Petrović, Nikola: Hajózás és gazdálkodás a Közép-Duna-Medencében a merkantilizmus korában (Vajdasági Tudományos és Művészeti Akadémia, Novi Sad - Történelmi Intézet, Beograd, 1982)
Summary
shareholding company, to be founded specially for the purpose. All similar projects in the Habsburg projects in the Habsburg empire had previously been out exclusively by the state and belonged to its permanent property. In addition, no canal of such length existed either in Austria or Hungary, or anywhere in southeast Europe. The new canal would be used primarily for transportation. The designer asked for a concession to exclusive rights for the next 25 years on the transport of all salt — whose trade was a state monopoly — from the main storehouses at Segedin, by the Tisa, the new canal and the Danube, to Osijek, Mohac, Dunafeldvar, Baja and Dunavecs. The shipping charges which were paid to the private shipowners, would remain unchanged. Because of the great importance of river navigation, the Kiss brothers proposal aroused a good deal of interest in Vienna, and also in Buda, the capital of Hungary. All relevant documents, from the first Kiss proposal in Decemer 12, 1791, to the completion of the canal in 1801, have been preserved at the Hoffkammerarchiv in Vienna and the Hungarian State Archive in Buda (Országos levaltar). This has made possible an almost complete reconstruction of the turbulent history of this huge and important enterprise, and also of the fate of its initiators and designers, the Kiss brothers. After giving a detailed explanation of the benefits for navigation and which the new canal would bring, the designers had, quite naturally, to submit a comprehensive cost estimate. They estimated that a sum of somewhat less than 900,000 forints would cover excavation of the canal, construction of the locks and erection of the administrative buildings and staff housing. Of this total, some 700,000 forints would be covered by issuing shares, and the remaining 200,000 by a state loan, with 4 pet interest. This loan was supposed to encourage the (still underdeveloped) Austrian and Hungarian stockmarket to invest in the company. At that time there was no stock company in Hungary, and throughout the feudal Habsburg empire capitalist enterprises were still little known, and the middle class still underdeveloped. This was particularly the case in the Hungarian half of the empire. The canal was also to serve land reclamation purposes. This was a natural outcome of its geographical location, running along the rim of the Teleőka plateau, from which waters draining into southern Backa was largely responsible for the marshes. The Danube—Tisa canal, therefore, was also to provide drainage. However, the originators of the project spoke but little of the aspect in their memorandum to the Vienna government and the emperor. Having in mind that the area was sparsely populated and the farming of an extensive character, with the accent on livestock and underdeveloped in crop farming, due to the continental position of the area and the difficult transport conditions, the designers emphasized the transportation significance of the canal, thinking (quite reasonably) that it 486
