Nincs absztrakt.

Since the 1990s, global history has gained increasing prominence in international historiography. However, by the mid-2010s, this momentum appeared to slow down, and criticism began to mount. The critiques have focused on the wide variety of works grouped under the label of global history, the lack of clarity regarding its methodological and theoretical foundations, its deterministic and teleological view of history, its disregard of individual agency, and the marginalization of primary sources. One possible response to these challenges is the emerging approach of global microhistory, which seeks to combine global and microhistorical perspectives. The present study offers an overview of current international discourse surrounding the reconciliation of global history and microhistory, and the potential of global microhistory as a new direction. Special emphasis is placed on the issue of scale in historical analysis. The discussion is based primarily on two thematic journal issues: the 2018 special section of the French Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, and the 2019 special issue of the British Past and Present, addressing this topic. Other key works related to this debate are also considered in order to chart earlier developments and thereby situate ongoing discussions within a broader historiographical context.

Nincs absztrakt.

This study of the relationship between village and town analyses a unique historical situation whereby the town acted as the overlord of the villages, rather than simply being a market outlet or information hub for them. In this function, the town played an integral role in various aspects of the peasants’ day-to-day life: acted as judge, collected taxes, regulated the use of forests, controlled the mill, alcohol sales, the abattoir, and was the patron of the parish priest as well. The case study examines Kassa (presently Kosice, Slovakia’s second largest city), which was one of the most important regional centres in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the 1840s, due to the privileges as chartered town, as well as other royal grants, Kassa was entitled to hold seventeen villages and a market town. The study examines the economic impact of owning lands and the everyday relations between the town as landowner and its villages before the 1848 Revolution and its aftermath abolished this form of feudal co-dependence. The analysis suggests that although the town generated significantly more revenues from financial transactions (investment and loans) than from its villages, this income was far from insignificant. Judging by the villagers’ legal cases presented to the council, the town can be characterised as a strict and consistent, but not tyrannical overlord. The town’s relationship with its villages can be seen as patriarchal: villages were not considered merely as a source of income, but were also recipients of support and care. While villagers were keen to find loopholes in the system and circumvent feudal control, they were also acutely aware of their dependency on the town as their overlord.

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The starting point of the paper is the analysis of the changes of the concept of“town” in Hungary. Exploration of the discourse of the time shows that the conceptof town had undergone signifi cant changes between the end of the 18th centuryand the middle of the 19th century. Besides the traditional legal-politicalconcept, two new aspects came into play, as witnessed by the defi nition providedby Article 1. of the Urban Act drafted by the Parliament of 1843-1844: “Thetown consists of the town area and the town dwellers”. Th at is, while previousdefi nitions had been primarily based on privilege, here the emphasis shifted tothe demographic and spatial dimensions of the concept. The paper examines thepart of the protracted debate of the Parliament of 1843-1844 about the draftUrban Act that focused on the problems related to the defi nition of the townarea. According to the members of the Parliament, the area of the town is thearea over which the town has jurisdiction. The main diffi culty arose from the factthat due to the various privileges, this area did not coincide with the geographicaldimensions of the town. The proponents of liberal reforms strove to homogenizethe legally fragmented dimensions of the town as far as possible and to extend thecompetency of the town authority over the entire geographical area of the town.As this also entailed the subordination of the town nobility under the town jurisdictionand thus had a direct eff ect on existing noble privileges, the debate on thedefi nition of the town area involved signifi cant political and social stakes. Yet,the diff erences between the geographical dimensions and the area – the jurisdiction– of the town had only been eliminated by the laws of 1848.

Nincs absztrakt.