Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 1. (Budapest, 2006)

Abstracts

rated from each other. Therefore, the owner could use his land for both aims. In fact, the adaptability of the system lied in this peculiar characteristic. After all, in the middle of the nineteenth century owing to the flourishing cereal production, the favourable export possibilities and to the increase of the internal consumption corn production got in the forefront against animal husbandry. The territory of plough-lands grew with unbelievable rapidity at the disadvantage of paddocks and meadows. Furthermore, the animal husbandry farms of the eighteenth century could bc changed into fanning homesteads without any difficulties. The Great Hungarian Plain, which had primarily lived from animal husbandry, became the centre of the Hungarian com production in this period. So, the agrarian economy of the free royal towns of the Great Hungarian Plain was not considerably affected by the differences of the legal status. The only distinction concerned the rate of those living from commerce and industry. While in the two free royal towns their rate moved between 30 and 40% at the end of the nineteenth century, in the three market towns it remained under 15%. However, 90% of the craftsmen of the free royal towns of the Great Hungarian Plain were made up of handicraftsmen at this time too. So, neither in this respect could any qualitative difference between the market towns and free royal towns of the Great Hungarian Plain be established. ÁRPÁD TÓTH The Strategies of Acquiring Burghers' Right and the Attraction of Being a Burgher in Pozsony in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century The study raises questions concerning the meaning and importance of the title 'burgher' (civis, Bürger) in Pozsony (Pressburg, Bratislava in present day Slovakia), one of the biggest and most urbanised towns in pre-industrial Hungary. It analyses the social composition of the burghers, comparing it to that of other Hungarian towns. Pozsony attracted a number of immigrants from a large area of the Gennan-speaking world (mostly Bavaria, Saxony, Austria and the Bohemian tenitories of the Habsburg realm) and of the surrounding Hungarian counties in the decades of the French wars and the Vormärz Period. However, the rate of the newcomers among the burghers slightly decreased. The detailed survey of the place of origin and the occupation of the burghers indicates a strong split in terms of religion, a late remain of an age-long conflict between Catholics and Protestants. The conventional social historical analysis based on lists of the newly admitted burghers is complemented with other sources and methods. The comparison of the immigration rates between the Lutheran burghers and Lutheran bridegrooms (in the great