The price of survival: Transformations in environmental conditions and subsistence systems in Hungary in the age of Ottoman occupation

Rácz, Lajos (2010) The price of survival: Transformations in environmental conditions and subsistence systems in Hungary in the age of Ottoman occupation. Hungarian Studies, 24 (1). pp. 21-39. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

In the modern era the population of the Carpathian Basin, for political and environmental reasons, was bound to the fundamental alterations of the prevailing subsistence system. Over the course of the 16th and the 17th centuries the country became a borderland between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. The regional effects of the Little Ice Age were aggravated by the ravages of the warring armies. Moreover, the climate turned cooler and wetter, and in consequence marshlands and swamps grew significantly. The population of Hungary adapted to the nearly two centuries of warfare, the environmental effects, and the European economic environment by cultivating cattle breeding and exports. Cattle exports reached 250,000 at the end of the 16th century, and the country’s economic unity survived intact in spite of the fact that Hungary itself had disintegrated politically. Following the close of the Turkish wars, Hungary became a part of the Central European Habsburg Empire.

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