Juhász Antal: A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve, 1982/83-2. A szegedi táj tanyái. (Szeged, 1989)

not sell its common pastures, but leased them for various periods (10, 25 or 30 years). With the subdivision of the pastures, another wave of farm construction followed. New farms were also built in the zone of the abodes, to which people continued to move out from the town. Between 1850 and 1870, the population living in the outskirts of Szeged doubled (26 000) and in 1900 it was more than 38 000. The town continued to lease out its common pastures between 1922 and 1926, and by 1930 some 3100—3200 farms had been built on the leaseholds of the town, where some 15 000 people lived. The common pastures of the town were leased out in 14-acre sites at auctions, and in the 20th century a significant number of lessees were unable to undertake larger areas of land. During the economic depression (1929—1933), many lessees fell into debt and went bankrupt, but most of them settled on the distributed pastures. In 1930, two-thirds of the population in the outskirts of Szeged (45 450 people) lived on farms built on inherited land and one-third on leaseholds. The leasehold system made the inhabitants of the farms enterprising and induced them to produce for the market. They sold their products in the markets of Szeged, with its population of about 100 000, and in the nearby settlements (Kiskunfélegyháza, Csongrád, Kistelek, Kiskunhalas and Szabadka). In 1949, more than 49 000 people lived on 12 000 farms in Szeged. Szeged and Kecskemét, the other market-town in the Danube

—Tisza region, became the towns with the largest populations living on farms on the Great Hungarian Plain. Schooling in the outskirts was introduced on some bigger farms in around 1840. In 1853, the town built 4 public elementary farm schools, and in 1910 there was regular education in 70 public farm schools. The town of Szeged led the way in creating farm schools and set an example for the surroungding settlements. In the 1850s, the confines were divided into farm districts. In 1892, the town established two administrative centres in the outskirts. To a great extent, these took over the roles of the mother town and significant farm centres or village nuclei developed around them. II. 3. Farms developed in a similar way in the confines of a privileged, small Cumanian markettown, Dorozsma, with the difference that the common pastures in Dorozsma were distributed in 1898—99. In its confines, 4 farm centres were established up to the 1930s. II. 4. In the confines of Kistelek, founded in 1776, the arable land and the hayfields held in villeinage were distributed in one piece. The landowner (the town of Szeged) did not interfere in the management of the serfs, who were therefore able to build farms on the land in the confines immediately after they had settled there. After the distribution of he common pastures, besides the old farmers, many small farmers and some enterprising tradesmen also acquired land and built farmhouses in the confines. II. 5. The serfs in Tápé cultivated their arable land in a crop-rotation system, and terefore no farms could be established there. In the confines of Tápé, the meadowland reclaimed after the regulation of the riverways offered favourable conditions for the development of farms from the 1850s, when the town of Szeged distributed leaseholds. II. 6. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, two large sandpuszta, areas of about 8500 acres were distributed in the vicinity of the confines of Szeged where mainly poor peasants from the Szeged region hoping for a better living settled. Most of these settlers built farm houses, and only a few of them settled on village sites. In Pusztamérges, two large (430 and 180 acres) vineyards were planted; these were cultivated by poor peasants living in the sandy region. In the 10 700-acre Felső-Pusztaszer, the town of Kecskemét started to distribute leaseholds in the mid-19th century. There, 70-acre plots of land were distributed, which offered better conditions for settlement and the development of farm economy than, the lease system of Szeged. At the turn of the century, Kecskemét turned over the to sale of land as permanent property. In Felső-Pusztaszer, about 60% of the population originally came from Kecskemét; the others moved to the recently distributed puszta from the confines and farms of Szeged, Kistelek, Tömörkény and other neighbouring settlements. II. 7. The author analyses the development and the changes in the tobacco plantations, manors and farms on the Pallavicini estate (entailed property from 1835). Tobacco growers settling here from the middle of the 18th century were lessees under contract, and by 1850 the population of five tobacco plantations had grown to 500—1000, that is a village. In 1851—52, the prosperous tobacco plantations were liquidated by the Pallavicinis, and their inhabitants were driven away without mercy. Some of the expelled tobacco growers moved to the Bánság, area in southern Hungary, while others dispersed in to the surrounding villages and puszta. In 1786, there were abodes (stables and folds) on the land in the confines of 42% of the serfs in Algyő, just as on the units of land held in villeinage in Kistelek (Figure 41). By the 1840s, the abodes where mainly animals were kept became farms combining agriculture and animal husbandry, where some peasant families ]ived permanently. From the 1850s, some smaller, 420—710-acre pieces of land were distributed and leased to enterprising small peasants living there. In the 1850s, a lessee received about 23 acres of arable land, and later even less. These leases 'satisfied' the land-hunger of the poor and small peasants, and at 250