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 14. Endurance, Compromise and Economic Boom "The Repudiation of That Which is Illegal is No Mere Option, But Rather an Obligation" (Ferenc Deák) (Katalin Körmöczi - Edit Haider)

58. Hungarian coins minted after 1867 NATIONAL ECONOMY AND IMPERIAL MARKET One of the most important successes of Hungarian development during the 19th century was the taking shape of a national economy. Modernization of the economy was also in the interests of the absolutist system. After 1849, modernization in Hungary meant "offering the 1848 bourgeois achievements at the point of a bayonet". The first step was the socage patent issued in 1853, a decree relating to the redemption of land and the payment of compensation. The Socage Patent - modifying the 1848 liberation of the serfs - announced the abolition of rights, dues and obligations deriving from socage and the authority of landowners. It also gave serfs free use of land they tilled and announced compensation for landowners. As a result of the rapid growth of the railway network and of the development of steam navigation during the second half of the 19th century, Hungary experienced a revolution in transportation, as well as the first phases of an industrial revolution. Helped by all this and by the abolition of the empire's internal tariff frontier, the development of a Hungarian national market centred on Pest-Buda accelerated, and the conditions were created for the inflow of foreign capital. After the defeat of the independence war, despotism prevented the operation of economic associations. In 1851, the director of the Hungarian National Museum, the naturalist Ágoston Kubinyi, proposed that flower and fruit exhibitions be held in the museum. Beginning from this the activities of the economic associations slowly began to revive. Visitors can see a page, a lithograph by Alajos Röhn, commemorating the Produce Exhibition held in 1851, a photogravure on the founding of the First Hungarian General Insurance Company in 1857, the rules and regulations of the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest from 1854, securities (Fig. 56), government stocks, banknotes, metal Convention money from before 1857, Austrian currency from the period 1857-67 - the so-called Österreichische Wahrung - and medals awarded as prizes by the associations which were now starting up (Fig. 57). The upturn which began after the Compromise was made possible by the boom in a European economy operating on the principle of free trade. The Compromise concluded in 1867 was supplemented by an Economic Compromise which had to be renewed every ten years. The monetary system remained common to both Austria and Hungary, tariffs were standardized on both imports and exports, and a common