The dynamics of urban development: Towns in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Hungary

American Historical Review

Volumn 109, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 360-386

  Szelényi, Balázs A ^a  

^a LIBRARY OF CONGRESS   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 56249095813     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/530336     Document Type: Review

References (123)

1. Including Slovakia and Transylvania.
2. See Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974);
3. T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philip, eds., The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (New York, 1985);
4. Ernest Bramsted, Aristocracy and the Middle Classes in Germany (Chicago, 1964);
5. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, 3 vols. (New York, 1982-84);
6. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (1967; rpt. edn., New York, 1979);
7. Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York, 1947);
8. Sándor Gyimesi, A városok a feudalizmusból a kapitalizmusba való átmenet idoszakában [Towns during the transition from feudalism to capitalism] (Budapest, 1975);
9. Eric Hobsbawm, "The General Crisis of the European Economy in the 17th Century: I," Past and Present, no. 5 (May 1954): 33-53;
10. and "The Crisis of the 17th Century: II," 6 (November 1954): 44-65;
11. Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1950 (Cambridge, 1985);
12. Marion Malowist, "The Problem of the Inequality of Economic Development in Europe in the Later Middle Ages," Economic History Review 19, no. 1 (1966): 15-28;
13. Zsigmond Pál Pach, Die ungarische Agrarentwicklung im 16-17. Jahrhundert: Abbiegung vom westeuropäischen Entwicklungsgang (Budapest, 1964);
14. Henri Pirenne, A History of Europe from the Invasions to the XVI Century, Bernard Miall, trans. (London, 1939);
15. Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815 (Cambridge, 1958);
16. Jeno Szucs, "Vázlatok Európa három történeti régiójáról" [Outline of the three historical regions of Europe], in T. Iván Berend and Éva Ring, eds., Helyünk Európában [Our place in Europe], 2 vols. (Budapest, 1986);
17. Jerzy Topolski, The Manorial Reaction in Early Modern East-Central Europe: Origins, Development and Consequences (Aldershot, 1994);
18. Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-1871 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971);
19. Max Weber, The City, Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth, trans. and eds. (New York, 1966).
20. Francis L. Carsten, "The Origins of the Junkers," English Historical Review 62, no. 243 (April 1947): 145-78, see 164.
21. Francis L. Carsten, "Medieval Democracy in the Brandenburg Towns and Its Defeat in the Fifteenth Century," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser. (London, 1943): 73-92, see 90.
22. Francis L. Carsten, The Origins of Prussia (Oxford, 1954), 135.
23. Jerome Blum, "The Rise of Serfdom in Eastern Europe," AHR 62 (July 1957): 807-36, see 833.
24. Often, the criticism is leveled specifically at G. F. Knapp's famous work, Die Bauern-Befreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preussens (Leipzig, 1887), which formed one pillar of Carsten and Rosenberg's criticism of the Junkers.
25. William W. Hagen, "Seventeenth-Century Crisis in Brandenburg: The Thirty Years' War, the Destabilization of Serfdom, and the Rise of Absolutism," AHR 94 (April 1989): 302-35;
26. also see Hagen, Ordinary Prussians (Cambridge, 2002);
27. Hagen, "How Mighty the Junkers? Peasant Rents and Seigniorial Profits in Sixteenth Century Brandenburg," Past and Present, no. 108 (1985): 80-116;
28. Peter Kriedte, Peasants, Landlords and Merchants: Europe and the World Economy 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1983);
29. also Kriedte, "Spätmittelalterische Agrarkrise oder Krise des Feudalismus?" Geschichte und Gesselschaft 7 (1981): 42-67;
30. Edgar Melton, "Gutsherrschaft in East Elbian Germany and Livonia, 1500-1800: A Critique of the Model," Central European History 21 (December 1988): 315-49;
31. Jan Peters, ed., Konflikt und kontrolle in Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften (Göttingen, 1995);
32. J. Schlumbohm, Freiheitsbegriff und Emanzipacionsprozess (Göttingen, 1973);
33. Tom Scott, Freiburg and the Breisgau (Oxford, 1986);
34. Heidi Wunder, "Serfdom in Later Medieval and Early Modern Germany," in T. S. Aston, ed., Social Relations and Ideas (Cambridge, 1983), 273-94.
35. Hagen, "Seventeenth-Century Crisis in Brandenburg," 311.
36. Melton, "Gutsherrschaft in East Elbian Germany and Livonia," 326.
37. Hagen, "Seventeenth-Century Crisis in Brandenburg," 315, 313.
38. Adriaan Verhulst, "The Origins of Towns in the Low Countries," Past and Present, no, 122 (February 1989): 3-36.
39. John Merrington, "Town and Country in the Transition to Capitalism," in Rodney Hilton, ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1978), 170-95, see 170.
40. As quoted in Merrington, "Town and Country," 173,
41. from Pirenne's Medieval Cities (rpt. edn., New York, 1966), 31, 72, 153-58.
42. Henri Pirenne, Histoire de la constitution de la ville de Dinant au moyen-âge (Gand, 1889);
43. also see Pirenne, Belgian Democracy, Its Early History (Manchester, 1915);
44. Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, N.J., 1925);
45. and Early Democracies in the Low Countries: Urban Society and Political Conflict in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York, 1963).
46. Pirenne, History of Europe from the Invasions to the XVI Century, 534.
47. On the Hungarian literature, see Zsigmond Pál Pach, Das Entwicklungsniveau der feudalen Agrarverhältnisse in Ungarn in der zweiten Hälfte des XV. Jahrhunderts (Budapest, 1960);
48. Sándor Gyimesi, "Frühkapitalistische Entwicklung und Spätfeudalismus in 16. und 17. Jh. in Ungarn," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftgeschichte 2 (1987): 51-64;
49. Ivan Berend, "The Historical Evolution of Eastern Europe as a Region," in Ellen Comisso and Laura D'Andrea Tyson, eds., Power, Purpose, and Collective Choice (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 153-70;
50. Szucs, Vázlat Európa három történeti régiójáról; György Granasztói, A középkori magyar város [The medieval Hungarian town] (Budapest, 1980).
51. On Poland, look at Maria Bogucka, Handel zagraniczny Gdańska w pierwszej połowie XVII w. [Gdańsk's foreign trade in the first half of the seventeenth century] (Wrocław, 1970);
52. Antoni Ma̧czak, "Export of Grain and the Problem of Distribution of the National Income in Poland in the Years 1550-1650," Acta Poloniae historica 18 (1968): 75-98;
53. Staniszlaw Hoszowski. "The Revolution of Prices in Poland in the 16th and 17th Centuries," Acta Poloniae historica 2 (1959): 7-16;
54. Jerzy Topolski, "The Role of Gniezno in International Trade," Acta Poloniae historica 18 (1968): 194-204.
55. For recent work, see Andrzej Wyrobisz, "Towns in 15th, 16th, and 17th Century Descriptions of Poland," Acta Poloniae historica 67 (1993): 79-90;
56. Jerzy Wyrozumski, "Was Poland Affected by the Late-Medieval Crisis?" Acta Poloniae historica 78 (1998): 5-18.
57. Z. P. Pach, "Sixteenth-Century Hungary: Commercial Activity and Market Production by the Nobles," in Peter Burke, ed., Economy and Society in Early Modern Europe: Essays from Annates (New York, 1972), 113-33, see 114.
58. Zsigmond Pál Pach, "The Shifting of International Trade Routes in the 15th-17th Centuries," Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 14 (1968): 287-319,
59. see 287, also printed in Pach, Hungary and the European Economy in Early Modern Times (Aldershot, 1994).
60. Zsigmond Pál Pach, "The Role of East Central Europe in International Trade," in Pach, Hungary and the European Economy, 259.
61. Pach, "Sixteenth-Century Hungary," 114.
62. Pach, Das Entwicklungsniveau der feudalen Agrarverhältnisse;
63. see also Zsigmond Pál Pach, The Role of East-Central Europe in International Trade, 16th and 17th Centuries (Budapest, 1970).
64. For a shorter summary, see Pach, Levantine Trade and Hungary in the Middle Ages: Theses, Controversies, Arguments (Budapest, 1975);
65. also see Pach, The Transylvanian Route of Levantine Trade at the Turn of the 15th and 16th Centuries (Budapest, 1980).
66. Verhulst, "Origins of Towns in the Low Countries," 32.
67. A. B. Hibbert, "The Origins of the Medieval Town Patriciate," Past and Present, no. 3 (February 1953): 15-27, see 17.
68. Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe," Past and Present, no. 70 (February 1976): 30-74, see 54-55.
69. Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure," 59-60.
70. R. H. Hilton, "Capitalism-What's in a Name?" Past and Present, no. 1 (February 1952): 32-43, see 41.
71. Maurice Dobb, "A Reply," in Hilton, Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, 57-67, see 61.
72. In 1100, Kremica (Kremnitz/Körmöcbánya), in 1141, Skalica (Skalitz/Szakolcza), and in 1200, Szeged (Szegedin) were granted royal privileges, but real urban growth was more characteristic of the first half of the thirteenth century. In 1225, Banská Bystrica (Neusohl/ Besztercebánya), in 1238, Trnava (Tyrnau/Nagyszombat), in 1242, Levoča (Leutschau/Locse), in 1244, Buda, in 1244, Banská Štiavnica (Schemnitz/Selmecbánya), and in 1244, Krupina (Karpfen/Korpona) became royal free towns. In 1291, both Bratislava (Pressburg/Pozsony) and Pest were elevated to royal free standing, but between 1250 and 1320, fewer towns received royal charters. Then in the year 1324-which is understood as the height of urban power in Hungary-seven towns were granted royal privileges, including Bardejov (Bartfeld/Bártfa), Prešov (Preschau/Eperjes), Sopron (Ôdenburg), Zvolen (Altsohl/Zólyom), Nová Baňa (Königsberg/Újbánya), and Baia Mare (Neustadt/Nagybánya), and were raised to royal free standing. The year 1324 is viewed as the most important year for urban development in Hungarian history. Mining, manufacturing, construction, and trade were all flourishing and expanding.
73. Gernot Nussbächer, Johannes Benkner (Bucharest, 1988), 22-23.
74. Nussbächer, Johannes Benkner, 22-23. The names are given as spelled in the original documents.
75. These were Alba Iulia, Baia Mare, Baia Sprie (Mittelstadt/ Felsobánya), Cluj-Napoca, Esztergom (Gran), Košice, and Tîrgu Mureş (Neumarkt/Marosvásárhely).
76. Christian Genersich, Merkwürdigkeit der königlichen Freystadt Käisermarkt (Kaschau, 1804).
77. Also see Ivan Chalupecký, Kežmarok (Košice, 1968);
78. Nora Baráthová, Kezmarský hrad (Martin, Slovakia, 1989).
79. Genersich, Merkwürdigkeit der königlichen Freystadt Käisermarkt.
80. István Sinkovics, "Útkeresés Mohács után: Az ország három részre szakadása 1526-1541" [The search for order after Mohács: The partition of the kingdom into three parts 1526-1541], in Zsigmond Pál Pach, ed., Magyarország története 1526-1686, 2 vols. [History of Hungary 1526-1686] (Budapest, 1987), 1: 147-222, see 180-90.
81. Also see Gábor Barta, et al., eds., Két tárgyalás Sztambulban: Hyeronimus Łaski tárgyalása a töröknél János király nevében, Habardanecz János jelentése 1528. Nyári sztambuli tárgyalásairól [Two conferences in Istanbul: Hieronimus Łaski's meeting with the Turks in the name of King János; and János Habardanecz's report of his Istanbul conference in the summer of 1528] (Budapest, 1996).
82. Genersich, Merkwürdigkeit der königlichen Freystadt Käisermarkt. Zápolya granting estates to Łaski can be found in the Hungarian National Archives (MOL), Neo-regestrata acta, E 148, 59/20. Some of Łaski's correspondence can also be found in the Sibiu Branch of the National Archives of Romania, under the Brukenthal Index. Kežmarok's town book covering most of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is in the Poprad District Archive (Slovakia) and is in excellent condition.
83. Gábor Barta, Vajon kié az ország? [To whom does the country belong?] (Budapest, 1988);
84. Alphons Lhotsky, Das Zeitalter des Hauses Österreich: Die ersten Jahre d. Regierung Ferdinand I. in Österreich, 1520-1527 (Vienna, 1971).
85. In 1493, the burghers of Krakow were also ennobled, and similar ennoblements took place among the burghers of Lviv (in Ukraine) and Wilno (Vilnius). András Kubinyi, "Budapest története a késobbi középkorban Buda elestéig 1541-ben" [The history of Budapest in the late medieval period to Buda's fall in 1541]; László Gerevich, ed., Budapest Története II, 2 vols. [History of Budapest] (Budapest, 1973), 2: 210-12.
86. Kálmán Mikszáth, A fekete város [The black city] (Budapest, 1910). This popular novel by Mikszáth was a fictional account of the history of Levoča during the Thököly Revolt in the seventeenth century.
87. István Rácz, Városlakó nemesek az Alföldön 1541-1848 között [Urbanized nobles of the Plains 1541-1848] (Budapest, 1988), 17-19.
88. Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfu, Magyar történet [History of Hungary], 5 vols. (Budapest, 1935-36), 3: 554.
89. Rácz, Városlakó nemesek az Alföldön, 30.
90. Hóman and Szekfu, Magyar történet, 3: 555-56.
91. Hóman and Szekfu, Magyar történet, 3: 555-56.
92. Hóman and Szekfu, Magyar történet, 3: 558.
93. Nussbächer, Johannes Benkner.
94. Sebastian Munster, Cosmographey Oder beschreibung aller länder herschaftenn vnd fürnemesten stetten des gantzen erdbodens (Getruckt zu Basel, 1588). The Hungarian Simplicissimus appeared in print in 1683 and was an imitation of Grimmelshausen's work. Its author's identity remains a mystery. Some have attributed it to the Silesian-born Daniel Speer. He was born in Vraclav (Breslau) in 1635. However, linguists have questioned this assumption, and there remains no definite answer to the author's true identity.
95. See József Turóczi-Trostler, ed., Magyar Simplicissimus (Budapest, 1956), 226.
96. Ágnes Várkonyi, "Gazdaság és társadalom a 17. század második felében (1648-1686)" [Economy and society during the second half of the seventeenth century], in Pach, Magyarország története 1526-1686, 2: 1273-1424, see 1290.
97. Rácz, Városlakó nemesek az Alföldön, 27.
98. László Makkai, A magyar városfejlodés és városépítés történeti vázlata [A historical outline of Hungarian town development and town building] (Budapest, 1963), 62.
99. Antal Verancsics, an eyewitness to the execution of Dózsa, described it thus: "They took György Dózsa's clothes off up to the waist and tied him to a red-hot iron chair. Then they forced his soldiers to dance the heyduck around his throne. After the completion of every round they had to take a bite out of his flesh." László Kürti, "The Ungaresca and Heyduck Music and Dance Tradition of Renaissance Europe," Sixteenth Century Journal 14, no. 1 (1983): 63-104, 83.
100. Kürti is quoting from Memoria Rerum quae in Hungaria a Nato Rege Ludovico Acciderunt, in L. Szalay and G. Wenczel, eds., Monumenta Hungariae Historiae, III (Budapest, 1854-75), 11.
101. Rácz, Városlakó nemesek az Alföldön, 27-28.
102. Makkai, A magyar városfejlodés, 70.
103. Rácz, Városlakó nemesek az Alföldön, 85-86.
104. Elemér Mályus, A mezovárosi fejlodés [The development of agrarian towns] (Budapest, 1953);
105. Lajos Zoltai, Debrecen a török uralom végén [Debrecen at the end of Ottoman rule] (Budapest, 1905);
106. Zoltai, Vidékiek beköltözése Debrecenbe [The settlement from the countryside into Debrecen] (Debrecen, 1902);
107. István Balogh, A civisek világa [The world of well-to-do peasants in the towns of Eastern Hungary] (Budapest, 1973);
108. István Rácz, A debreceni cívisvagyon [An inventory of Debrecen's well-to-do peasants living in the town] (Budapest, 1989).
109. Makkai, A magyar városfejlodés.
110. Quoted in Lothar Gall, Bürgertum in Deutschland (Augsburg, 1989), 17. Mommsen also wrote: "I have never had political influence, nor aimed at it. But in my innermost self, and I believe with what is best in me, I have always been an animal politicum, and wished to be a citizen. That is not possible in our nation; even the best among us never rises above doing his duty in the ranks and treating political authority like a fetish (politischen Fetischismus). This rift between my inner self and the people to whom I belong has firmly and consistently determined me to appear as little as possible as a person before the German public, for which I have no respect. "
111. Theodore Mommsen, "Last Wishes, 1899," Past and Present, no. 1 (February 1952): 71.
112. Friedrich Meinecke, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationstaat (Munich, 1908).
113. Quoted in Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany, 50. As Don Martindale noted: "[For Weber] Prussia's policies were determined by the attempt to keep the city and its typical strata under political control while political dominance-in the state, the administration, and the higher ranks of the Army-was in the hands of the rural aristocrats (the Junkers). Thus [he thought that] while in other Western lands and the United States urban types had the major voice in the affairs of the nation, in Germany the city man was peculiarly deprived of political responsibility."
114. Martindale, "Prefatory Remarks: The Theory of the City," in Weber, The City, 36. Or, as Richard Bendix noted: "[As] a member of the middle class [Weber] inquired into the sources of the collectivism and rationality that prompted English and Hanseatic stockbrokers to impose an ethic of trade upon themselves-a practice that stood in marked contrast to the aping of aristocratic ways among his compatriots."
115. Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (1960; rpt. edn., Berkeley, Calif., 1977), 48.
116. Carsten, "Medieval Democracy in the Brandenburg Towns," 90. Carsten understood his theory as applying to all of Eastern Europe, including Hungary: "In spite of wide differences of historical development between Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Prussia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Russia, and the Baltic states, one basic fact applied to all of them: the nobility remained the ruling class, and an urban middle class did not come into being until the later nineteenth century";
117. Carsten, Origins of Prussia, 276.
118. Carsten, Origins of Prussia, 276.
119. Kálmán Demkó, Locse törtéenete [History of Levoča] (Locse, 1897), 269.
120. Granasztói, A középkori magyar város, 158-59.
121. Szucs, "Vázlatok Európa három történeti régiójáról," 2: 515-68, see 541.
122. Geoff Eley, From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (1986; London, 1990), 12, 276.
123. Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure."