Susan Zimmermann. Divide, Provide, and Rule: An Integrative History of Poverty Policy, Social Policy, and Social Reform in Hungary under the Habsburg Monarchy.

Abstract

For the past several decades, Susan Zimmermann has been one of the leading social historians of modern Hungary. Much of her work has focused on the social consequences of industrialization and urbanization, and she has published monographs in German on women's movements and welfare reform. In this book, Zimmermann offers English-language readers a concise summation of her work on Hungarian welfare and labor policies in the years around 1900. The larger goal, as stated in the preface, is to draw attention to transnational influences and to “the past and present of inequality and exploitation within and between the countries and regions of Europe” (p. xii). Late nineteenth-century Hungary faced tremendous social problems. Zimmermann closely analyzes the laws and policies that emerged as state and local officials recognized the inadequacy of traditional practices and grasped at new tools to take on these problems. The solutions they reached—limited in some areas, innovative in others—form the basis of the book's three substantive chapters. The first surveys poverty policy, which produced some notable achievements, including the founding of hundreds of poorhouses, orphanages, and children's homes. Yet officials maintained strict residency requirements that made it difficult for the poor to qualify for aid and had particularly dire consequences in Budapest and other cities that drew large numbers of migrants. The following chapter examines social reforms, with an emphasis on child protection, public housing, and unemployment insurance. Here Zimmermann finds much more to praise, and she emphasizes landmark legislation in 1901 that transformed child welfare across Hungary, as well as the more than 10,000 workers' apartments built in Budapest in the last decade before the war. The final section of the book takes up labor protection and social insurance, and here the record is more mixed. Pressured by trade unions and influenced by international conventions, Hungarian authorities instituted piecemeal reforms: limits on Sunday work, maximum working hours, and restrictions on child labor. More ambitiously, a series of laws introduced mandatory health and accident insurance. But these initiatives often met resistance from employers, doctors, and local officials who sought to exclude sizeable segments of the working population from basic protections and policies.