Századok – 1993

Tanulmányok - Pach Zsigmond Pál: A Levante-történetírás fordulata 1879 és 1918 között II/239

268 PACH ZSIGMOND PÁL THE TURN IN THE VIEWS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY ON LEVANTINE TRADE BETWEEN 1879 AND 1918 by Zsigmond Pál Pach Summary In his earlier writing published in Századok (1972, pp. 849-891) the author examined the views of historians on the Hungarian route of the medieval Levantine trade — via the Danube and "Iïansylvania — in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the way this idea became general among historians throughout most of the past century. In the present paper he discusses the tum in historiography between 1879 and 1918 resulting in the refusal of both the Danubian and the Tïansylvanian version. On international level the turn was initiated in 1879 by Wilhelm Heyd who pointed out that the documents supporting the idea of early medieval Levantine trade via the Danube since Hüllmann's study of 1808 had been misinterpreted. He thought that oriental goods had been transported to German territories mainly through Italy even before the 13th century. His views were supported by the writings of Heniy Simonsfeld (1887), Aloys Schulte (1900) and Adolf Schaube (1906). The Hungarian and Transylvanian (Saxon) counterparts of Heyd were Dezső Csánki (1880) and Oszkár Meltzl (1892) respectively, who questioned the Tïansylvanian route of Levantine goods in the late Middle Ages as well. They interpreted certain charters of the Hungarian King Louis the Great I from the years 1367 and 1370 as referring to spices and other oriental goods coming to Hungary and Iïansylvania mainly via the Dalmatian towns, especially Zara. The charters from the 14th and 15th centuries attesting that great quantities of such goods had been imported to Iïansylvania from the coasts of the Black Sea simply escaped their attention. Just as the introduction of the idea of a Hungarian route of early medieval Levantine trade had been promoted in the late 18th and early 19th century also by current political and economic considerations along the scientific ones, the refusal of the idea on the part of historians in the late 19th century can also be attributed to similar reasons. The earlier expectations considering the solution of the so-called Eastern Question, i.e. the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire proved namely somewhat exaggerated from economic, political and military aspects alike. First, the growth of world economy in the second half of the 19th century precluded the possibility of the revival of an Asian-European world trade by land; second, the process of dissolution in the Ottoman Empire was dragged out by the rivalry of the European Great Powers quite up to the early 20th century; third, the decisions of the Berlin Congress of 1878 supported the aspirations of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy not towards the Lower Danube and the Black Sea but rather towards the Adriatic. From the end of the 19th century a further political motive was added by the expansion of the united Germany, i.e. by the project of the Hamburg-Bagdad Railway and the so-called Mitteleuropa Plan in the years of the First World War. In its wake some German and Austrian historians began to rehabilitate the idea of the Danubian route of the medieval Levantine trade (Zimmerer, 1914; Wendt, 1916; Suppan, 1917). At the same time, Rumanian and Polish historians — urged partly by national aspirations — investigated the Levantine trade on the routes leading from the Black Sea to Moldavia, Wallachia and Poland in the 14th and 15th centuries (Iorga, 1899; Kutrzeba, 1902; Nistor, 1911). On the other hand, the Hungarian and the Tïansylvanian Saxon historians arrived at the opinion that Hungary obtained oriental goods in the period in question via the Dalmatian coasts of the Adriatic and not via the Danube or Iïansylvania (Jickeli, 1913; Borcsiczky, 1914; Domanovszky, 1918). So the tum in Levantine historiography between 1879 and 1918 was not only characterized by the refusal of the Danubian and Tïansylvanian idea, but also by the appearance and spreading of the Dalmatian theory. Zsigmond Pál Pach CHANGEMENT D'AVIS DANS L'HISTORIOGRAPHIE LEVANTINE ENTRE 1879-1918 (Résumé) Lauteur examinait dans une de ses études antérieures (Századok, 1972, 849-891 p.) comment apparut la conception professant la voie commerciale levantine du moyen âge à travers de la Hongrie — transylvaine respectivement danubienne — dans l'historiographie à la fin du 18e siècle et au début du