Journal Analele Banatului N.S. Archaeology-History

Loránd Balla

Asociaţiile civile locale şi modernizarea agrară regională în perioada dualismului austro-ungar. Un studiu de caz comparativ al activităţii Societăţii Agrare din comitatul Timiş şi a Asociaţiei Agricultorilor din Regiunea de Sud / Local Civil Asociations and Regional Agrarian Modernisation During the Austro-Hungarian Dualism. A Comparative Case Study of the Agrarian Society’s Activity in Timiş County and of the Agriculturers Asociation from the Southern Region

Jan. 1, 2012

Abstract

Within the last quarter of the 19th century, in Timiş County, two agricultural Associations were competing for representing the landowners’ interests: " e Agrarian Society of Timiş County (SAT) and the Association of Agricultors from the Southern Region (AARS). " e former functioned as a quasi-independent subsidiary of the Hungarian National Agrarian Society (SANM), representing the central power and the interests of the large and medium landowners from the Timiş County. In contrast, AARS aimed to represent the small landowners, mainly those of German origin, although, over time, its membership also included wealthy landowners. " e article intends to perform a multidimensional monography, a comparative case study of the two agrarian associations, by using the interdisciplinary methods specifi c to social history, approaching the topic through the lens of social anthropology and combining the results with quantitative data analysis. " e two associations are studied according to the British research method, stressing their role in the emergence and development of a ce rtain competitive mentality, specifi c for the second half of the 19th century. " e creation of the fi rst association was due to the eff orts of those “actors” from the local and central administration that were economically linked to the wealthy landowners. Along with the emergence of non-negligible competition from AARS, in the last decade of the 19th century, SAT started its formal opening towards the group of small landowners. Attracting them was required both by the need to maintain the association’s fi nancial equilibrium, through membership fees, and by the goal of preventing their membership in the competing association, AARS. By attracting the mass of landowners, the associations were targeting a large space of activity and infl uence. " rough a large number of good-paying members, through the large number and quality of their activities, the associations represented a civil “power”, with infl uence on the local, regional, even the national level of the public space. " is power depended to a large extent, besides the association’s fi nancial capacity, on the system of political and social strategies adopted and, last but not least, on their ability to successfully attract as members some public personalities of local, regional of even national and governmental importance. To a large extent, the success of the associations under scrutiny was due to the presence among their membership of important personalities of those times, such as Béla Ambrózy, Zsigmond Ormós or Franz Blaskovics.