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The Anatomy of a Colonization Frontier: The Banat of Temešvar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Colin Thomas
Colin Thomas
Affiliation:
University of Ulster
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Extract

If, as Meinig has suggested, the essential significance of colonization is that it produces a radical change and a totally new geography, there can be few regions in Europe which illustrate the process more vividly than the middle Danube plains, lying astride the modern borders of Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania. Over four centuries the varied strategic and economic potentials of these countries have been viewed by successive individuals and state administrations from different standpoints with the result that each, whether peasant or feudal magnate, imperial official or socialist planner, has left his interpretation as one of a series of veneers or imprints on earlier cultural strata. Historically, the primary guiding consideration in formation of policy was strategic, as has generally been the case; yet beneath this politico-administrative structural level were numerous economic and social frameworks of action which in many ways achieved more enduring tangible expression in community and landscape alike. Within the concept of these two organizational levels, this paper will trace the emergence of the region from sparsely settled wilderness to dynamic multi-national agrarian complex in the period from the early sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century.

Type
The Habsburg Empire: Its People, Administration, and Art
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , January 1984 , pp. 2 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1984

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References

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12 One relic of this mass movement survived to the nineteenth century in the village of Maly Oroszin (Rusko Selo) to the northwest of Kikinda. Its first known Serbian population dates from 1581 when five pastoralist families were recorded. A century later the number had barely doubled, but from Maria Theresa's program of colonization in the mid-eighteenth century Romanians settled to the south, and Germans and Magyars established themselves in 1767 and 1776 respectively. The presence of contemporary Serb residents is revealed, however, by the fact that the estate mansion and demesne were owned in 1797 by Pavle Čamojević and the influence of this prominent family was continued by his son Petar. In 1939 the opština (commune) was known as Čarnojevićevo. Vojvodić, I. and Vojvodić, S., “Kolonizatsija Ruskog Sela 1919–1941,” in Vojvodić, Ilija, et al. , eds., Prilozi za Poznavanje Naselja i Naseljavanja Vojvodine (Novi Sad: Matica Srpska, Odeljenje za društvene nauke, 1974), pp. 5–44.Google Scholar Descendants of Čarnojević also held estates in Futog in the 1740s. Gaćeša, N.L., Agrarna Reforma i Kolonizatsija u Baćkoj 1918–1941 (Novi Sad: Matica Srpska, 1968).Google Scholar

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16 In these were only 924 soldiers and officers, of whom 414 (with 169 civilian families) were located in Arad, while six other settlements had fewer than twenty-six households. Two-thirds of the families were Serbian and a quarter Romanian, the remainder being Magyars. Popovicč, Srbi u Banatu, pp. 51–55.

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39 Popović, Srbi u Banatu, p. 164 (Novi Arad), pp. 166–167 (Bešenovo, Bogaroš, Biled), p. 175 (Jarmata), p. 192 (Szakelhaz), pp. 194–195 (Semikluš Veliki).

40 The median age was thirty-seven, upper quartile value forty-five, lower quartile twenty-six.

41 Only twenty-four of the unmarried males had a profession.

42 Hofkammerarchiv, Banater Akten 156, Fasz. 35, ff. 91–150.

43 Count Hofmans (1793–1794), cited in Vasović, Najnovije naseljavanje Crnogoraca, p. 71.

44 Ibid., pp. 71–102.

45 Ibid., p. 103.

46 Djurić, Najnovije naseljavanje Bačke, pp. 48–63.

47 Ibid., pp. 73–87.

48 Omaljev, Naseljavanje Sutjeske, pp. 84–94.

49 Vasović, Najnovije naseljavanje, p. 43.

50 Vojvodić and Vojvodić, “Kolonizatsija Ruskog Sela,” p. 12.

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52 Bukurov, “Naselja u severnom.”

53 Vasović, Najnovije naseljavanje, p. 73.

54 Ibid., p. 44.

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59 Calculated from Ivšič, Les problémes agraires, p. 159. Vivid insights into life in Transdanubia are contained in Illyes, Gyula' People of the Puszta (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1967), especially pp. 245–289Google Scholar, where the social and economic rift between Calvinists and Catholics is also identified.

60 Gačesša, Agrarna Reforma u Banatu, p. 24.

61 Calculated from Ivšić, Les problèmes agraires, pp. 159–160.