Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 7. (Győr, 1965)

Vörös K.: The fight of Győr and Pest for Danubian corn trade 1850–1881

THE FIGHT OF GYŐR AND PEST FOR DANUBIAN CORN TRADE 1850—1881 The present paper, based mainly on the contemporary reports of the Budapest Chamber of Commerce and Industry, investigates the process by which the corn trade of Győr decayed utterly in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, forcing the city, as it were, to work for its prosperity by industrial development. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Győr held a leading position in the corn supply of Vienna and the surrounding hereditary provinces of Austria. This was due to the fact that the then existing regulation of the Danube hindered the towage of grain, transported from Southern Hungary and the Banate on the river, beyond Győr; here it had to be transshipped to smaller vessels, able to navigate to Vienna and beyond. Such a situation gave exceptional possibilities to the Győr corn market. After 1849 the grain-dealers of Pest began to concentrate the Danubian corn trade in the capital. As a preliminary condition of this move the exceptional situation of Győr had to be ended. However, this happened by the beginning of the 1860-s only, when commercial circles succeeded in concentrating the railway lines, recently built on the Great Hungarian Plain, to Budapest on one hand, arid in forming a connection with Trieste by rail, via Nagykanizsa and Pragerhof, on the other. Thus they became able to open up new grain-producing areas, independent of the Danubian traffic mastered by Győr, and to secure new export markets for these products, independently of Vienna. Especially the construction of the railway connection between Buda and Trieste led to a rapid decrease in the corn traffic of Győr; the corn-dealers of the city tried to find a remedy by supplanting the hitherto exclusively used horse-towed boats or galleys by steamships, later they supported the construction of the railway line between Győr and Graz. These steps and some transitional difficulties of the Pest corn trade resulted in making Győr a dangerous rival of Budapest corn traffic in the seventies, at least for a while. The circumstance, however, that the grain-merchants of Budapest developped also the milling industry of the capital in an increasing degree from the 1850-s, resulted in concentrating the corn traffic of the country in the capital more than ever. The Budapest mills purchased a huge amount of cereals, and the grain export of the capital was pushed into the background by the enormously growing flour export. So the corn trade of Győr tended to a final decay in the mid-seventies, and this process could not be stopped by the mid-eighties. As a conclusion, the paper deals with the links between the corn market of Győr and Vienna. In the author's view Győr was not simply an advanced post of the Viennese corn trade. Interdependence existed between both cities for a long time. Though the fall of Győr has put an end to the strong impact of Viennese graindealers on the Hungarian corn market, this fact does not dispense research of the investigation regarding the special development of the Győr trading society, and the actual measure of its dependence on Vienna. Table 1 compares the trade in corn at Pest and Győr from 1856 to 1859, in thousand „mérő"-s (being an obsolete grain measure); Table 2 shows the amount of corn transported on galleys to Győr and Pest, respectively, in the years 1861 and 1862, according to the loading stations, in „mérő"-s; Table 3 compares the grain export of Pest and Győr from 1865 to 1876 in 1000 customs quintals, illustrating the transitory decline in the corn export of Pest. K. Vörös 491