CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Medved, Mladen |
|---|---|
| Title | Transition to Capitalism in Croatia, Hungary and Austria (1830s to 1867/8): A Study in Uneven and Combined Development |
| Summary | This thesis examines the transition to capitalism in Croatia, Hungary and Austria in the period between the 1830s and 1867/8 from the perspective of uneven and combined development that theorizes development as intersocietal and multilinear and unifies social and geopolitical modes of explanation. Providing an interpretative framework for the analysis of both contemporary politics of elite-actors and socioeconomic development in the period, the thesis demonstrates that this approach is best suited to address a number of deficiencies in the historiography of the Monarchy. Within this framework, the thesis also contributes to closing an empirical gap in the scholarship that has examined the transition to capitalism by providing an analysis of the discourse of political economy in Croatia, Hungary and Austria. The thesis argues the Hungarian gentry, despite a lower level of development that characterized the country when compared to Austria, was ready to initiate the transition to capitalism in response to its social decline and the geopolitical challenge posed by Austria that was undergoing industrialization. In the process, the gentry relied on ready made ideologies and organizations from social formations on a higher level of development. The specificity of the Hungarian social formation and not its position in the world-system is considered a key factor for explaining strong state structures in Hungary in the period under examination. By contrast, the centralized, authoritarian Austrian state could not mobilize social forces into a more hegemonic project after the revolutions of 1848. The political elites of Croatia and Hungary rejected the Austrian developmentalist and civilizing discourse because the Austrian state was deemed both incapable of developing the peripheries and too authoritarian. Systemic conditions further exacerbated the difficult position of the Austrian state, as changes in international relations left it exposed to considerable strain. The thesis thus explains the emergence of Austro-Hungarian Settlement as a result of the Hungarian revolution, state-society relations in Austria and changes in international relations. With regard to divergence in socioeconomic development in the Monarchy before 1848, the thesis considers social property relations rather than Austrian tariffs as crucial for generating the economic stagnation of the Croatian and Hungarian social formations. While explaining why the gentry in Hungary was ready to initiate the transition to capitalism, the thesis maintains that Croatia did not have an endogenously driven transition to capitalism despite similarities in social structures with Hungary due to a smaller territorial container. The thesis considers post-1848 economic stagnation in Croatia as caused by the legacy of centuries of extra-economic coercion, uneven development under capitalism, the centralized regime of accumulation in the Austrian Empire and an upswing in the world-economy that did not favor a relocation of economic activities. It maintains that a relatively meager development of Croatia after 1848 cannot be explained with reference to feudal dispositions of the landlords. The thesis claims that the Hungaro-Croatian Settlement, rather than being caused by the Croatian class structure, was more geopolitically determined. |
| Supervisor | Zimmermann, Susan |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/medved_mladen.pdf |
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