Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Pest-Buda from 1686 to 1849
or occupational groups, as in the changes in the economic and political weight and importance of the different social strata. Most of the inhabitants of Pest were still journeymen, workers in the vineyards, daily wage-earners and servants with no independent means of subsistence. Most of those engaged in industry—approximately half the wage-earning population—were still craft workers, and the merchants, officials, professional and self-employed people formed a minute group in the total population. But in vain did the master craftsmen, who were in the majority, resist the new capitalist landowners, commercial and industrial entrepreneurs and wholesale merchants, or attempt to prevent the proliferation and growth of capitalist enterprises through the positions of power they occupied on the Council and in the city administration, and through the assertion of their semi-medieval guild privileges, that small group increasingly appropriated to themselves the leading role in the economy. The earlier economic and political power of the master tradesmen incorporated in guilds, their relative position of independence, was undermined not only by the increasing strength of capitalist enterprises, but also by growing competition from non-incorporated journeymen. In the eighteenth century they were still strong enough—through the guild statutes and the powerful support of the Council—to limit the number of journeymen employed in a workshop, and consequently, by severe restriction on the admission of masters to the guild, to force surplus journeymen out of the city. At that time few masters employed more than two men; but by the middle of the nineteenth century the number of journeymen employed had grown to several thousand, excluding the industrial workers, still small in numbers, who were beginning to make their appearance. The rapid increase in the numbers employed in the distributive and service industries, primarily in catering, is evidence of the spread of the urban way of life. The removal of the government departments to Buda considerably increased what had earlier been the tiny group of civil servants and lawyers living in the city. The number of noblemen, county and other city officials who spent shorter or longer periods in the city, also increased substantially. In earlier days they had visited the capital at fair-time, now they stayed more frequently and for longer periods to transact official business and maintain social contacts. The transfer of the university introduced a new valuable element into the capital, in the persons of students and young intellectuals—-many of noble family, others, to an increasing extent, of bourgeois and lower-class origin—-and in the scholars, writers and artists gathering there. Even if unimportant in terms of numbers, they exercised an increasing political and intellectual influence on the life of the city, and indeed of the country as a whole. The social and occupational division of the Buda population remained essentially unchanged. Since the great majority of the newly established factories and the whole focus of commercial activity was centred on Pest, the capitalist class had no great social impact on Buda. Most of the inhabitants of Buda were still dependent on the cultivation of vine for a living; practically every citizen of any substance—-including craftsmen—owned a vineyard. The number of those working in the vineyards, daily wage-earners, and in general of those engaged in horticulture or farming who lived in the city, remained important. The only change in the population was the influx of civil servants in the government offices, but this had no decisive influence on the development of the city. The rapid increase of population led to the further expansion of the urban areas. Owing 31
