Cooperatives in the Upper Hungarian Region at the Intersection of Embourgeoisement and Nation-Building (1898–1918)
Cooperatives in the Upper Hungarian Region at the Intersection of Embourgeoisement and Nation-Building (1898–1918)

Summary/Abstract: Cooperatives, which abound in theoretical constructions, can be defined as associationsof people who unite for a specific purpose and try to satisfy their economic needs through ademocratically operated, jointly owned enterprise. However, it is an established fact that, by theend of the nineteenth century, industrial revolution and capitalism had brought many economicand social problems and manifold grave social challenges. This led to the further organizationaldevelopment of self-help which, in turn, was an effective tool for shaping ethnic communities in thegreat trend of modernization and embourgeoisement.Self-help associations had a long tradition in the Habsburg Monarchy, including the territory of theKingdom of Hungary, already from the first half of the nineteenth century. However, especially in thelast third of the nineteenth century, the development and consolidation of cooperative networks inthis Central European region went hand in hand with ethnically based cooperative self-organizationcontrolled from above by the agrarian elites. Cooperative centres were established, which performednot only economic and social, but also national policy-related tasks, at the same time graduallymonopolizing some producer-supplier areas. Certain interpretations view cooperatives as importanttools of small-state economic nationalism, relegating their economic goals to the background.Focusing on the period between 1898 and 1918, this study deals with the process and stages ofdevelopment in the Hungarian cooperative system in Upper Hungary, whose solid foundationswere laid from the late nineteenth century onwards. Relying on archival sources, it discusses thestrategies of the two most significant cooperative centres, the Országos Központi Hitelszövetkezet(National Central Credit Cooperative) and Hangya (’Ant’). In the early twentieth century, theseHungarian attempts at integration coincided with the increasingly pronounced decentralizationideas of the Slovak cooperative elite.

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