Nincs absztrakt.

In the present historico-geographical paper I have attempted to present theinternal segmentation and developmental fault-lines of the early-20th centuryWestern Trans-Danubian region using quantitative methods. On of the mostimportant results of my researches is the discovery of a characteristic “North-Western/South-Eastern slope” in the diff erences among the development levelof the areas of the Western Trans-Danubian region. Th is refl ects the develop mental situation of the entire country. I was also able to ascertain that, ratherthan diff erences of religion, ethnicity or settlement structure, developmental differencesare primarily defi ned by the distance from Vienna. The developmentalmap displays marked zonality: we only fi nd contiguous areas of relative underdevelopmenton the Southern and Eastern peripheries, only disrupted by thedeveloped ”islands” around the towns. The correlation between the developmentalzones and Vienna also shows that at the beginning of the 20th century thecenter of this region was much rather Vienna than the capital of the country,Budapest.

The authors present the Hungarian town hierarchy of the first few years of the 20th century by relying on empirical methods (by drawing on the existence or the lack of 88 urban establishments sorted by settlements). In 425 (by more rigorous criteria 332) cases urban establishments achieved such a concentration that allows these settlements to be classified as towns. However, only 139 settlements possessed municipal rights (conversely, this research could not identify urban functions in all of them), so that the examination of the Hungarian urban stock, urban development and urbanization cannot be restricted to settlements with municipal rights. While 20,4% of the country’s inhabitants lived in settlements with municipal rights in 1910, 29,2% lived in such that had urban functions. In Hungary, the central role that some towns played in the regional administration (county centres and chief towns of the district) vastly affected the evolution of town hierarchy. The era of the middle class did not replace the core of the urban stock but initiated the transformation of towns of higher hierarchical ranks, and the substitution of their local society and functions. Until 1910, modern industry only elevated 5–7 settlements to the rank of the town. Within the Carpathian basin significant differences were manifest between the urban structure of the Alföld towns and towns of the other regions, since on the Alföld, urban functions settled in dense but agrarian population concentrations, so that their „specific values” were low and for this reason their identity as towns is debated. The quantity of urban functions they served however, were not disadvantaged compared to towns of other regions of the country.

The study outlines the historiography of the Hungarian historical ecology. The eighth part of the Carpatian Basin was flooded in the Middle Ages, and it was drastically changed during the Early Modern Ages. Up to the middle of the 20th century, historical works gave favourable account of the effects of these landscape changing drainage works. Since many unambiguous negative effects arised, such as pauperization of people using water resources; only child in a family, drying out of lands, it made researchers of social studies to revise the problem. In Hungary and first, experts of ethnology formed a new opinion (Bertalan Andrásfalvy) suggesting the long time bad effects of 18-19th century drainage works; and the researchers of historical geography followed this way (Tibor Bellon, Sándor Frisnyák).