Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 1. (Budapest, 2006)

Abstracts

However, the free royal towns served as an example for the market-towns in two respects. On the one hand, they provided a model for the structure of urban administration. Their model role for the towns as centres of civilization, promoting education and knowledge, organizing social life in different ways than rural communities is probably even more important. Throughout these changes the free royal towns preserved their advantageous situation concerning the propagation of urban lifestyle. This was what the contemporaries called "the civilization mission". The market-towns kept fighting for the free royal town rank, even by undertaking serious expenses, because this was the only possibility for them to liberate themselves from the control of the landowners and the county. The inhabitants of market-towns could call themselves citizens, but this had an importance only within their own community; outside of it they counted as peasants or serfs, although they represented the most liberal version of serfdom. The expressions civitas and freedom were at this time still bound together. The market-towns tried to acquire full urban right in order to achieve this more complete freedom. The prestige of this title persisted for a long time despite that several oppida thanked their urban role particularly to the dissolution of the society of orders. ISTVÁN OROSZ The Economy of Free Royal Towns and Market Towns From the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries The study deals with the economy of the inhabitants of the civitates and oppida of the Great Hungarian Plain from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, more precisely due to the nature of the region - with their agricultural production. Two free royal towns - Debrecen and Szeged - and three market towns - Hajdúnánás, Berettyóújfalu and Mezőberény - build the starting-point of the analysis. However, on the basis of their comparative analysis we can draw conclusions that are valid generally for the free royal towns and market towns located in the Great Hungarian Plain. In the surveyed period spacious outskirts were characteristic for both types of towns. This of course determined their economy as well. The system of economy fundamentally based on animal husbandry and not on com production - was not regulated by the state or manorial rule, but by the urban community itself. Animals and animal products led market goods, while cereals served rather for the internal demands of the town, although in the eighteenth century it usually did not fill the needs of the inhabitants. This economy built upon animal husbandry had in the eighteenth century an adequate outskirts usage system, which we can describe as the system of the so-called "quarter lands" - "terrae tuguriales". This system did not imply that houses and farms could be constructed in these areas, but that plough-land and meadow were not sepa-