Petrović, Nikola: Hajózás és gazdálkodás a Közép-Duna-Medencében a merkantilizmus korában (Vajdasági Tudományos és Művészeti Akadémia, Novi Sad - Történelmi Intézet, Beograd, 1982)
Summary
construction site, other than of a labour shortage until towards the and of 1794, when there appear a report on the session of the Hungarian Chamber, in which the Sombor administration complained that the builders had violated some of the terms of the contract. It was claimed that they had altered the original plan for the locks, in order to provide for the later building of water mills on the canal. However, the Hungarian Chamber rejected the complaint of the Sombor administration, ruling that the company had the right to build mills later on, but that this would not be allowed for the time being. Further, the company had put up a few dozen buildings in which merchants were selling various goods and craftsmen practicising their trade. The Chamber decided that these shops were not to be closed, but that the merchants and craftsmen should be treated as private businessmen, and not as privileged employees of the company. The company had also manufactured 6 million bricks, which was a regal right, without having paid the tax of 30 kreuzers for every 1000 bricks produced. The Chamber, however, ruled that bricks made for the canal should be exempt from the tax, unless sold to another party. Other items in the complaint were of a similar kind. They all give evidence that the local authorities in Backa kept all the activities of the builders under strict surveillance that in the second year of construction work was in progress along the whole route of the canal, and that the central administration was less stringent than its provincial agencies. Nevertheless, on the recommendation of the Hungarian Chamber, the emperor Francis II issued it an order to continue to watch closely over the fulfilment of the terms of the contract by the company. This did not resolve the conflict over the building of water mills. Heated disputes between the Vienna and Buda government agencies broke out again. On October 2, 1795, the emperor imposed a compromise solution by ordering that mills could be built at once, but only on the locks at Vrbas and Stapari, in order to make it easier for those without their own beasts of burden to get their grain milled. The disputes over this problem show that the privileged shipping company was being hampered in its activities by a number of the surviving feudal rights. Free capitalist competition in the Habsburg empire was still a far cry. The Kiss brothers' proposal to the emperor that they be permitted to establish a large privileged grain trade company is then reviewed. They asked for this concession for themselves, not for the shipping company. 493
