Heves megyei aprónyomtatványok 1/C
In the eighteenth century, when the recolonization of the Hungarian Great Plains had been started, the economic development was with increasing frequency interrupted by famine and animal starving following the droughts or by the grain shortage after the floods. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a decisive change occurred in the matter of the Tisza River regulation. Beyond the general economic development this was made possible on the one hand by the progress of surveying and the preparation of the regulation plans, and, on the other hand more directly promoted by the lessons learned from the recurrent floods and the long inundations of the 1840's. The credit of the recognition of the matured historical situation and the seizing of the favourable opportunity goes to István Széchenyi, while that for the technical establishment of the regulation works to Pál Vásárhelyi. As a result of this work an area larger than that gained in the Netherlands from the sea and river floods, or that given to the Italian agriculture by the flood control, in the Po River Plain, has been reclaimed. The adverse natural conditions were gradually trasformed by river regulation, flood control and the reclamation of the Tisza Valley, as a vast, increasingly extending work during the last more than a hundred year long period, and furthermore by the introduction of a purposeful comprehensive water management aimed at developing a dynamic equilibrium between water management conditions and socio-economic progress. This activity formed the favourable conditions for starting the economic development in the region which formerly had given a living only to a few hundred thousand people.
