Károlyi Zsigmond: A vízhasznosítás, vízépítés és vízgazdálkodás története Magyarországon (Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1960)
Idegen nyelvű összefoglalók
— first and foremost the irrigation of the rarely inhabited parts — is similarly instructive just as well as raising the question of relation between economic underdevelpoment of the Plainland and the incompetence of the waterways serving cheap mass-transport (after Elemér Sajó and Árpád Trümmer), etc. Water utilization has great past in Hungarian territory. Based on favourable natural conditions of the country, lakefarming and fishing, utilization of waterways and hydraulic power had raised to a high level, especially in the Middle Ages. The well developed economic life of medieval Hungary has rendered, beside this, various more or less important establishments of hydraulic engineering also necessary (flood control, land drainage, irrigation, etc). The 150 years of the Turkish occupation, however, not only hindered the swing of development, but, with the destruction of the productive forces, moreover, with its destructive activity on the natural forces of production (eradication of forests, devastation of the soil, inundation of land) put back the standard of economic life by centuries, — and that exactly in the natural economic centre of the country, i. e. the Plainland and the Eastern half of the Transdanubian part. Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century the economic development of the country started under much more disfavourable socialpolitical and production conditions than under those of the Middle Ages. This is why the Hungarian people could not cope with the water regulation and hydraulic engineering tasks ol decisive importance for the evolution of the whole country, — at a time which was the age of great hydraulic boom in the West. In the course of the century .greater hydraulic works were carried out only by the military authorities of the southern frontier country. The 18th century was a period of preparation in our country for the tasks of hydraulic engineering: its most considerable achievement was the birth of (hydrographic) mapping on scientific level; the establishment of the education of hydraulic engineers and the organs of the administration of hydraulic problems. Famous representatives of the hydraulic engineering culture of the age — limited mainly to mapping and planning — are Sámuel Mikoviny and Antal Balia. It was after such preliminaries, at the beginning of the 19th century and on a higher stage of development, that, on the initiative of István Vedress and József Beszédes, the pioneers of water economics in Hungary, the realization and technical preparation of the pressing tasks of water regulation and economics began to take place. These tasks — forming the programme of the »age of reforms« — were drawn up, based on the advice of the above-mentioned specialists, by István Széchenyi; the leaders of its practical-technical preparation were Mátyás Huszár, Sámuel Lányi and the greatest of all Hungarian hydraulic engineers, Pál Vásárhelyi. (Surveying the Danube, Tisza and tributaries; elaborating the plan of the Tisza-regu- lation.) This program, beside flood control and river regulation, works as bases of this agricultural development of the country (rendering the extension of agricultural production and the establishment of waterway and land transport possible), included afforestation, and even 316
