Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Pest-Buda from 1686 to 1849
activities of the students and the leaders of the intellectual life of the capital in general were not restricted to the city, but from the great commercial centre of Pest all the Hungarians attending the busy fairs or with business in the law courts or the public offices could carry back with them influences which affected the whole country. The rapid development of Buda and Pest naturally affected the surrounding settlements which are now part of modern Budapest. In the years following the expulsion of the Turks the market town of Óbuda, almost entirely merged with Buda, was first under the control of one of the barons, and then, from 1767 it became a Treasury-controlled market town, and at the same time the centre of an estate. While most of the inhabitants earned their livelihood through agriculture and market gardening and in the first place the cultivation of vine, its crafts were by no means unimportant. Towards the end of the century a few small, short-lived factory workshops provided new outlets for employment. But the importance of Óbuda in the history of the capital is due to the fact that the Jews, who for many years were banned from living in Pest and Buda, settled in this township. The Óbuda Jewry, through their commercial activities, mobility, access to capital and their western connections, contributed in no small measure to the growth of the commercial life of Pest. The progress of the other villages and small towns surrounding the capital was furthered by the ever-growing market for agricultural produce and food crops. This progress was reflected in the increase and the more heavily stratified composition of the population, as well as in an awakening of their political consciousness, evident in the social struggles which broke out in the middle of the century. Development into a Capital By the end of the eighteenth century Pest-Buda, as the administrative and most important commercial centre of the country, and—taken together, with the greatest population— became the largest city in Hungary. But to become a real national centre, a true capital, they had to be the centre of nation-wide political and intellectual life as well. The development of this role was the single most important factor in Hungarian history between 1790 and 1848; and it was the large-scale economic development of the city, and the social transformation which took place in the first decades of the nineteenth century, which provided the necessary stimulus. In economic terms, commerce was the lifeblood of the city. The Napoleonic wars brought great but transitory prosperity. After a short recession, revolutionary changes in transport, and in the first place the steamships introduced on the Danube in the 1830s, gave a new impetus to trade. For the export of cereals, so important in Hungarian economic life, the reduction in transport time provided by the cheap river traffic was a tremendous boom. Although railways, which began in 1846, made their effect felt only later, the fact that the railway network was designed with Pest as the central focus was a reflection of the conviction that that city was already regarded as the economic centre of Hungary. It was the foreign merchants in Pest who, for the most part, reaped the benefits of the period of prosperity due to the Napoleonic wars. Largely as a consequence of the Austrian tariff system, which discouraged industrialization of Hungary, and of the depression following the boom, the natives of Pest preferred to spend the capital they accumulated on the 29
