Petrović, Nikola: Hajózás és gazdálkodás a Közép-Duna-Medencében a merkantilizmus korában (Vajdasági Tudományos és Művészeti Akadémia, Novi Sad - Történelmi Intézet, Beograd, 1982)

Summary

The implementation of the contract was not automatic, and did not pass without conflicts or difficulties of various kinds. Despite the old administrative, political and economic structures, an essentially new form of economic organization began to rise in Hungary. Hence conflicts between the old and the new were unavoidable. I give some typical examples of this process.

As soon as work on the canal had commenced, a major dispute between the emperor and the Hungarian Chamber arose. The designers had asked that the contract should require the state to assign about 4000 men from the imperial army to the construction site, and that these men should be paid for their work. However, this was rejected. Knowing that the Chamber subjects rendered 70% of their dues in money and 30% in actual labour, and that some part of the latter remained unused, because the Chamber estates in Backa could not absorb all this serf labour, the designers proposed that all the free labour be turned over to their purpose and that the company pay a compensation for this to the Hungarian Chamber.

The Chamber accepted this, but the emperor Francis II rejected its decision twice, holding that unused labour dues could not be ceded for money, especially to a private contractor. The dispute between the Hungarian Chamber and the Austrian Court persisted until September 1793, and this aggravated designers' position to a considerable extent. Throughout the construction period, labour shortage was one of the chief obstacles. The situation was to be complicated even more by the Napoleonic Wars.

The emperor finally decided to allot 30 000 man/days of labour dues per year for the next two years to the company, under the condition that their wages, to be fixed by negotiation, be paid directly to the serfs, instead of the Chamber Treasury. This meant that the serfs would work as hired labourers, and not as serfs. This decision, therefore, was to the disadvantage of the Hungarian Chamber, and went directly contrary to the feudal principles it was defending. But these 30 000 man/days could in no way satisfy the huge damands of the construction site.

The constitute the company, it was necessary to transfer the contract from the Kiss brothers to the new organization, and then, as a separate document, to issue a royal act of privilege for all the concessions that it had been awarded. In April 1794, company representatives asked the emperor that a new contract be signed, with the same provisions as the first, but stipulating the company as one of the contracting parties. The new contract, identical to 1793 version, was signed 12 November, 1794. As its integral part, a royal act of privilege in six items was issued on the same day. Its principal and most important (first) item extended all privileges embodied in the contract to the whole Kingdom of Hungary, i.e. not only to Baéka. All buildings belonging to the company vyere thus excemptfrom requisitioning for soldiers quarters, and this fact was to prove quite important in the

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