Szakács Sándor szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1990-1991 (Budapest, 1991)

PÁLMÁNY BÉLA: Városok, mezővárosok - országos és hetivásárok Magyarországon (1686-1870)

and activity of societies. In the.traditional agrarian societies the fairs and weekly markets were the chief stages of the exchange of goods. The territorial division of labour among regions of different natural and economic conditions - especially among highlands and lowlands - makes necesary the bartering of peasant domestic industry (e.g. of wooden implements like lumbers, tiles, ploughs, tubes, wheels or hardwares and potteries) respectively of the overflow of lowland crops (e.g. corns, cabbage, dried fuits, catties, bacon and ham) and wines. The paper - before treating of historical role and significance of the fairs - defines the main concepts, sources and methods of elaboration of the theme. The right of keeping fairs, markets - as fixed dated, organised, supervised and protected opportunities of buying and selling of goods - was connected with the privileges of the "free royal towns" (civitates) and market towns (oppida). A kind of specialization is also noticeable: there were special live-stock markets for sale and purchase of cattle, horses, swine, sheep, wool etc. famous grain crop fairs, wine markets and so on. The author emphasizes the significance of fairs as scenes of exchanging news, ideas, standards of values, where also new books, calendars, "dime novels" and souvenirs were bought and brought into the dwelling-houses. The fair was a large stage, were people were simultaneously spectators and actors of a drama or of a comedy. The growth of the number of towns and market towns, their population and the rate of their bourgeois strata (handicraftsmen, merchants, intellectuals) is a significant component of the Hungarian society during the two centuries from the war of liberation againts the turkish conquerors until the abolition of serfdom and the Compromise between Austria and Hungary (1686-1687). This was the age of decay of the society of orders and traditional agriculture and the birth of the bourgeois liberal society and market economy in Hungary. The paper describes the development of urbanisation in Hungary with historical statistical methods, reconstructing the network of market places in several points of time: 1700,1720,1787,1825,1863. The author publishes his own, totalized data on the increase of market privileges granted between 1655 and 1848 won from Libris Regiis - referring to the rapid development of the Great Hungarian Plain. The paper emphasizes the significance of smaller market towns. The author agrees with prof. Rúzsás' opinion on the role and importance of market towns: these small market places settled the major part of the trade in land produce of the whole country in the 19th century, too. In 1863 there were 775 urban settlements (48 free royal towns, 114 municipal towns and 613 "simple" market towns - 726 of them were mentioned in the Calender for 1862 as market places. The growth of the market places between 1825-1863 was 256 new central settlement! So the network of market places covered the whole country. The paper explains the changes of the last decades of the 19th century with the building up of the system of railway-lines between 1846-1866 (2000 km) respecti-