Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)

ROOM 10. Hungary in the 18th Century (Gábor Németh)

ROOM 10 Hungary in the 18th Century After 150 years of the devastation wrought by Turkish rule, the 18th century represented a time of slow economic, social and cultural reconstruction for the country. Under the rule of the Habsburg monarchs, the life of the country was lived within a larger imperial unity which continued to count as the principal great power in the Central and East European region. This life was determined by the Pragmatica Sanctio (accepted by the Hungarian Estates in Laws I and II of 1723), by the legislation passed by the Hungarian Diet in the 1710s and 1720s, and later by the framework established by monarchical decrees increasingly permeated by Enlightenment ideas. After the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the House of Habsburg was obliged to renounce the throne of Spain. The enormous empire's centre of balance now shifted away from the unsafe western territories towards the Danubian provinces, with the result that the significance of the Kingdom of Hungary, which had now recovered its territorial integrity, increased. Regulation of the succession arrangements from the point of view of ensuring the dynasty's future played the main role. Securing acceptance of a secret family agreement (1703) ensuring succession through the female line in the event of the male line's dying out, and later of a family law known as the Pragmatica Sanctio (1713), comprised the basis of the House of Habsburg's policy, the influence of which, with breaks, was of decisive importance in Hungary right up until 1918. In the interests of peace in Hungary and in his wider empire, Charles III (1711-40) broke with the forceful absolutist policy of his predecessors. Even before his accession to the throne he had shown greater understanding of Hungarian issues, writing that the Hungarians "had to be governed with generosity and care, with the ending of the feeling that the Germans were oppressing them". In 1712, he confirmed the Peace of Szatmár (Satu Mare). The foundations of the new political order were laid by the diets which sat between 1712 and 1715 and between 1722 and 1723. Charles III recognized the independent nature and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Hungary, as well as the fact that it had to be governed according to its own laws and by its own political institutions. In this way, feudal dualism, the dualism of government by the Estates on the one hand and by centralized absolutism on the other, survived. The principal organs of the Hungarian administration were the seats of government (dicasteria). The highest was the Royal Hungarian Chancellery, and in 1723 the Council of Lieutenancy was set up, headed by the palatine. Financial affairs, the mines and treasury income were administered by the Royal Hungarian Chamber. The Estates' principal organ of power was the bicameral Diet (National Assembly), while the counties were local autonomous units run by the nobles. The royal free towns and the areas possessing privileges (the Jászkun area and the Haiduk towns) did not come under their authority. Justice was administered by the seven-man Royal Court, by district courts, and by county and town courts. For serfs, justice was meted out by manorial courts. The power of the feudal landlords over the serfs subordinated to them remained essentially unaltered up to the serf provisions introduced by Maria Theresia. Croatia enjoyed an autonomous structure. The political structure of Transylvania was built on the traditional union between the