagykanizsa, Kecskemét, Pancsova [Pančevo, SCG], Pápa, Baja,
Versec [Vršac, SCG] and Békéscsaba). These 50 towns, with similar roles in the
settlement network and at a similar level of the urban hierarchy, made a rather
heterogeneous group considering their urban history, the composition of their soci-
ety, their employment structure, the number of population and the cityscape. De-
spite categorising them in the same hierarchy level, it is reasonable to emphasise
the significant differences among them both as regards the range of their urban
functions and the volume of these; we have to emphasise the fact that the 21 “par-
tial county seats” were actually a transitory phase towards the middle towns (the
main argument against their categorisation as a separate level of the hierarchy is
the avoidance of the over-fragmentation of the hierarchical order). This heteroge-
neity within the group is underlined by the large standard deviation of some of their
“indices” and the lack of integration among these indices.
The average number of population in the county seats was almost 24 thousand
people, the median of this category is 20 and a half thousand inhabitants. However,
the difference between Szabadka [Subotica, SCG] with its 94 and a half thousand
population and Rimaszombat [Rimavská Sobota, SK] with hardly 7 thousand in-
habitants is 13-fold, and the relative standard deviation of the number of population
at this hierarchy level is also big, 68.0%, as opposed to the deviation of 33.7% of
the regional centres. The circle of the county seats involved quite a number of set-
tlements of small town size even by the contemporary standards, whereas Szabadka
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[Subotica, SCG], Kecskemét, Miskolc or Fiume [Rijeka, HR] had more inhabitants
than some of the regional centres. The volume of the urban functions of the county
seats clearly differentiates these towns from the regional centres (Table 21), mak-
ing only about one-third of the latter, even less in the field of economy. Also, the
standard deviation of the economic indices within this group is larger than that of
the other indices.
Table 21
Volume of urban functions in the regional centres and the county centres
Indices
Average number in the
County centres in % of
the regional centres
regional
county
centres
Number of population
67,367
23,940
35.5
Earners in trade
2,836
870
30.7
Earners in public services
2,591
827
31.9
Lawyers
77
30
39.0
Secondary school students
3,469
1,145
33.0
Deposits in financial institutions,
51.9
14.9
28.7
million crowns
Telephone subscriber
1,153
247
21.4
Household servants
3,272
1,023
31.3
Source: Hungarian Statistical Yearbook, 1910.
The county seats can be grouped in many ways, depending on the different as-
pects. We leave the judgement of the role within the settlement network to the
reader, on the basis of the hierarchy order (Appendix 1) and the table edited on the
volume of the urban functions of the county centres (Table 21), we cannot intro-
duce each town of this hierarchy level individually.
Without detailed analyses it is possible to categorise the county seats into sev-
eral types, only on the basis of their role in the settlement network. Some of them
were settlements with a balanced development and significant urban traditions,
with proportionate economic and administrative-clerical-cultural roles; the majority
of these county seats were home to regional institutions, as well. Also on the basis
of the volume of their urban institutions, they were among the elite of the county
centres.
The situation and urban roles of Fiume [Rijeka, HR] were special in the Dualist
era; legally it was an exclave of Hungary and the authority of its administrative
institutions did not reach beyond the boundaries of the town. Being the only sea
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port of Hungary, it enjoyed s substantial support from the Hungarian state. Natu-
rally it was economic and trade functions that dominated the life of Fiume [Rijeka,
HR]. As regards the volume of its urban functions, it is at the top of the order of the
county centres, with a value more or less the same as that of Miskolc, and although
Fiume [Rijeka, HR] is also the first as regards its “significance surplus”, its hinter-
land was nevertheless not in the neighbouring areas – from which it was separated
by administrative borders, orographic obstacles and the lack of transport infra-
structure, and even by language differences – but in its far-away motherland. Its
special situation is further complicated by the fact that majority of its inhabitants
were Italian in language and culture. Sopron had been in the elite of the Hungarian
urban hierarchy already in the Middle Ages, it hosted a range of regional institu-
tions in the Dualist time, too, sharing its regional functions in North Transdanubia
with Szombathely and Gyır. Probably just because its citizens had been able to
create a prosperous town already in the feudal times and had strong ties to feudal
institutions, the “modernisation” of Sopron was rather slow in the time of the Du-
alism, together with its growth. Miskolc was located along a strong market line, its
transport situation became favourable after the railway constructions, and had a
lively mediating trade between the Great Hungarian Plain and Upper Northern
Hungary, even though it did not play a dominant role in the crops trade in the 18th
and 19th century. The “capitalist” urban development factors were clearly visible in
the creation of manufacturing industry, although outside the city, in Diósgyır, a
settlement administratively independent of Miskolc at that time. The completion of
its intellectual, cultural and administrative functions was blocked by the competi-
tion of Kassa [Košice, SK], still Miskolc was the second in the order of the county
centres by the volume of its urban functions. Urban life had similar traditions to
those of Sopron in Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO], the cultural, educational and intellec-
tual centre of the Saxons in Transylvania; the modernisation of Nagyszeben [Sibiu,
RO] was also sluggish, as in Sopron – both as regard society and cityscape. Sza-
badka [Subotica, SCG], the most populated “countryside” town of Hungary after
Szeged, grew big as a country town, but it did not become a county seat; its almost
100 thousand inhabitants and the need of the surrounding rich agricultural region
for urban goods lifted it to the level of the county centres. Szombathely, Maros-
vásárhely [Târgu Mureş, RO], Szatmárnémeti [Satu Mare, RO], Székesfehérvár,
Eger and Zombor [Sombor, SCG] can also be categorised in this type.
The next group of county centres too contains towns with balanced functions
and usually with significant urban history, but with more limited volume of urban
functions and a deficient institutional network – they are administrative centres
rather than economic and trading ones. Also, their urban life is deficient from some
aspect. Veszprém, Eperjes [Prešov, SK], Besztercebánya [Banská Bystrica, SK] and
Esztergom had considerable urban traditions, but they were pushed to the back-
ground in the bourgeois era, and their manufacturing industry was negligible;
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Máramarossziget [Sighetu MarmaŃiei, RO], Sátoraljaújhely or Nyíregyháza, and
even Kaposvár, on the other hand, became the centres of their counties in the sec-
ond half of the 19th century; they were immature, “juvenile” towns. Nyitra [Nitra,
SK], Szolnok, Nagybecskerek [Zrenjanin, SCG] and Komárom [Komarno, SK] are
also in this group of county centres.
Újvidék [Novi Sad, SCG], Kecskemét, Nagykanizsa, Pápa, Munkács [Mu-
kacheve, UA], Baja, Békéscsaba and Versec [Vršac, SCG] were not county centres
in the early 20th century; these towns were at the same level as the previous county
seats because of their trading and financial, transport and economic roles and their
urban services.
On the other hand, a number of county centres were “lifted up” in the hierarchy
by the acquisition of the county centre position, but the volume of their urban
functions was rather modest, the growth of their number of population and the ex-
pansion of their economic functions had not “grown up” yet to their administrative
roles, so they were usually administrative centres without an advanced modernisa-
tion. Such towns are Trencsén [Trenčín, SK], Zalaegerszeg, Nagyenyed [Aiud, RO],
Lıcse [Levoča, SK], Zilah [Zalău, RO], Déva [Deva, RO], Székelyudvarhely
[Odorheiu Secuiesc, RO], Rimaszombat [Rimavská Sobota, SK], Torda [Turda,
RO] and Lugos [Lugoj, RO].
5.4 Middle towns
The 65 middle towns (this specification refers to the medium position in the
settlement hierarchy and not to the number of the population) show and even more
varied picture than county centres did. They hardly outnumber the previous hierar-
chy category, which does not meet the laws of the hierarchical breakdown, even if
we do not insist on Christaller’s model in which the number of centres is tripled at
each lower hierarchy level. This suggests that the middle towns did not have a nec-
essary position in the settlement hierarchy of Hungary in the early 20th century
(which is also true today, anyway). The relatively large number of county centres
fulfilled the obligations delegated to the higher hierarchy levels, the small towns
also “covered” the country with some regularity, but the position and functions of
the middle towns in the hierarchy system were casual. Usually towns falling out
from the country centre level belonged to this category; these settlements were
made county seats – almost as a must –, but because of their modest urban history,
their insignificant economic roles, bad traffic situation, the “backwardness” of their
counties etc., their county functions remained one-sided, their urban institutions
were deficient and also low in number; thus they did not meet the criteria set
against the country centres. In some cases the country centres did not even meet the
middle town criteria; they were small towns that were home to irreplaceable county
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administrative institutions; e.g. Alsókubin [Dolný Kubín, SK] (1,821 inhabitants in
1910 (!), Magyaróvár (5,273 inhabitants), or Nagyszılıs [Vinohradiv, UA]. But in
Fogaras [Făgăraş, RO], Ipolyság [Šahy, SK], Dicsıszentmárton [Târnăveni, RO]
too all county level institutions belonged to the public administration exclusively
and not one of them to economic or service sectors.
On the other hand, in some other small towns real small town functions were
accumulated, either due to the large number of population in the respective town –
this group involved a number of Great Plain country towns with large population,
such as e.g. Hódmezıvásárhely, Kiskunfélegyháza, or Budapest’s suburb, Újpest
(55 thousand inhabitants in 1910!) – or because of the insignificance of the
neighbouring district seats (e.g. Mohács or Gyöngyös). Also, this hierarchy level
contains towns that had lived better days but were now “on the slide” (Sel-
mecbánya [Banská Stiavnica, SK], Bélabánya [Banská Belá, SK], Gyulafehérvár
[Alba Iulia, RO], Nagyszombat [Trnava, SK]); “secondary centres” of counties that
contributed to the supply of their counties with higher level urban services, sharing
the tasks with their county seats, such as Losonc [Lučenec, SK] in Nógrád county
(mainly an economic and trading centre besides the office[r] town, Balassagyar-
mat), Gyulafehérvár [Alba Iulia, RO] in Lower Fehér county (also mainly an eco-
nomic and trading centre but with administrative functions, too in addition to
Nagyenyed [Aiud, RO]). In these counties the county seats were “weak”, so the
middle towns contributed to satisfying the demand of the settlement network.
There were towns also at this hierarchy level that were selected from among the
other “typical” small towns by their “market centre”, economic, or transport func-
tions, maybe their manufacturing industry.
It comes from the mixed origin, functions and roles in the settlement network
that average values of the middle town level give little information on the charac-
teristics of these towns (we cannot describe the “model” of the middle towns of the
early 20th century in Hungary), although we have to remark that the average values
of the indices typical of this respective hierarchy level were quite different from
both the county centres and the small towns. The average concealed large differ-
ences, however, so the standard deviations are necessarily significant, too. The
relative standard deviation of the number of population is 82.3%, the highest
among all hierarchy levels.
Nevertheless we believe that the towns not up to the criteria against the county
centres, e.g. Losonc [Lučenec, SK], Munkács [Mukacheve, UA], Vác, Érsekújvár
[Nové Zámky, SK], or Szentes should not be “included” among the small towns.
These quantitative and sometimes qualitative differences justified the creation of
the middle town category, even if the role of the middle towns in the settlement
network is usually not unambiguous.
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5.5 Small towns
As opposed to the middle towns, the role of the small towns in the settlement net-
work is usually unambiguous; the small towns – more exactly the small town func-
tions – had direct contacts to the overwhelming majority of the population, the
“rural” population used the small town “institutions”: they brought their goods to
be sold to the markets of the small towns, where they also purchased some of their
consumables; they bought products from the craftsmen producing agricultural
tools, from handicraftsmen producing for the markets, other goods in shops with
larger range of goods than the small village groceries, maybe they visited the out-
lets of the banks and insurance companies, the physicians or the lawyers. There
was a demand for centres offering such services in all regions of Hungary in the
late 19th and early 20th century, and given the contemporary transport conditions –
the majority of the villages had no access to railway at the turn of the century, the
most frequently used means to visit the towns were still wagon or walking –, a
relatively dense network was needed to make it possible to walk to the market cen-
tres and back within one day. Public administration also considered this principle
when organising the districts and designating the district centres. The district seat
centre was an important organising principle anyway in the bourgeois era in the
shaping of the network of small towns; where the district administrative functions
were designated to settlements, market centres that had already had urban tradi-
tions, viable and versatile small towns with lively traffic were born or survived,
sometimes advancing in the urban hierarchy. In economically less advanced re-
gions, in areas just leaving autarchy behind the district seats were often settlements
of village character; the further development of these depended on whether they
had a hinterland with acceptable transport situation, with a large enough population
and a possibility to join in the goods production, whether the actors participating in
urbanisation had a faith in the viability of these settlements and accordingly settled
down in them, or whether some other factors – e.g. manufacturing industry in some
cases – assisted the further development of the district centres. The district seat
function, however, on its own did not necessarily “developed” a town, even a small
town; the findings of our survey categorised some of the district seats among the
“urbanising” settlements (with district level functions), but many of them did not
even reach this level of hierarchy. Nevertheless, as a consequence of the process
described, the small towns were relatively homogeneously dispersed all over Hun-
gary, maybe in the territory of the mountain range surrounding the Carpathian Ba-
sin, rarely populated and still close to autarchy anyway, we find some areas with
“small town deficiency” (North Transylvania, East Upper Northern Hungary).
Apart from the similar functions in the settlement network, the development
paths to the small town category were quite different, and these settlements were
rather heterogeneous in their functions, economic roles, the composition and the
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number of their population and also in their look. Thus Hungary could have no
“typical” small town in the early 20th century; we should make at least half a dozen
types to get more or less homogeneous groups of towns. The precise definition of
these groups and the complete “categorisation” of the small towns are beyond the
objectives of our essay; hereby we only remark the starting hypotheses of a possi-
ble enumeration.
– Some of the small towns had considerable urban history – some of them used
to be free royal towns –, or at least had had strong and evident market centre
functions before the bourgeois era. A part of the small towns had been corpo-
rate towns already in the beginning of the 20th century. These settlements
had almost the full range of small town functions, and the volume of these
functions was significant; most of them even had functions of middle town
character. The number of their population exceeded 5 thousand people.
Within their local societies, the weight of the bourgeois class was consider-
able, although this bourgeois class was usually the remnant of the feudal
times: handicraftsmen with guild traditions, merchants, domain officials –
with very few exceptions, they belonged to the “petty bourgeois”. The city-
scape of these towns was relatively urbanised, at least in the centre; partly
they preserved the architectural memories of former times – e.g. Bártfa
[Bardejov, SK] or Szentendre –, partly the architecture of the bourgeois era
gave their centres a small town appearance by the beginning of the century,
by typically one-storey public buildings, savings banks, some tenements
whose ground floors accommodated shops (however, the residential houses
were usually ground floor houses even in the city centres and the main
streets), like in Tapolca, Szigetvár or Csorna.
– The next group is represented by the “more modest” counterparts of the
previous category – with smaller number of population, deficient functions
and smaller volume of urban institutions. Within their central functions, the
administrative activities prevailed, the role of the officers was bigger in their
society. This group contains e.g. Marcali, Tiszafüred or Szécsény.
– Finally a number of settlements can be listed into this type of “market centres
– central places” whose small town functions were mostly due to their district
seat roles, they had modest urban traditions, and the proportion of the agri-
cultural population was high (applying Tibor Mendöl’s country town model
we can say that a district seat function “located” in a settlement with mostly
village functions created a separate, not organically integrated “urban core”
in the village). In other settlements, the deficient supply and the low volume
of the urban functions justifies the classification into this category.
– A number of Great Plain country towns can also be found among the small
towns; the urban functions were mostly restricted to the supply of their own
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population, their hinterlands were usually very much deficient. Naturally the
country town features are characteristic of these towns: large number of
population for their hierarchy level (Békés had 27 thousand and Ha-
jdúszoboszló 16 thousand inhabitants in 1910), the very high proportion of
agricultural population for a settlement with urban functions (in Mezıkövesd
it was 79.2%, in Kunhegyes 72.9% and in Jászapáti 72.3%), the large out-
skirts with scattered farms, the village-like look of the settlement and so on.
– Some of the characteristic products of capitalist urban development, the min-
ing and industrial settlements had acquired some urban functions by the be-
ginning of the century (e.g. Salgótarján, Resicabánya [ReşiŃa, RO],
Petrozsény [Petroşeni, RO]).
5.6 Settlements with some district level functions
This awkward specification covers those settlements whose “district level func-
tions” are so deficient that they could not even be listed among the small towns, but
– mostly due to their district seat rank – had some urban institutions. A variety of
settlements belong to this category, from formerly more important small towns
hopelessly “declining” – e.g. Vízakna [Ocna Sibiului, RO], or Poprád [Poprad,
SK] –, small country towns – e.g. Mezıberény or Hajdúdorog –, factory towns –
Diósgyır, Ózd –, to a large number of “central places” benefiting from the district
seat rank, or settlements becoming bathing resorts – Balatonfüred or Pöstyén
[Piešt’any, SK] –, maybe auxiliary settlements “sticking” to other towns.
On the other hand, some corporate towns had lost all their urban functions by
the beginning of the 20th century (Kolozs [Cojocna, RO], Leibic [L’ubica, SK],
Ruszt [Rust, A] or Szentgyörgy [Svätý Jur, SK]).
6 Summary
Taking the supply and the quantity of the urban functions (i.e. settlement hierarchy)
into consideration, in Hungary in the early 20th century, approximately 330 settle-
ments were evidently towns, another 90–100 villages had some urban institution,
mostly the offices of the district administration. In other words, the contemporary
urban network involved some two and half times more settlements than the number
of settlements with town rank. (On the other hand, some Hungarian settlements
with town rank were actually villages by function). Taking the settlements with
town rank into consideration, the proportion of the urban citizens in Hungary will
be approximately 10% higher. The urban network of Hungary was unbalanced at
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this time; the weight of the urban functions of Budapest was outstanding already in
the Dualist era. (In some “indices” the share of the capital city functions from
reached 30–60% of the national “output”.) The modernising urban functions of the
“civil towns” spread across Hungary mostly according to the laws of the “hierarchy
model”. This explains the fact that the 10 (or 12) regional centres and the mode
advanced county seats were the “junctions” of the other factors of “urban charac-
ter”: hierarchy rank, the weight of economic role, the bourgeois development of the
local society, the appearance of the cityscape etc. At lower hierarchy levels there
were many “lopsided” towns where the penetration of the urban institutions pre-
ceded the spread of the modern economic sectors, the rise in the number of popu-
lation and bourgeois development in general. The external effects (mostly coming
from the state) played a significant role in “urbanisation” (both in the qualitative
and the quantitative sense): such effects were the location of administrative institu-
tions, railway constructions, industrial development based on foreign capital etc.
The “urbanising” function of public administration was outstanding in the Dualist
era, especially in areas formerly in shortage of towns. Nonetheless the major part
of the urbanisation in the Dualist era took place within the former feudal urban
network, a relatively low number of “new” towns were born (a few mining and
manufacturing industry towns or administrative centres); however, the urban net-
work of the feudal times decreased in number (especially the previous country
towns fell back to the status of the villages in large number). There were even
country towns that should be listed among the villages by functional criteria.
As regards the regional differences of urbanisation, the most striking is the dif-
ference of the Great Hungarian Plain, originating in urban history. In the Great
Hungarian Plain the proportion of urban citizens was extremely high; the towns
had very large numbers of population compared to their hierarchical rank. Their
urban functions mostly supplied their own citizens (only a small part of the popu-
lation lived in the villages), so the proportion of urban goods “exported” to the
rural areas is low, the urban functions were “swallowed” by the host of other func-
tions, making their presence almost invisible. (This leads to the misinterpretation of
the urbanisation of the Great Hungarian Plain.) The urban network of Transdanu-
bia, the Small Hungarian Plain and the Bánát region was more balanced – although
the urbanisation level of South Transdanubia was modest –, whereas Upper North-
ern Hungary was home to a strikingly large number of stagnating or declining
small towns, descending to the village category. In Northeast Hungary and Tran-
sylvania, the urban network was underdeveloped – with the exception of a few
major cities, such as Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO], Brassó [Braşov, RO], Nagysze-
ben [Sibiu, RO] or Marosvásárhely [Târgu Mureş, RO] – and the proportion of
urban population was low.
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Appendix 1
The leading group of the Hungarian urban hierarchy in 1910
Rank
Cities
Legal status &
Population
Total
Rural
administrative
population population
in
in
functions of the
supplied
supplied
1870
1910
settlements
with urban with urban
services
services
I REGIONAL CENTRES
I.1 With full-fledged urban functions
1
Zágráb [Zagreb, HR]
Thj.
Msz.
20,402
79,038
445,573
366,535
2
Pozsony [Bratislava, SK]
Thj.
Msz.
46,540
78,223
296,256
218,033
3
Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca, RO]
Thj.
Msz.
26,638
60,808
251,097
190,289
4
Kassa [Košice, SK]
Thj.
Msz.
21,742
44,211
169,688
125,477
5
Debrecen
Thj.
Msz.
46,111
92,729
271,025
178,296
6
Temesvár [Timişoara, RO]
Thj.
Msz.
36,844
72,555
272,099
199,544
I.2 With incomplete urban functions
7
Szeged
Thj.
71,022 118,328
260,193
141,865
8
Nagyvárad [Oradea, RO]
Thj.
Msz.
28,698
64,169
289,480
225,311
9
Pécs
Thj.
Msz.
23,683
49,822
171,627
121,805
10
Gyır
Thj.
Msz.
26,225
44,300
161,245
116,945
I.3 With partial urban functions
11
Arad [Arad, RO]
Thj.
Msz.
32,725
63,166
249,244
186,078
12
Brassó [Braşov, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
27,766
01,056
143,061
102,005
II COUNTY SEATS
II.1 With full-fledged urban functions
13
Sopron
Thj.
Msz.
21,108
33,932
123,278
89,346
14
Miskolc
Thj.
Msz.
21,535
51,459
179,086
127,627
15
Szombathely
Rtv.
Msz.
9,666
30,947
121,332
90,385
Marosvásárhely [Târgu
Thj.
Msz.
13,018
25,517
100,598
75,081
16
Mureş, RO]
17
Fiume [Rijeka, HR]
Thj.
17,884
49,806
180,462
130,656
18
Nagyszeben [Sibiu, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
18,998
33,489
145,118
111,629
Máramarossziget [Sighetu
Rtv.
Msz.
8,833
21,370
77,193
55,823
19
MarmaŃiei, RO]
20
Szatmárnémeti [Satu Mare,
Thj.
Msz.
18,353
34,882
131,325
96,443
RO]
127
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
continuoing Appendix 1
Rank
Cities
Legal status &
Population
Total
Rural
administrative
population population
in
in
functions of the
supplied
supplied
1870
1910
settlements
with urban with urban
services
services
21
Szabadka [Subotica, SCG]
Thj.
57,556
94,610
164,445
69,835
22
Székesfehérvár
Thj.
Msz.
22,683
36,625
111,076
74,451
23
Besztercebánya [Banská
Rtv.
Msz.
5,950
10,776
63,107
52,331
Bystrica, SK]
24
Szolnok
Rtv.
Msz.
15,847
28,778
81,938
53,160
25
Nagybecskerek [Zrenjanin,
Rtv.
Msz.
19,666
26,006
87,932
61,926
SCG]
26
Nyitra [Nitra, SK]
Rtv.
Msz.
10,683
16,419
73,280
56,861
27
Kaposvár
Rtv.
Msz.
6,649
24,134
78,474
54,340
28
Eger
Rtv.
Msz.
19,150
28,052
90,600
62,548
29
Eperjes [Prešov, SK]
Rtv.
Msz.
10,772
16,323
74,397
58,074
II. 2. With incomplete urban functions
30
Újvidék [Novi Sad, SCG]
Thj.
Jsz.
19,119
33,590
118,085
84,495
31
Veszprém
Rtv.
Msz.
12,002
14,792
63,867
49,075
32
Lugos [Lugoj, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
11,654
19,818
72,905
53,087
33
Zombor [Sombor, SCG]
Thj.
Msz.
24,309
30,593
87,453
56,860
34
Nagykanizsa
Rtv.
Jsz.
15,125
26,524
84,012
57,488
35
Sátoraljaújhely
Rtv.
Msz.
9,946
19,940
77,754
57,814
36
Kecskemét
Thj.
41,195
66,834
97,430
30,596
37
Nyíregyháza
Rtv.
Msz.
21,896
38,198
93,381
55,183
38
Esztergom
Rtv.
Msz.
14,512
17,881
62,935
45,054
39
Komárom [Komarno, SK]
Thj.
Msz.
13,595
22,337
62,770
40,433
40
Zalaegerszeg
Rtv.
Msz.
5,850
10,844
41,049
30,205
41
Trencsén [Trenčín, SK]
Rtv.
Msz.
3,949
7,805
41,179
33,374
II.3 With partial urban functions
42
Pancsova [Pančevo, SCG]
Thj.
Jsz.
16,888
20,808
64,188
43,380
43
Dés [Dej, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
5,832
11,452
41,113
29,661
44
Balassagyarmat
K.
Msz.
6,435
8,271
41,815
33,544
45
Ungvár [Uzhhorod, Ua]
Rtv.
Msz.
11,017
16,919
58,469
41,550
46
Déva [Deva, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
3,277
8,654
35,091
26,437
47
Beszterce [BistriŃa, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
7,212
13,236
48,490
35,254
48
Segesvár [Sighişoara, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
8,204
11,587
38,928
27,341
49
Nagykároly [Carei, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
12,754
16,078
48,809
32,731
50
Beregszász [Berehove, Ua]
Rtv.
Msz.
6,272
12,933
47,827
34,894
128
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
continuoing Appendix 1
Rank
Cities
Legal status &
Population
Total
Rural
administrative
population population
in
in
functions of the
supplied
supplied
1870
1910
settlements
with urban with urban
services
services
51
Gyula
Rtv.
Msz.
18,495
24,248
42,377
18,129
52
Lıcse [Levoča, SK]
Rtv.
Msz.
6,887
7,528
30,697
23,169
53
Zilah [Zalău, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
5,789
8,062
30,850
22,788
54
Székelyudvarhely [Odorheiu
Rtv.
Msz.
5,173
10,244
36,447
26,203
Secuiesc, RO]
55
Pápa
Rtv.
Jsz.
14,223
20,150
70,740
50,590
56
Nagyenyed [Aiud, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
5,779
8,663
29,561
20,898
57
Szekszárd
Rtv.
Msz.
11,069
14,947
42,454
27,507
58
Torda [Turda, RO]
Rtv.
Msz.
8,803
13,455
39,756
26,301
Rimaszombat [Rimavská
Rtv.
Msz.
4,796
6,912
40,655
33,743
59
Sobota, SK]
60
Baja
Thj.
Jsz.
18,169
21,032
66,820
45,788
61
Versec [Vršac, SCG]
Thj.
Jsz.
21,095
27,370
56,544
29,174
62
Békéscsaba
K.
Jsz.
30,022
42,146
51,493
9,347
Abbreviations:
Thj.: City with municipal rights
Rtv.: Town
K.: Village
Msz.: County seat
Jsz.: Micro-region seat
Source: calculated by the authors.
129
Beluszky, Pál - Győri, Róbert : The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2005. 133. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 46.
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The Discussion Papers series of the Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences was launched in 1986 to publish summaries of research findings on
regional and urban development.
The series has 5 or 6 issues a year. It will be of interest to geographers, economists,
sociologists, experts of law and political sciences, historians and everybody else who is, in
one way or another, engaged in the research of spatial aspects of socio-economic
development and planning.
The series is published by the Centre for Regional Studies.
Individual copies are available on request at the Centre.
Postal address
Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
P.O. Box 199, 7601 PÉCS, HUNGARY
Phone: (36–72) 523 800
Fax: (36–72) 523 803
www.rkk.hu
Director general
Gyula HORVÁTH
Editor
Zoltán GÁL
galz@.rkk.hun
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Discussion Papers 2005. No. 46.
The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
Papers published in the Discussion Papers series
Discussion Papers /Specials
BENKİNÉ LODNER, Dorottya (ed.) (1988): Environmental Control and Policy:
Proceedings of the Hungarian–Polish Seminar in the Theoretical Problems of
Environmental Control and Policy
OROSZ, Éva (ed.) (1988): Spatial Organisation and Regional Development Papers of the
6th Polish–Hungarian geographical Seminar
DURÓ, Annamária (ed.) (1993): Spatial Research and the Social–Political Changes: Papers
of the 7th Polish–Hungarian Seminar
DURÓ, Annamária (ed.) (1999): Spatial Research in Support of the European Integration.
Proceedings of the 11th Polish–Hungarian Geographical Seminar (Mátraháza,
Hungary 17–22 September, 1998)
GÁL, Zoltán (ed.) (2001): Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union
HORVÁTH, Gyula (ed.) (2002): Regional Challenges of the Transition in Bulgaria and
Hungary
KOVÁCS, András Donát (ed.) (2004): New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the
Urban-Rural Relationship
BARANYI, Béla (ed.) (2004): Hungarian–Romanian and Hungarian–Ukrainian border
regions as areas of co-operation along the external borders of Europe
Discussion Papers
No. 1
OROSZ, Éva (1986): Critical Issues in the Development of Hungarian Public
Health with Special Regard to Spatial Differences
No. 2
ENYEDI, György – ZENTAI, Viola (1986): Environmental Policy in Hungary
No. 3
HAJDÚ, Zoltán (1987): Administrative Division and Administrative Geography
in Hungary
No. 4
SIKOS T., Tamás (1987): Investigations of Social Infrastructure in Rural
Settlements of Borsod County
No. 5
HORVÁTH, Gyula (1987): Development of the Regional Management of the
Economy in East-Central Europe
No. 6
PÁLNÉ KOVÁCS, Ilona (1988): Chance of Local Independence in Hungary
No. 7
FARAGÓ, László – HRUBI, László (1988): Development Possibilities of
Backward Areas in Hungary
No. 8
SZÖRÉNYINÉ KUKORELLI, Irén (1990): Role of the Accessibility in De-
velopment and Functioning of Settlements
No. 9
ENYEDI, György (1990): New Basis for Regional and Urban Policies in East-
Central Europe
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Discussion Papers 2005. No. 46.
The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
No. 10
RECHNITZER, János (1990): Regional Spread of Computer Technology in
Hungary
No. 11
SIKOS T., Tamás (1992): Types of Social Infrastructure in Hungary (to be not
published)
No. 12
HORVÁTH, Gyula – HRUBI, László (1992): Restructuring and Regional Policy
in Hungary
No. 13
ERDİSI, Ferenc (1992): Transportation Effects on Spatial Structure of Hungary
No. 14
PÁLNÉ KOVÁCS, Ilona (1992): The Basic Political and Structural Problems in
the Workings of Local Governments in Hungary
No. 15
PFEIL, Edit (1992): Local Governments and System Change. The Case of a
Regional Centre
No. 16
HORVÁTH, Gyula (1992): Culture and Urban Development (The Case of Pécs)
No. 17
HAJDÚ, Zoltán (1993): Settlement Network Development Policy in Hungary in
the Period of State Socialism (1949–1985)
No. 18
KOVÁCS, Teréz (1993): Borderland Situation as It Is Seen by a Sociologist
No. 19
HRUBI, L. – KRAFTNÉ SOMOGYI, Gabriella (eds.) (1994): Small and me-
dium-sized firms and the role of private industry in Hungary
No. 20
BENKİNÉ Lodner, Dorottya (1995): The Legal-Administrative Questions of
Environmental Protection in the Republic of Hungary
No. 21
ENYEDI, György (1998): Transformation in Central European Postsocialist
Cities
No. 22
HAJDÚ, Zoltán (1998): Changes in the Politico-Geographical Position of Hun-
gary in the 20th Century
No. 23
HORVÁTH, Gyula (1998): Regional and Cohesion Policy in Hungary
No. 24
BUDAY-SÁNTHA, Attila (1998): Sustainable Agricultural Development in the
Region of the Lake Balaton
No. 25
LADOS, Mihály (1998): Future Perspective for Local Government Finance in
Hungary
No. 26
NAGY, Erika (1999): Fall and Revival of City Centre Retailing: Planning an
Urban Function in Leicester, Britain
No. 27
BELUSZKY, Pál (1999): The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the
Second Millennium
No. 28
RÁCZ, Lajos (1999): Climate History of Hungary Since the 16th Century: Past,
Present and Future
No. 29
RAVE, Simone (1999): Regional Development in Hungary and Its Preparation
for the Structural Funds
No. 30
BARTA, Györgyi (1999): Industrial Restructuring in the Budapest
Agglomeration
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The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century
No. 31
BARANYI, Béla–BALCSÓK, István–DANCS, László–MEZİ, Barna (1999):
Borderland Situation and Peripherality in the North-Eastern Part of the Great
Hungarian Plain
No. 32
RECHNITZER, János (2000): The Features of the Transition of Hungary’s
Regional System
No. 33
MURÁNYI, István–PÉTER, Judit–SZARVÁK, Tibor–SZOBOSZLAI, Zsolt
(2000): Civil Organisations and Regional Identity in the South Hungarian Great
Plain
No. 34
KOVÁCS, Teréz (2001): Rural Development in Hungary
No. 35
PÁLNÉ, Kovács Ilona (2001): Regional Development and Governance in Hun-
gary
No. 36
NAGY, Imre (2001): Cross-Border Co-operation in the Border Region of the
Southern Great Plain of Hungary
No. 37
BELUSZKY, Pál (2002): The Spatial Differences of Modernisation in Hungary
at the Beginning of the 20th Century
No. 38
BARANYI, Béla (2002): Before Schengen – Ready for Schengen. Euroregional
Organisations and New Interregional Formations at the Eastern Borders of Hun-
gary
No. 39
KERESZTÉLY, Krisztina (2002): The Role of the State in the Urban
Development of Budapest
No. 40
HORVÁTH, Gyula (2002): Report on the Research Results of the Centre for
Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
No. 41
SZIRMAI, Viktoria–A. GERGELY, András–BARÁTH, Gabriella–MOLNÁR,
Balázs–SZÉPVÖLGYI, Ákos (2003): The City and its Environment: Competi-
tion and/or Co-operation? (A Hungarian Case Study)
No. 42
CSATÁRI, Bálint–KANALAS, Imre–NAGY, Gábor –SZARVÁK, Tibor
(2004): Regions in Information Society – a Hungarian Case-Study
No. 43
FARAGÓ, László (2004): The General Theory of Public (Spatial) Planning (The
Social Technique for Creating the Future)
No. 44
HAJDÚ, Zoltán (2004): Carpathian Basin and the Development of the Hungarian
Landscape Theory Until 1948
No. 45
GÁL, Zoltán (2004): Spatial Development and the Expanding European
Integration of the Hungarian Banking System
137