Borsodi Levéltári Évkönyv 3. (Miskolc, 1980)
Angol nyelvű
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL TO THE QUESTION OF SERF-MIGRATION FROM COUNTY SZABOLCS INTO THOSE OF ABAUJ, BORSOD, AND ZEMPLÉN FROM THE EARLY DECADES OF THE 18TH CENTURY István Bársony The aim of the present study is to document the process of serf-migration with the direction given in the title, its chronological succession, separation within the county, the property status of migrating people through a detailed revelation of the sources referring to serf-migration and escape. Three reasons for the intense serf-migration in the early decades of the 18th century are underlined: differences in the density of population between the various parts of the country, the unsettledness of the distribution of land, and the appearance of the different strata of free-moving serfs. A long series of county regulations of the period deals with the question of serf- migration. After a brief account of them we told facts about the 345 families which had migrated from County Szabolcs to the counties Abaúj, Borsod, and Zemplén between 1698 and 1723, then we established that the serf-migration having taken place in the above-mentioned direction could not be looked upon as considerable before 1711. After 1711 and especially 1715, however, the number of those having settled in our counties had increased by leaps. This settling hit only 4 villages and country-towns in Abaúj, 15 in Borsod and 40 in Zemplén; in the majority of cases they ensured the same living and farming conditions as the villages which had been left behind by those coming here from County Szabolcs. The new inhabitants had found their new home mainly in the southern parts of Zemplén and Borsod, in the country-towns of Hegyalja (the Tokay vine-growing district), and on the settlements upon the rivers Sajó and Hernád where Heyducks used to live. In most cases serfs changing their home covered only a rather short distance. The greater part of those involved in migration were peasants living in serfdom for life, but there were a great number of censualists, peasants paying taxes, free peasants, twelve days’ peasants and cotters as well among them. A great part of the inhabitants made a new living not as poverty-stricken people who could rely only upon living earned with their own hands, but they had domestic animals of not negligible quantity at that time. DEMOGRAPHICAL CHANGES IN TOKAJ-HEGYALJA AND ITS ENVIRONS BETWEEN 1787 AND 1970 István Süli-Zakar The treatise sums up the changes in the population of the eastern part of County Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén for nearly 200 years from the first census in Hungary up to 1970. The regions of different natural character constituting the territory in question had developed in very different ways in the past centuries. Due to this, changes in the population of the various regions had taken specific shapes. a) Tokaj-Hegyalja had been among the most densely populated areas in Hungary for centuries. The high density of population here was connected with prosperous viticulture, so its crisis necessarily had a negative effect on peopling in the area. After the maximum number of inhabitants in the first half of the 19th century the prevailing feature of the population changes in Hegyalja had been that of stagnation. 290
