GÁBOR DEMETER Agrarian Transformations in Southeastern Europe (from the late 18th century to World War II) PUBLICATIONS OF THE BULGARIAN–HUNGARIAN HISTORY COMMISSION 3. A MAGYAR–BOLGÁR TÖRTÉNÉSZ VEGYES BIZOTTSÁG KIADVÁNYAI ИЗДАНИЯ НА БЪЛГАРО–УНГАРСКАТАИСТОРИЧЕСКА КОМИСИЯ 2 PUBLICATIONS OF THE BULGARIAN–HUNGARIAN HISTORY COMMISSION 3. GÁBOR DEMETER Agrarian Transformations in Southeastern Europe (from the late 18th century to World War II) Institute for Historical Studies, BAS Institute of History, RCH, HAS Sofia 2017 3 The research has been supported by the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences This volume was realised within the framework of the Bulgarian–Hungarian joint academic project entitled “Connected Histories: Sources for Building History in Central and Southeast Europe, 17th – 21st Centuries” © Gabor Demeter © Institute for Historical Studies, BAS © Institute of History, RCH, HAS Published by the Institute for Historical Studies, BAS Responsible Editor: Árpád Hornyák, Penka Peykovska ISBN 978-954-2903-31-4 (Institute for Historical Studies, BAS) ISBN 978-963-416-088-5 (Institute of History, RCH, HAS) ISSN 2535-0757 Front and back cover: map from Rónai, A.: Közép-Európa Atlasz. Balatonfüred, 1945. (Areas with grain surplus and graindeficits) and Kanitz (Rose picking). 4 Dedicated to Imre Ress _______________________ 5 6 Contents I. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 9 (a) Problems ........................................................................................................ 12 (b) The agro-ecological features of the region ................................................ 16 (i) Vertical and horizontal dissection .......................................................... 16 (ii) Climate...................................................................................................... 17 (iii) Soils .......................................................................................................... 19 (iv) Agroeconomic needs and best practices ............................................. 20 (c) Concept .......................................................................................................... 22 II. Agriculture and rural societies during the Napoleonic wars (1780–1820) ...... 27 (a) Agriculture in the Ottoman Empire ........................................................... 27 (i) Changing structures ................................................................................. 27 (ii) Agricultural production and society .................................................... 30 (iii) The system of provisionism and its collapse ...................................... 45 (b) Agriculture in landlocked non-Ottoman lands ........................................ 50 (i) The birth of a smallholder society – The origins of Serbian agrarian structure ......................................................................................................... 51 (ii) Borderlands .............................................................................................. 60 (iii) Integration into the imperial division of labour – Hungary ............. 65 (iv) Quantification of grain production and its distribution between social strata – Hungary ................................................................................. 86 III. Integration to the world market (1840s–1870s) ................................................ 104 (a) The effect of the liberalization on prices, trade patterns and wages.... 104 (i) Regional effects of international division of labour ........................... 104 (ii) Trends, prices and wages in agriculture ............................................ 113 (b) The profitability of agrarian production ................................................. 117 (i) The formation and transformation of chiftliks ................................... 117 (ii) Profitability of agrarian production: peasant economies ................. 122 (c) Modernization efforts ................................................................................ 130 (d) Social consequences ................................................................................... 134 (i) Burdens of agrarian societies ................................................................ 134 (ii) The living standard of agrarian classes .............................................. 140 (e) Alternatives of monocultural grain production ..................................... 144 7 IV. Shrinking opportunities of extensive agriculture (1873–1914) ......................152 (a) The impacts of global trends on agriculture, 1873–1900........................152 (i) Problems of measuring productivity and development – data interpretation ...............................................................................................160 (b) The agrarian decline ...................................................................................163 (i) Transformations I. – Land reforms andintrovertion in Bulgaria ......163 (ii) Transformations II. The landuse conflict of animal husbandry and grain production in Serbia .........................................................................167 (iii) Transformation in the borderlands I.: traditional conditions and development driven by colonization processes (Bosnia) .......................178 (iv) Croatia, Slavonia, Slovenia and Dalmatia – the dissolution of communal lands ..........................................................................................187 (v) Transformations in the borderlands II: Macedonia – the alternatives of shrinking grain exports ..........................................................................194 (vi) Forced grain exports against price trends .........................................201 (vii) The effects of independence on the agriculture of Bulgaria ..........209 (viii) Frozen agrarian conditions – Albania (1870-1930s) .......................214 (c) The era of extensive growth (1900–14) and price recovery ...................216 (i) Alternatives of grain production ..........................................................216 (ii) Livelyhood, taxation, wealth, living standards .................................222 (iii) A dead-end success – the polarized agrarian system of Hungary in the 1870s–1914 .............................................................................................232 V. The postwar agriculture, 1920s–40s ....................................................................249 (a) Persisting problems ....................................................................................249 (b) Reconstruction attempts of smallholder agrarian societies: land reforms and consequences .............................................................................................262 (c) Social tensions: living standards, prices, wages and indebtedness, regional differences ..........................................................................................271 (d) The great economic crisis: causes, consequences and responses; agrarian policy during the protectionist era .................................................279 (e) The beginnings of modernisation: technological advance and intensification in the agriculture ....................................................................290 Conclusions ................................................................................................................296 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................297 8 I. Introduction This book deals with the agrarian transformations of the Balkan Peninsula in the 18th-20th centuries. While focusing on the external and internal challenges and responses the volume gives a brief summary on the socio-economic transformations these had caused, and at the same time it tries to compare the evolution of the Balkan agriculture with the development of the neighboring Hungary – representing a different agrarian system. Though agrarian systems in Southeast-Europe were able to play decisive role in supplying Europe only for short periods,1 the agriculture of the Balkan Peninsula yet deserves deeper investigation as (1) 80% of the population of the Balkan Peninsula earned their living from agriculture even in the 1930s, and the state budget also relied on the agrarian incomes for a long time (tithe constituted 30% of state revenues not only in the Ottoman Empire around 1900, but in successor states as well); (2) thus, agrarian production was deeply intertwining with social and even with political questions, which was not so characteristic for Western Europe after the industrial revolution; (3) as this region was still characterized by the preindustrial stage of development, determined by climatic impacts, geographic conditions, self-subsistence and peasant mentality alien to the capitalist thinking; (4) as the development here can be rather described by constant transformations, responses to external (shift from the Levantine to the Atlantic world economy with all its consequences) or internal challenges (extreme population growth), than by quantitative increase (output/hectare); 1 As it was in 1847 for example. But generally, the region could not compete with the mass production of Russia, USA, etc. Even the famous special exports products, like Greek raisins, Bulgarian rose oil, Romanian walnut were more significant for the