Short Survey of Recent Literature on Hungarian Economic History

Abstract

H r ISTORIOGRAPHY in Hungary can look back on a distinguished past. It had inherited relatively rich but unevenly exploited sources from predecessors and a relatively ample but disproportionately worked-out literature which was predominantly conservative in its attitude and methods. Economic history, however, was a particularly weak branch of Hungarian historiography. Research in economic history was pioneered at the turn of the century by Kairoly Tagainyi with his ephemeral Magyar Gazdasagtertineti Szemle (Hungarian Economic History Review, i894-i906) and was continued by Prof. S. Domanovszky's school in the inter-war period. These developments did not fundamentally influence Hungarian historiography, which was characterized by a predominant interest in political history. The introduction of Marxist methods was the responsibility of Erik Molnar, whose works on the development of medieval Hungarian society played an important part in recent Hungarian historiography. Economic history has had its greatest quantitative and qualitative growth in the past twenty-five years. This growth derived much from the materialist concept of history, from the recognition that over and above geographical and biological factors, the mode of production, consumption, and distribution provides that tongue dure'e element (to use the language of the Annales school), that process which forms a basis for cycles and epochal changes which underlie histoire evenementionnelle. Besides the impulse received from Marxism the upward trend of economic history was reinforced after I 945 by the opening of the archives of the state, of ministries, of enterprises, and of the families, sources that had been closed up to that time. Hungarian historians also learned much from foreign literature, from works applying modern economic methods to history, and from discussions at international meetings. They contributed to the growing international co-operation of economic historians at the International Congresses of Economic History held in I 960, I 962, I965, I968, and I 970. The results of increasing research, and the enlarging international relations, are indicated by the organizing of conferences on economic history in Budapest (French-Hungarian, March i968; G.D.R.Hungarian, September i969; Italian-Hungarian, January I970). The research work of Hungarian historians has been focused on the following themes: the formation and consolidation of the feudal relations of property; the problems of the transition from feudalism to capitalism; the characteristics of the capitalist system in Hungary; the question of the industrial revolution in eastern central Europe; investigations on demography and social structure. This research has resulted in new trends in historical writing that have developed in Hungary in the course of the past twenty-five years.