Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

2. Towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary) before 1918

Towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary) before 1918

The average population of other towns was 13,752 people. Considering the towns of the counties named in the 1861 Slovak memorandum, the average population was higher (16,851 people). The reason for this is that the towns of the counties with ‘mixed populations’, i.e. the towns of the counties with a Hungarian majority, were more densely populated than the towns in the 'purest Slav counties', i.e. those in the counties with a Slovak majority.

The classification of towns according to their population (Figure 3) indicates that the typical town of the Felvidék was a town with a low number of inhabitants. The municipal boroughs (Pozsony [Bratislava], Kassa [Košice] and Selmecbánya [Banská Štiavnica]) were evenly distributed among the different population categories, but other towns had as few as 20,000 (9 towns) inhabitants and 27 of them had fewer than 10,000.

Table 3. Classification of the towns in Hungary according to their population in 1910

Number of municipality boroughs:

27

In the counties included in the memorandum of 1861

Over 70,000 people, Budapest included:6

1 (Pozsony [Bratislava!)

50-70,000 people

6

—

30-50,000 people

9

1 (Kassa [Košice!)

15-30,000 people

6

1 (Selmecbánya [Banská Štiavnical)

Number of towns:

111

Between 30-60 thousand people

9-Between 20-30 thousand people

16

—

Between 10-20 thousand people

33

9 (including Sátoraljaújhely)

Between 1-10 thousand people

53

27

Source: ibid

When examining the towns as classified in the 1861 memorandum (Table 4), we will find that, due to their size and low social and economic weight, the ‘purest Slav counties’ had no municipal boroughs; what is more, in Árva County there were no towns at all. Alsókubin [Dolný Kubín] was mentioned as a village in the statistics. The 18 small towns of the five 'purest Slav counties’ had a total population of 120,880 people. The average population of these towns was 6,716 people. Among them Eperjes [Prešov], with its 16,323 inhabitants, was considered the most densely populated town. There were only four towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants and four small towns, with Poprád being the small-26