Juhász Antal: A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve, 1982/83-2. A szegedi táj tanyái. (Szeged, 1989)
The farms in the Szeged region The author examines the development and settlement-ethnography of farms in the region of the Great Hungarian Plain where the town of Szeged has been the largest settlement and administrative centre for centuries. The definition of the area under investigation follows the boundaries of the administrative units in the 18th —19th centuries. Szeged became a free royal town at the end of the 15th century, and by the mid-18th century covered an area of 202 000 acres (816 km 2 ), which remained intact between 1776 and 1950. Besides Szeged itself, the study extends to two villages (Algyő and Tápé) which have been continuously populated since the 11th century, two villages settled in the 18th century (Dorozsma and Kistelek), three villages settled at the end of the 19th century (Sándorfalva, Ötömös and Pusztamérges), a large manorial estate and a settlement which became a village in 1934 (Figure 1). With the exception of manorial estates with a seignioral domestic economy, isolated farms became a typical form of settlement throughout the whole region. The development and settlement history of such farms is described from the second decade of the 18th century up to the mid-20th century. In 1950, 9 farm settlements in the confines of Szeged and 4 in the confines of Kiskundorozsma became villages with independent administrations. In the introduction, the history of the research performed in this field is summarized. The second chapter outlines the settlements in the region at the beginning of the 18th century, and provides a detailed study of the development and various forms of farms settlements in the different administrative units. II. 2. The first written document about the economy of the confines of Szeged is the Turkish tax report from 1570. The report states that the puszta 'has long included settlements called 'szállás' (abodes), where inhabitants plough, sow, make hay and pasture their animals in winter and in summer'. In the 16th —17th centuries, well-to-do peasants living on the puszta in the vicinity of Szeged had abodes for animal-keeping and partly for agriculture, similar to the economic settlements of other towns (Kecskemét and Nagykőrös) on the Great Hungarian Plain, with tehir 'gardens in the field' and their utilization of the land. At the beginning of the 18th century, Szeged was comprised of several zones: the town was surrounded by vineyards ; the next zone included the inner pastures, the arable land and the meadows ; and the outermost zone consisted of the outlying pastures. The farmers built abodes on the privately owned meadows, where rich peasants employed farm hands to keep |3.nd feed their animals in winter, whereas poor peasants did this work themselves. The two preconditions for the development of abodes were private property and a free leasehold. In 1747 and 1778 respectively, 137 and 280 economic settlements regarded as abodes were to be found in the confines of the town (Figures 4—6). In the late 18th century, many vines were planted in the sandy fields in the zone containing these abodes. This had two important consequences: the number of abodes increased and many peasant families moved from their town houses to their abodes in the confines. In the 1830s, numerous families lived permanently in their abodes, that is farms. This was fofbidden by the authorities, because such families did not participate in certain common duties, e.g.: quartering soldiers. A map of the confines of Szeged from around 1840 shows 1465 farms, which indicates a developed and dense network of farms on the land close to the town (Figures 10—11). In the 18th century, two tobacco-growing settlements, Röszke and Szentmihálytelek were founded in the confines of Szeged, but in the mid-19th century a change was made to red pepper growing. The town of Szeged started to distribute its large (97 000 acres) puszta in 1852. The town did 249
