Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
1. Introduction
Introduction caused fewer conflicts, and less destructive ones, than differences in religion. The peoples living in Hungary did not wage war against each other because of linguistic or ethnic differences; rather, religious conflicts were the main reasons for wars, e.g. the Hussite wars or the battles fought between reformation and counter-reformation. It was in the IS“1 century that ethnic and language differences lead to conflicts. It is an important fact that in the 1848-49 Hungarian war of independence, the most difficult Hungarian national struggle, there were more Slovak people fighting on the revolutionist Kossuth’s side than in the imperial army. This indicates that the ethnic conflict between Hungarians and Slovaks was much less bitter than, for instance, in the case of the Hungarian and the Serb or Romanian people. One of the main reasons why Hungarians and Slovaks (and all the other peoples living in that area) could coexist peacefully was the division of labour, which had developed over centuries. The order of labour division was reflected by the society of the towns in Felvidék (earlier, Upper Hungary; since 1920, Slovakia) and also by the relations these towns had with the settlements in their environs, in other parts of the country and in other countries. The coexistence of Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, and others was replaced by isolation, exclusion and expulsion in the 20th century, but this was not because of the ethnic composition of the towns. The area of contemporary Slovakia was not a regional, social, economic, administrative or linguistic unit; and therefore the different characters and separation of the areas populated by Slovaks were not reflected in the names of the age, either. In the old Hungarian language the northern mountainous area of Hungary was called Felföld, which stretched as far as contemporary Partium (the area between Transylvania and the Great Hungarian Plain), but did not include the northern part of the Small Hungarian Plain or the left bank of the Danube. In geography, the name Felföld (highlands) appeared as the opposite of Alföld (plain). At present, in Hungary since the Trianon Peace Treaty, the southern part of Felföld is called the Northern Mountain Range. The name Felső-Magyarország (Upper Hungary) is used in history, but the counties near Bratislava do not belong there. The Upper Hungarian mining directorate involved Gömör, Borsod, Szepes, Abaúj and Torna Counties (their towns are Götnicbánya [today: Gelnica], Szomolnok [today: Smolník], Igló [today: Spišská Nová Ves], Rozsnyó [today: Rožňava], Jászó [today: Jasov], Rudabánya and Telkibánya), and that of Lower Hungary (Alsó-Magyarország) included Nyitra, Bars, Hont and 16
