Petrović, Nikola: Hajózás és gazdálkodás a Közép-Duna-Medencében a merkantilizmus korában (Vajdasági Tudományos és Művészeti Akadémia, Novi Sad - Történelmi Intézet, Beograd, 1982)
Summary
Their reasoning was based on the fact that in Hungary good and poor crops alternated periodically, because of which prices fluctuated widely. To prevent this it would be necessary to build 21 granaries, one every 12 to 14 miles, which could store 5 million Viennese centrners (275,000 metric tons) of ordinary bread flour and 1 million (55,000 metric tons) of white flour. The c^nal designers and builders had worked out a detailed plan of the trade and financial operations and transactions this would involve, and asked for financial help from the state. Their major hopes lay in exporting grain in the case of a poor harvest in Italy, France or Spain. They calculated that profits in such years could be as high as 30—40 million forints in hard money. From the company they intended to form, and to initially finance, they asked only a third of the net income for themselves. For the company to be able to buy such large quantities of grain on the Hungarian market, it had to obtain special privileges, practically a monopoly over the domestic and foreign grain trade. This demand aroused fierce resistance among both the grain merchants and the big landowners, who were themselves exporting their grain. The proposal was studied carefully at all relevant levels of the Habsburg government. Francis II rejected it in the end, but the Kiss's initiative left its mark. The brothers were fully aware of the fact that the implementation of their plans for promoting grain export would depend above all on the feasibility of inland water transport. Therefore they proposed at the same time, on behalf of the privileged shipping company, that the central Danube Basin be better linked with the ports on the northern Adriatic via a new river navigation system based on the Danube—Tisa canal, and a canal which would connect the Danube with the Sava, from Vukovar on the Danube of Sabac on the Sava. The áava would be trained for navigation upstream as far as Sisak. On the Kupa from Sisak to Karlovac, extensive river training works would have to be carried out. The old inland waterways would be thereby improved considerably. However, on the land route from Karlovac to Rijeka there would still remain severe obstacles through the Gorski Kotar highlands. In the 18th century (a railway was built in the 19th century) this was the route by which grain brought up river to Karlovac was transported to Rijeka. In order to improve the transport through Gorski Kotar, the Kiss brothers proposed that the upper reaches of the Kúpra, from Karlovac to Brod na Kupi, should be canalized by building a series of locks. In this way a continuous combined land—water transport route would created leading almost to the ports of Rijeka, Kraljevica and Bakar. The canalization of the Kupa had already been attempted around the middle of 18th century. The idea of the Vukovar—Samac canal was not new. 494
