ПОСЛЕДИЦЕ РАТА И КУГЕ У ПАНЧЕВАЧКОМ ДИСТРИКТУ (1737–1739)
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR AND THE PLAGUE IN THE PANČEVO DISTRICT (1737–1739)

Summary/Abstract: The sufferings and losses of property in Pančevo district during the Austro- -Turkish War 1737–1739 were huge because this district was not only a borderline area but also an area ravaged by war. At the end of 1739, the conditions were listed in which the Pančevo district had been found. The data from this census demonstrate that the war and the plague years caused a discontinuity in both demographic and economic development of the area. It turned out that the sufferings had been caused by the passing of the domestic army, attacks by the Turkish army and the bandits, but mostly – by the plague. It was recorded in the census that the household property had been plundered by the Turkish army and the bandits as well as by the domestic army. The former would usually take the cash and the cattle that was easily driven – horses and sheep, and the latter would take small and horned cattle that was used for maintenance. Losses were so huge that after the war, in average, each household of the Pančevo district had approximately just one horse, ox and cow, and every second household had a sheep and a pig. Since the Pančevo district settlements were exposed to domestic and foreign armies and bandits, up to 1739, major property losses had been the ones in the settlements by the Danube river – Ovča, Pančevo, Starčevo, Omoljica, Kovin, Brestovac, Gaj and Dubovac, whereas in the settlements far from the military transit – Margitica, Jarkovac and Dobrica, the census does not note any loss whatsoever. Until the end of 1739, the plague had claimed its victims in each settlement of the Pančevo district. The share of the contributing people i.e. tax payers (adult men and widows running the households) who had died from the plague, was 43.62% out of the total number of tax payers from the pre-war period. This share is slightly smaller for the settlements of the districts in the hinterland of the Danubian border, such as Bečkerek (36.0%), Vršac (33.61%) and Čakovo (27.21%). After two plague-striken years, 1738 and 1739, where the summers were particularly fatal, the plague killed 332 tax payers and 1,027 “others” which is a total of 1,359 persons. Because of the plague, tax paying people mostly died in the settlements by the roads along the riverflows of the Danube and Tamiš. In the settlements of Tomaševac, Sakule, Opovo, Jabuka, Ovča, Pančevo, Starčevo and Omoljica, the loss of the population was 50–60% of the pre-war population. The settlements that had smaller losses due to the plague are as follows: Neuzina, Ilandža, Dobrica, Sefkerin, Idvor and Gaj, where the share of the pre-war tax payers who had died from the plague was 25–33%. The lack of well-ordered sanitary crossings at the Pančevo district teritory during the whole war and the provisional solutions to the problem of the movement control with much oversight, these were the consequence of the fact that the Pančevo district, up to 1740, had not had the position or even the organization of the borderline area.

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