Cesty a dial'nice na Slovensku v medzivojnovom období [Roads and highways in Slovakia during the interwar period] by Michal Ďurčo (review).

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cesty a dial'nice na Slovensku v medzivojnovom období [Roads and highways in Slovakia during the interwar period] by Michal Ďurčo Jan Štemberk (bio) Cesty a dial'nice na Slovensku v medzivojnovom období [Roads and highways in Slovakia during the interwar period] By Michal Ďurčo. Bratislava: VEDA, 2020. Pp. 230. This monograph is this young Slovak historian's first book, based on his dissertation defended in 2019. So far, in Czech/Slovak/Czechoslovak historiography, little research has looked at the development of the road network. Recently, roads in the Pardubice Region featured in Štěpán and Pražan, Silnice v Pardubickém kraji, 2009. As works published in the past (for example, Musil, Po stezkách k dálnicím, 1987) are now outdated, Michal Ďurčo's monograph is therefore a welcome contribution. His focus on the interwar period divided by 1928, when the Road Fund Act was issued, is very important, as it was a time when load directions in Slovakia changed, initiated by the establishment of the Czechoslovak state, and motor cars appeared, placing higher qualitative demands on the roads. Ďurčo's monograph goes hand in hand with the work of another young Slovak historian, Jančura, Osobný motorizmus na Slovensku v rokoch 1918–1938, 2017, examining personal car transport, for which a good quality road network was a prerequisite. Durčo's grasp of the topic shows a solid knowledge of history writing methods as well as current research trends in transportation history, which he interweaves with approaches used in historical geography. Applying historian Thomas Hughes's Large Technical Systems concept to the road network is a decidedly fresh approach. The sources are Czech and Slovak archives, as well as professional journals and popular magazines. This work is well structured. After introducing the theory and methodology, the narrative is chronological: the central milestone is 1928, the tenth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia and when the Road Fund was legally established, aiming to modernize Czechoslovakia's road [End Page 1194] network. Although the author's focus is Slovakia, he does not neglect the rest of the republic areas that were also facing problems with poor road network conditions (see Dvořák's contribution to Cestami hospodářských dějin, 2020), and the potential for public funding was limited. The clarity of the monograph is enhanced by the same approach to analyzing the periods before and after the 1928 Road Fund. Readers will certainly welcome the overview of road development in Slovakia from the late 1700s mercantilism to 1918, as well as brief outlines of the economic history of both eras that form the basis for subsequent interpretation. Each stage of the problems encountered with modernizing the Slovak road network is exemplified by a specific structure: the Pohronská Polhora–Tisovec road in the 1920s and Stará Huta–Podkriváň in the 1930s. The case studies are appropriate because 320 km of new roads were built in Slovakia during the period examined, and 600 km were provided with a dust-free surface. However, both cases are notably in central Slovakia. In my opinion, the final chapter (pp. 173–204), devoted to the plans and preparations for the Czechoslovak highways in the late 1930s, is the best. This covers a relatively short period, mostly consisting only of discussions, and the real preparatory work had to be crammed into the few months after the 1938 Munich Agreement. Yet the author captures the development of the idea and its gradual implementation until construction began in February 1939. He thus successfully supplements the up-to-now insufficient literature covering the beginnings of motorway construction in these regions (see Lídl and Janda, Stavby, kterým doba nepřála, 2006). Hopefully the book will initiate further research not only on other parts of the region, but also in the second half of the twentieth century, when the topic was just as relevant. Jan Štemberk Jan Štemberk is associate professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, in Prague, the Czech Republic. He is the author of Podnikání v automobilové dopravě v českých zemích v první polovině 20. století [Automobile industry and trade in the...