Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0160/01609.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 29KB | 512 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01609}
$Pretitle{365}
$Title{Hungary
Chapter 3B.   Boundaries and Political Subdivisions}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eugene K. Keefe}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{percent
miles
city
budapest
towns
danube
country
less
population
river}
$Date{1973}
$Log{Budapest Scenes*0160901.scf
Table 1.*0160901.tab
Table 2.*0160902.tab
Table 3.*0160903.tab
}
Country:     Hungary
Book:        Hungary, A Country Study
Author:      Eugene K. Keefe
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 3B.   Boundaries and Political Subdivisions

[See Budapest Scenes: Courtesy Embassy of Hungary, Washington DC]

Boundaries

     The total boundary of Hungary is about 1,400 miles long. About 222 miles
are shared with Austria to the west, 448 with Czechoslovakia to the north,
sixty-six with the Soviet Union to the northeast, 270 with Romania to the
east, and 394 with Yugoslavia to the south. The Danube and Ipoly rivers
delineate the western portion of the northern border; the Drava and Mura
rivers delineate a considerable portion of the southwestern border; and some
ten miles of the northern boundary line crosses Lake Ferto. Elsewhere, terrain
features are not sufficiently salient to serve as natural borders.

     The 1972 boundaries are close to those established for the country in
1920 by the Treaty of Trianon. After the country's defeat in World War I, the
treaty stripped 71.4 percent of its territory from the old kingdom. Areas
removed were major contributions to the formation of Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia and increased the size of Romania by roughly 50 percent. Some
Hungarian geographers have argued that the treaty destroyed most of the former
natural boundaries and that the smaller state was no longer the viable
economic and geographic unit that had existed before. From a physical
standpoint the old boundaries encompassed the middle-Danube basin, which was a
territorial entity wreathed naturally by the Carpathian Mountains in the north
and east, by the Alps in the west, and by the Dinaric Alps in the south.

Political Subdivisions

     The major administrative areas for local government are the nineteen
counties and five towns of county rank (see fig. 3). The counties range in
size from 870 to 3,230 square miles and in population from about 240,000 to
860,000. County boundaries have not adhered to those of the topographic
regions; most of Pest County, for example, is in the Great Plain, but some of
its western and northern sections are in Transdanubia and the Northern
Mountains. In general, there are three counties in the Northern Mountains,
seven in the Great Plain, and eight in Transdanubia. Gyor-Sopron County
encompasses most of the Little Plain.

     Of the cities having county rank, Budapest stands alone in population
with nearly 2 million inhabitants. The other four average approximately
150,000 each. Miskolc, a mining and industrial town, is located in the
northeast in the foothills of the Northern Mountains. Debrecen is a cultural
and university city with a rich tradition and is located in the easternmost
part of the country. Szeged, on the Tisza River near the southern border,
is a frontier and commercial town, but it is also the major cultural center
for the southern portion of the Great Plain. Most buildings in the city
have been built since 1879 because only a few of the most substantial ones
survived the great flood of that year. Pecs, on the southern slopes of the
Mecsek Mountains in southern Transdanubia, is an old city with much history
and tradition, and it has also become the commercial and industrial center
for its section of the country.

     There are two administrative levels of local government below that of
the counties and the cities of county rank. The intermediate group
consists of districts and towns of district rank. The lowest level consists
of small towns, villages, cooperatives, and others. From the administrative
standpoint, the classifications of village and town denote little, except
whether or not the settlement is to be considered rural or urban.

     If they are not built around some nonagricultural enterprise, all
settlements or areas having populations of less than 5,000 are considered
villages. Of the settlements or areas having between 5,000 and 20,000
inhabitants, 205 are considered villages, and twenty-five are considered
towns. Of those having populations greater than 20,000, only two of the
fifty-three
are classified as villages.

Settlement Patterns

     The seven Magyar tribes that settled Hungary in the late ninth century
were nomads, horsemen, and raiders. Before their arrival in the middle-Danube
basin, they had been so constantly in movement that their ethnic
identification from earlier days was inconclusive (see ch. 2).

     At the time of their appearance, the Great Plain was a no man's land
between German states and the Byzantine empire. It was ideal horse country,
and the surrounding mountains provided shelter for the tribes if they were
pursued after raiding sorties into neighboring territories. In A.D. 955 the
Magyars settled down on the Great Plain-after suffering a decisive defeat.
Later they occupied Transdanubia, the land across the Danube. The extent of
the land they have occupied has been subject to compression by neighboring
ethnic groups, but the Magyars have at times exerted outward pressures.

     The country is usually depicted as one characterized by its villages and
towns-most of them small, a few medium-sized. Only Budapest and four other
cities have populations greater than 100,000. The sizes of villages and towns
overlap; the determination between them is based mostly on size but also upon
whether the inhabitants should be termed urban or rural. According to the 1970
census, 5.7 million persons were villagers, and they comprised the entire 55
percent of the population classified as rural. The term village is not used in
its generally accepted sense to describe the small cluster of houses and shops
at the center of a rural area; a Hungarian village encompasses the entire
area. The 3,135 villages, therefore, account for 88 percent of the country's
total area, and the seventy-six towns, for the remaining 12 percent. Of the
settlements classified as villages, about 1,500 have fewer than 1,000 persons,
and another 1,500 have between 1,000 and 5,000. Of the remaining 210 larger
villages, two have more than 20,000 inhabitants (see table 1).

[See Table 1.: Urban-Rural Population of Hungary, 1970 Census]

     A village describes a rural territorial area, which may comprise one or
more nucleated settlements, or possibly elongated or street settlements, plus
the isolated farmsteads surrounding them. In the Great Plain and in parts of
Transdanubia the portion of the village population living in isolated homes is
significant. Farmland collectivization-which was largely completed by 1961-is
reducing their numbers gradually.

     The feature of towns and cities that distinguishes them from villages and
categorizes their inhabitants as urban, as opposed to rural, is that they are
not oriented primarily toward agriculture. Most have commercial or industrial
enterprises and have attracted cultural and educational institutions and the
businesses necessary to provide for the needs of the local people. Those close
to an exploitable natural resource or having an industrial enterprise have
grown rapidly since about 1880, and their growth has accelerated since 1945.

     Budapest, capital of the country and center of its administration,
industry, culture, and commerce, dwarfs all other cities and towns in size and
importance. The city acquired its name and took the major step toward its
present status in 1873, when three cities-Obuda, Buda, and Pest-clustered at
its excellent Danube-crossing point were combined into one. Obuda (Old Buda)
was a city of 50,000 inhabitants when it was the Roman city of Aquincum,
capital of the old Roman province of Pannonia. Buda was built on Castle Hill,
just south of