Urbs - Magyar Várostörténeti Évkönyv 10-11. (Budapest, 2017)
Abstracts
460 Abstracts At first the mills were positioned on small rivers or on tributaries. Those strongly structured ship mills that could utilise the stronger current of the river’s main branch, spread in Hungary from the 18th century. Although the ship mills worked only from spring to autumn and in winter they had to be dismantled, from the second half of the century their operation encountered more problems: the number of ship mills increased and they were anchored in clusters, thus the risk of accidents also increased. In the first half of the 19th century the intensified river traffic was seriously impeded by the ship mills anchored in more lines (in so-called mill ferries). The grain boom during the Napoleonic wars made the situation even more difficult. Therefore, from the second half of the 18th century the city administration took measures on the situation of the ship mills and central regulations were also adopted (e.g. the 1814 regulations on the navigation on the Danube and the berths for ship mills). The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between the river, the ship mills and the navigation in the above-mentioned period in the bigger Hungarian cities along the Danube (above all in Pozsony, Győr, Komárom, Pest-Buda-Óbuda). Special attention is paid to the situation in Pest, Buda and Óbuda, where the positioning of the ship mills was regularized repeatedly but the proximity of the three towns limited the possibility to utilise the Danube in this way. The closeness of the mills repeatedly led to accidents and not only the mills were damaged but also the pontoon bridge connecting Pest and Buda. Furthermore, the loss of importance of the ship mills was predictable, because at the end of our period the much more effective steam mills appeared. ANDRÁS VADAS Moats and water management in Central European Towns in the Late Middle Ages The castles and towns were surrounded by partly or wholly artificial moats that played an important role in the defence and security of the settlements. Moreover, in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modem Period the moats were intensively used by the local societies. The moats had at least two important functions in the economic life of the settlements: the provision of water energy and the use of the waters as fish-ponds. The paper examines how the mills along the moats were built in certain settlements and how soon after their construction the use of water energy started. We have less information about the use of waters as fish-ponds and there is particularly limited information about the beginnings of the activity. When the sources allow, we try to deal with this issue as well.
