ACTA HISTORICA - A MTA TÖRTÉNETTUDOMÁNYI FOLYÓIRATA TOM. 26 (1980)
26. kötet / 1-2. sz. - ETUDES - V. BÁCSKAI-L. NAGY: Market Areas, Market Centres and Towns in Hungary in 1828
2 V. Bácskai —L. Nagy Our study aims to reconstruct not the system of towns as such but the system of settlements exerting a central place function, and only having done so to identify which of these settlements are true towns by virtue of the breadth of their role as centres and the extent of their sphere of influence. The fact that influence as a centre was exerted has been established not in any speculative way but on the basis of contemporary reality: the replies to questions on market places in the 1828 conscription made for the purposes of tax assessment.3 The survey included a question about where the inhabitants marketed their produce and where they obtained their supplies. 85% of the country's settlements — 8,340 settlements in all — admitted to attending markets. We distinguish between two concepts: market function and function as a market centre. A market function was possessed by all settlements that provided a regular, organized framework for purchase and sale of certain goods through the holding of a national fair or a weekly market. Neither the volume of trade nor the reciprocal nature of it was significant from the point of view of fulfilling this function. Market functions were fulfilled both by localities that sustained their right to hold markets only by a small-scale, occasional exchange of goods, and also by settlements whose inhabitants were engaged in specialized labour and were supplied with produce brought to regular weekly markets from the surrounding localities, but not paid for by bartering the market place's own specialized products (e.g., mining towns). But a market function acting upon a small sphere with a limited range of goods and volume cannot be equated with an influence as a centre, by which the production and way of life of the population in a wider area is substantially affected. Settlements of a merely limited market function of this kind we have treated and termed as market places, to distinguish them from settlements which by the greater demand, by the range and quantity of goods bought and sold, or by their active or intermediary role in foreign trade exerted an influence over a sizeable sphere with a sizeable population in such a way as to affect the production and way of life in that sphere to a greater or lesser extent. This type of market function is treated as the function of a market centre, and such settlements as market centres. Our study has focussed upon exploring, classifying and grouping the typical features of this latter settlement type. 2. Originally our research was aimed at establishing the efficacy and range of this function as a market centre in terms of the size of population influenced. However, the plotting of the processed data on maps,the total of the settlements which fulfilled the function of a market centre, and most of all the hierarchy of 3 Országos Levéltár (National Archives), Budapest: Regnicolaris levéltár (Regnicolar Archives), N. 26. Conscriptio regnicolaris art. VII. 1827 ordinata, 1828—32. 'Acta Hiitorica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 26, 1980