Scott M. Eddie

Economic policy and economic development in Austria–Hungary, 1867–1913

Introduction The Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph I of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen, had every right to be pleased as he stood in the Hungarian capital city of Buda, atop a mound of earth gathered from every part of the country, to be crowned I. Ferencz Jozsef, King of Hungary, on 8 June 1867. Ten days earlier, the Hungarian parliament had passed the acts constituting the Compromise of 1867 which, with their counterpart laws in Austria, formally established the Austro-Hungarian monarchy as of I January 1868. Very largely the personal work of the Kaiser himself, the Compromise regulated the political relations between the two constituent parts of his Empire, at one and the same time stabilizing both the internal conditions and the international position of the Habsburg lands. Franz Joseph had rightly seen that the position of Hungary was the key both to the internal cohesion of the Empire and to the arrest and reversal of the decline of Austria as a major power, which defeat in the war with Prussia in 1866 had exposed so clearly. Under the Compromise, Hungary regained full internal autonomy and most of the status of an independent country, but remained united with Austria in the person of the common monarch and in the conduct of foreign affairs. The Compromise established two classes of relations between the partners in the new Austria–Hungary: ‘Common affairs’ embraced the army and navy, and all aspects of international relations including the diplomatic service; a common ministry was set up to handle the financial side of these matters.

Agricultural Production and Output per Worker in Hungary, 1870–1913

The countries of non-Russian “Communist Eastern Europe†present the economic historian with a fascinating field for study. This opportunity has, judging from English-language journals at least, largely gone unexploited. Moreover, although Eastern Europe remained a predominantly agrarian region up to the most recent times, the existing literature concentrates heavily on finance, trade, and industry. It is in the hope of contributing to the discussion of Eastern European economic history, most particularly some of its agricultural aspects, that this article has been written.

The Prussian Settlement Commission and Its Activities in the Land Market, 1886–1918

Inner colonization, as is clear from the chapters in this volume, can take many forms. The farther back one goes in history, the more likely it is that the colonization effort was directed at populating empty lands. This was the case, for example, in the efforts of the Habsburgs to attract settlers to the Southeastern areas of their Empire in the eighteenth century, after expulsion of the Turks. Even schemes in modern times, such as Nikita Khrushchev’s virgin lands scheme in the Soviet Union, or the settlement schemes in Sri Lanka in the 1960s, were primarily aimed at bringing new land, or underused land, into cultivation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, there existed an official government settlement scheme that was unusual in that it was directly aimed at changing the ethnic balance of population in an already settled region,1 and undertaken primarily for political, rather than economic, ends.

Galician Jews as Migrants: An Alternative Hypothesis

Quantitative essays in economic history do not need dazzling equations and arcane terminology to make a contribution. Often the greatest service to the profession is performed by the careful scholar who collects, works up, and presents useful economic data in a simple and straightforward way. Simplicity can be deceptive, however, and often the most painstaking scholar will fail to see important implications in the data he uses and manipulates.