Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Pest-Buda from 1686 to 1849
acquisition of landed property. The effect of their newly acquired wealth, as a result, was not to be seen so much in the establishment of new factories and industrial enterprises, but in the great growth of fine buildings in the capital. It was then that the fine streets of fiats of the Lipótváros district bringing in no small revenue for their owners, were built in the northern part of today’s fifth district. Between 1800 and 1850 the structure of commerce also changed. The fairs were no longer the most important and sole centres of commercial exchange. Their importance, indeed, survived and even increased, since the open markets increasingly became the meeting-place for foreign merchants. Their turnover and importance were compared by contemporaries to those of the Frankfurt and Leipzig fairs. But by this time commercial dealings outside the fairs were steadily growing, and in the second quarter of the century a number of commercial firms with substantial capital were established and flourishing there. In 1831, the Hall of Merchants, the forerunner of the Bourse, was set up, and this provided a more convenient milieu for the conduct of business. The Credit Act of 1840 and the foundation of the Pesti Magyar Kereskedelmi Bank (Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest) in 1841 helped to create a financial basis for larger enterprises. As a result, even though the economic policy pursued unchanged by Austria continued to impede the development of Hungarian industry, the capital accumulated in commerce was increasingly used to produce profits from industrial investments or in the foundation of banks. However slowly and sluggishly, the development of capitalist industrialization began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and more effectively in Pest than elsewhere in the country. And although the craft guilds continued to be the bases of industrial production, their privileged position was shaken to its foundation by the Act of 1840, ensuring the free employment of skilled factory workers. The construction of factories, most of them on the Pest side of the river, was not, however, confined to Buda and Pest. One of the most important capitalist enterprises of the time, a shipyard already employing six hundred workers in the 1840s, was situated in Óbuda. The brick factory supplying most of the bricks required for Buda and Pest was also in Óbuda. And it was in these years that Újpest, a new village which had been granted full freedom for the establishment of industry and factories by the landowner, was built, a forerunner of the later industrial suburbs. Life in the other settlements surrounding the capital was still dominated by agriculture, market gardening and horticultural pursuits, all designed to satisfy the increasing food requirements of the capital, while at the same time, the number of craftsmen also increased considerably in some of the villages. The busy economic life of Buda, and even more so of Pest, naturally proved a growing attraction to businessmen and merchants seeking to make use of their existing capital, or their skill and enterprise, as well as those who hoped to find employment and a better livelihood in the developing metropolis. While the population of other Hungarian cities and towns increased 70 per cent on the average between 1784 and 1846, the population of Pest increased by almost 500 per cent and that of Buda by 150 per cent. In 1846 Pest with 100,000 inhabitants was already the largest Hungarian city, and Buda, with a population of 40,000, the third. This difference in the rate of growth makes it clear that at the beginning of the nineteenth century Pest took the leading role in the development of the capital. The social composition of the population had also changed considerably. The transformation was shown not so much in the numbers or percentage of members of the various social 30
