Developing Fiume into an international port was one of the achievements of the Hungarian state that was acclaimed by the wider public in the Age of Dualism. The scale of the industrialization process is well illustrated by the fact that by 1891 the population of the city increased threefold as compared to the population at the time of the Compromise of 1867, and it became the second most industrialized city in Hungary based on the proportion of its industrial layer. Fiume’s significance, however, can be also gauged by other means that its position in the hierarchy of Hungarian cities. The city was also an integral part of the Croatian urban network and had major influence on other seaside settlements in its vicinity. This influence was partly exerted through the population employed by the industrial establishments of Fiume and commuting from the Croatian villages nearby. On the other hand, the fact that all infrastructural development was channeled into the city put it into an unbeatable position of advantage compared neighboring cities that formerly ranked similarly. The biggest loser in the process was Zengg (Senj). The study focuses on Zengg’s loss of position: primarily concentrating on the regional realignment as a consequence of Fiume’s industrialization, it sidesteps the praise of Fiume’s nation-wide significance and nuances the usual perception of the port city being isolated from its environment. The aim of the study is to find out how an industrial city’s centrally determined development is experienced by the neighboring region and its former trade hub, what narratives are created to describe its changing position, and how they respond to their new problems. The first part of the study concentrates on the narratives, while subsequent sections delve into the city’s problem-solving strategies.

Nincs absztrakt.

The study examines the role of Hungarian-Croatian coast as a landscape construct (an image of a landscape created by social, political and cultural processes) in the collective imagination of the nation, as well as the role of institutionalising geographical scholarship in the construction of this image. The literature on (re)creating landscapes along nationalistic agendas is abundant. With regard to territorial representations of the Hungarian nation state, the present study relies mainly on the work of Réka Albert and Levente T. Szabó, who studied the symbolic role of landscapes in national self-representation in connection with the Great Plain and Transylvania. As Róbert Keményfi points out, Hungarian geographical scholarship has constructed a centrifugal view, whereby the territory of the state is identical with the Carpathian Basin, observed from the angle of the state-forming nation’s central dwelling area. Besides the obvious political reasons, this can also be explained by the fact that basic geographical research on the ethnic peripheries of Hungary was yet to commence. This, however, is not entirely true for Croatia: due to Hungarian imperialistic power struggles official scholarship of the Balkans did in fact start in this period, partly based in Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia). As a result of these early efforts, the contemporary scholarly output in the geographical sciences provides rich source material for modern scholarship. The present study relies on two types of sources: contemporary press, including articles published in the Fiume-based weekly Magyar Tengerpart (Hungarian Coast), as well as the popular science publications of the Hungarian Geographical Society (founded in 1872) and articles published in its journal Földrajzi Közlemények (Studies in Geography). After Edward W. Said’s paradigmatic work it has become a commonplace that the scholarly research and knowledge of any given space is one of the primary tools of power over that territory: a kind of ‘geographical violation’ which provides those in power with practical information and takes part in the ideological legitimation of exercising their power at the same time. Although Said’s observation primarily concerns spaces demarcated, named, and through these gestures, governed specifically by colonial powers, the present study of creating loci of power employs his methodology of spatial analysis, also found in other contributions in the field of (post)colonial studies. Geographical knowledge shaping both political practice and national imagination was one of the most important instruments in constructing the nationalized space of Hungary and the complex spatial structure, civil code and ethnic composition of the Adriatic region provides an apt terrain to explore the birth of this construct.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

To this day, Central Europe’s biggest rail hub is the Budapest-Ferencváros Railway Station, which was first opened in 1877. While there has been much socio-historical research conducted into the social impact of important passenger stations, the history of the rail lines connecting Budapest stations and the construction of the Ferencváros railway station has remained unexplored. The study briefly discusses the background and history of the station’s construction and goes on to explain the consequences of this development: the main focus is on the radical changes that the station brought to the urban district of Ferencváros and the first Hungarian metropolitan industrial zone as social space. The effects of the railway on Ferencváros as a social space were ambiguous. On one hand, conscious town planning and well-developed infrastructure, as well as the district’s unusual proportions and busy industrial plants, created a hitherto unknown atmosphere of modernity. On the other hand, the railway has also contributed to the solidification of problematic characteristics, such as isolation and peripherality. The connecting rail line had an important role in the country’s internal trade. However, while the station connected Ferencváros to the national bloodstream, in reality this meant the district’s ultimate segregation within the gradually integrating Budapest space. The study concludes with the examination of the social space formed by the Ferencváros railway hub itself. Archival sources attest to the inclusion-like existence of the Hungarian Railway’s Budapest-Ferencváros station in the fabric of the district and Budapest in general. The station’s operation is isolated from its immediate surroundings: as a living and working space it is fundamentally different from the surrounding working class residential district, whose existence, at least partially, had been a result of the development of the station.