Takács Péter (szerk.): A jobbágylét dokumentumai az úrbérrendezés kori Szatmár vármegye Nyíri járásából - A nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum kiadványai 66. (Nyíregyháza, 2010)

A jobbágylét dokumentumai az úrbérrendezés kori Szatmár vármegye Nyíri járásából

the spared rye, wheat, oat, bacon and ham for lime, pottery vessels, fruits, melons from the cart of the itinerant trader.

She was also gardener - horticulturist and florist. The women of the family took care of the flowers in the small garden between the window front of the house and the fence on the street side. In well tended gardens, various flowers bloomed from the opening of the tulips in the spring to the frostbitten fading of the aster. They also took care of the vegetables in the kitchen garden.

The household of a prospering villain plot did every work - with a slight exaggeration - apart from metallurgy. This could be read from the statements of the villains to the commissioners of Maria Theresa’s socage tenure regulation. And the same can be read in the sources published here.

They also draw a picture of the contemporary social structure and relationships to the depth of the individual description of landowners and serfs. They inform about the structure of the everyday life. They give detailed description of the natural endowments in the individual regions. They tell about the production technology of the contemporary societies of the villages and the market towns. With the application of an appropriate method, they afford us to uncover the property and income conditions of the feudal aristocracy. The greatest merit of these sources is that they offer an insight into sociological characteristics of the population of the Hungarian Kingdom at the end of the 18th century on the level of families and households. We can see the literacy of the peasants. We can learn about the handicrafts practised in the country. We can draw a picture of life and production technology in miners’ villages. The sources inform about every water construction in Hungary and about most of the dry mills. They depict the traffic conditions and the condition of the roads. For the first time they give an overview of the energy supply of the households. They contain minor details of the regional structure of the economic life of Hungary. They offer more details of the exchange of goods between small and large regions than any other sources. They draw an expressive picture of the wild forces of nature. They depict an authentic picture of the ethnic distribution of the population of the country.

We can find out from the sources of the Nyír district that there was enough arable land on the unregulated territories of the villages. In this region, we cannot speak of land robbery, land appropriation by the landlords and over-corvée. The landlords did not have cereals cultivated that could not be sold far from the Vienna, the raw material and food demand of the more industrialised Austrian and Bohemian towns.

Due to the specific hydrological conditions, the villages of this region were smaller with a smaller population. Self-procurement dominated in food supply, dressing, tool making and the supply of household energy. Money-based trading appeared only in the case of basic goods like salt, certain spices and the metal components of tools. The soil conditions and the traditional plough type needed a large pulling power. Less than four oxen were rarely enough for ploughing and carting. The pulling power needed for ploughing and carting did not afford the yoking of cows in this region. Horses were also rarely used in the fields.

The sources mention that the environs of the villages were in their natural conditions, which offered great possibilities for predatory activities. This is why the culinary art of

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