GÁBOR DEMETER Agrarian Transformations in Southeastern Europe

310 Pages·2017·4.63 MB·English

GÁBOR DEMETER

Agrarian Transformations in Southeastern Europe

(from the late 18th century to World War II)
PUBLICATIONS OF THE BULGARIAN–HUNGARIAN
HISTORY COMMISSION

3.

A MAGYAR–BOLGÁR TÖRTÉNÉSZ VEGYES BIZOTTSÁG
KIADVÁNYAI

ИЗДАНИЯ НА БЪЛГАРО–УНГАРСКАТАИСТОРИЧЕСКА
КОМИСИЯ

2
PUBLICATIONS OF THE BULGARIAN–HUNGARIAN
HISTORY COMMISSION

3.

GÁBOR DEMETER

Agrarian Transformations in Southeastern Europe

(from the late 18th century to World War II)

Institute for Historical Studies, BAS
Institute of History, RCH, HAS

Sofia
2017
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The research has been supported by the Bolyai János Research
Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

This volume was realised within the framework of the
Bulgarian–Hungarian joint academic project entitled
“Connected Histories: Sources for Building History in Central and
Southeast Europe, 17th – 21st Centuries”

© Gabor Demeter
© Institute for Historical Studies, BAS
© Institute of History, RCH, HAS

Published by the Institute for Historical Studies, BAS

Responsible Editor: Árpád Hornyák, Penka Peykovska

ISBN 978-954-2903-31-4 (Institute for Historical Studies, BAS)
ISBN 978-963-416-088-5 (Institute of History, RCH, HAS)
ISSN 2535-0757

Front and back cover: map from Rónai, A.: Közép-Európa Atlasz. Balatonfüred, 1945. (Areas
with grain surplus and graindeficits) and Kanitz (Rose picking).

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Dedicated to Imre Ress
_______________________

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Contents

I. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 9
(a) Problems ........................................................................................................ 12
(b) The agro-ecological features of the region ................................................ 16
(i) Vertical and horizontal dissection .......................................................... 16
(ii) Climate...................................................................................................... 17
(iii) Soils .......................................................................................................... 19
(iv) Agroeconomic needs and best practices ............................................. 20
(c) Concept .......................................................................................................... 22
II. Agriculture and rural societies during the Napoleonic wars (1780–1820) ...... 27
(a) Agriculture in the Ottoman Empire ........................................................... 27
(i) Changing structures ................................................................................. 27
(ii) Agricultural production and society .................................................... 30
(iii) The system of provisionism and its collapse ...................................... 45
(b) Agriculture in landlocked non-Ottoman lands ........................................ 50
(i) The birth of a smallholder society – The origins of Serbian agrarian
structure ......................................................................................................... 51
(ii) Borderlands .............................................................................................. 60
(iii) Integration into the imperial division of labour – Hungary ............. 65
(iv) Quantification of grain production and its distribution between
social strata – Hungary ................................................................................. 86
III. Integration to the world market (1840s–1870s) ................................................ 104
(a) The effect of the liberalization on prices, trade patterns and wages.... 104
(i) Regional effects of international division of labour ........................... 104
(ii) Trends, prices and wages in agriculture ............................................ 113
(b) The profitability of agrarian production ................................................. 117
(i) The formation and transformation of chiftliks ................................... 117
(ii) Profitability of agrarian production: peasant economies ................. 122
(c) Modernization efforts ................................................................................ 130
(d) Social consequences ................................................................................... 134
(i) Burdens of agrarian societies ................................................................ 134
(ii) The living standard of agrarian classes .............................................. 140
(e) Alternatives of monocultural grain production ..................................... 144
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IV. Shrinking opportunities of extensive agriculture (1873–1914) ......................152
(a) The impacts of global trends on agriculture, 1873–1900........................152
(i) Problems of measuring productivity and development – data
interpretation ...............................................................................................160
(b) The agrarian decline ...................................................................................163
(i) Transformations I. – Land reforms andintrovertion in Bulgaria ......163
(ii) Transformations II. The landuse conflict of animal husbandry and
grain production in Serbia .........................................................................167
(iii) Transformation in the borderlands I.: traditional conditions and
development driven by colonization processes (Bosnia) .......................178
(iv) Croatia, Slavonia, Slovenia and Dalmatia – the dissolution of
communal lands ..........................................................................................187
(v) Transformations in the borderlands II: Macedonia – the alternatives
of shrinking grain exports ..........................................................................194
(vi) Forced grain exports against price trends .........................................201
(vii) The effects of independence on the agriculture of Bulgaria ..........209
(viii) Frozen agrarian conditions – Albania (1870-1930s) .......................214
(c) The era of extensive growth (1900–14) and price recovery ...................216
(i) Alternatives of grain production ..........................................................216
(ii) Livelyhood, taxation, wealth, living standards .................................222
(iii) A dead-end success – the polarized agrarian system of Hungary in
the 1870s–1914 .............................................................................................232
V. The postwar agriculture, 1920s–40s ....................................................................249
(a) Persisting problems ....................................................................................249
(b) Reconstruction attempts of smallholder agrarian societies: land reforms
and consequences .............................................................................................262
(c) Social tensions: living standards, prices, wages and indebtedness,
regional differences ..........................................................................................271
(d) The great economic crisis: causes, consequences and responses;
agrarian policy during the protectionist era .................................................279
(e) The beginnings of modernisation: technological advance and
intensification in the agriculture ....................................................................290
Conclusions ................................................................................................................296
Bibliography ...............................................................................................................297
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I. Introduction

This book deals with the agrarian transformations of the Balkan
Peninsula in the 18th-20th centuries. While focusing on the external and
internal challenges and responses the volume gives a brief summary on
the socio-economic transformations these had caused, and at the same
time it tries to compare the evolution of the Balkan agriculture with the
development of the neighboring Hungary – representing a different
agrarian system.
Though agrarian systems in Southeast-Europe were able to play
decisive role in supplying Europe only for short periods,1 the
agriculture of the Balkan Peninsula yet deserves deeper investigation as
(1) 80% of the population of the Balkan Peninsula earned their living
from agriculture even in the 1930s, and the state budget also relied
on the agrarian incomes for a long time (tithe constituted 30% of
state revenues not only in the Ottoman Empire around 1900, but in
successor states as well);
(2) thus, agrarian production was deeply intertwining with social and
even with political questions, which was not so characteristic for
Western Europe after the industrial revolution;
(3) as this region was still characterized by the preindustrial stage of
development, determined by climatic impacts, geographic
conditions, self-subsistence and peasant mentality alien to the
capitalist thinking;
(4) as the development here can be rather described by constant
transformations, responses to external (shift from the Levantine to
the Atlantic world economy with all its consequences) or internal
challenges (extreme population growth), than by quantitative
increase (output/hectare);

1 As it was in 1847 for example. But generally, the region could not compete with the mass
production of Russia, USA, etc. Even the famous special exports products, like Greek
raisins, Bulgarian rose oil, Romanian walnut were more significant for the producer, than
for the target country (probably with the exception of Macedonian tobacco).

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(5) thus, the region gives a good (and still actual) example for
adaptation problems: extensification vs. intensification, large
estates vs. smallholdings, for the failure of general modernization
financed by agriculture, or for growth consumed by population
increase, etc.;
(6) though the area was not homogeneous regarding its climate, land
tenure systems, products etc. (that most of us might think of the
Balkans), but despite this diversity these states had a common fate
in failing to give adequate answers for the challenges on the long
run;
(7) this higlights, that adaptive-reactive models – a key feature of
peripheries and peripherization2 – are not always successful;
(8) without a knowlegde on these problems, the (level of) sovietization
(which also showed a diverse pattern on the Balkans) of the
agriculture between 1945-1990 with its present consequences also
remains incomprehensible;
(9) the moral of the changes in the long 19th century (the shift from
Asian-type production system to a capitalistic world economy)
might be informative in identifying recent problems and a cure for
these, as the transformations during the EU-integration process
(return from a Soviet-type system to the capitalistic order) could be
interpreted similarly to the changes that took place in the 19th
century.

The key process determining the outcome of events (and that also helps
us understand some of the recurring problems) was the so-called “first
globalization“, during which the region shifted from the Levantine
economy to the Atlantic system. This resulted in drastic changes. Prior
to its integration to the global market this region represented an area
with optimal landuse fit in the physical geographical and climatic
conditions characterized by best practises fit to the economic needs of
the Levantine centre. This resulted in a diverse economy, where

2 The difference (and thus the border) between Southeast-Europe and other, neighboring
peripheric regions (East-Central Europe) applying reactive model is the success in adaptation.
(This also implies that the boundaries of regions are not stable on the long run).
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