Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Dieter Stiefel, Alice Teichova (Hrsg.): Sonderband 9. „Zarte Bande” – Österreich und die europäischen planwirtschaftlichen Länder / „Delicate Relationships” – Austria and Europe’s Planned Economies (2006)
Damir Jelic: “Living in the neighbourhood” - Economic Relations between Capitalist Austria and Socialist Croatia in Historical Perspective
“Living in the neighbourhood” the west. Geographically, the region could be divided into two valleys: a small and a big valley of the central Danube region. The small valley is the region between Bratislava and Ostrogon and the big valley (Alfold) covers the region between Visegrad and Orsova, including the Drava and the Sava Valley. Transport facilities in the region were well developed thanks to navigable rivers' and railway systems - which did not face significant natural barriers and were somewhat cheap to be built. The Vienna Valley, or Lower Austria, is not a very large area but it represents the connecting point between the Bohemian and the Panonian Valley. Economically, but not politically, the valleys of south-western Slovakia - as well as (to some extent) the small western Panonian Valley - were integrated in the economic area of Vienna. Even if Vienna was not the geometrical centre of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it was a transport and geographic centre. The three valleys constituted an economic region where economic integration reached its maximum in the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.1 2 However, we have to note that the economic expansion of this region faced some fundamental barriers on both the internal and the world market. Apart from being, geographically speaking, the main integrative factor, the Danube also had its limits. It could not provide for the stimulation of economic integration and the build up of the Central European market in the same way as the Rhine did in Germany. The Danube was not navigable for three months straight during the winter, and in early spring days, melting and broken ice caused damages and flooding. In addition, due to the quantity of water, the Danube is a fast-running river - something that made upstream transport expensive (because powerful tugboats were needed). Especially in the autumn, during the harvest and export season of grain from the Black Sea region, the transport business struggled. Another crucial problem was the fact that the Danube flows into the Black Sea and not directly into the Ocean, thus making the way to the world market even longer.3 The result of such geographical circumstances was that the Danube region had better pre-requisites to develop its internal market as opposed to expanding on the international market.4 The development of the internal market was additionally strengthened by regional differences, which stimulated the exchange of goods and services within the region. The Danube economic region was a large area which included not only the three valleys already mentioned. The mountain regions and some weaker neighbouring 1 The river basin of the Danube covers 71.5 percent of the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lukas, Filip: Economic geography for trade academies. Zagreb, 1915. p. 187. 2 See Good, David F.: “Economic Union and Uneven Development in the Habsburg Monarchy” in John Komlos (ed). Economic Development in the Habsburg Monarchy in the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1983. 3 And not to forget: even getting passed the Iron Doors was an additional difficulty. 4 A fact well-known to economic historians of the region. 247
