THE COMMONAGE - WOODLAND AND PASTURAGE COLLECTIVES IN NORTHERN HUNGARY
THE COMMONAGE - WOODLAND AND PASTURAGE COLLECTIVES IN NORTHERN HUNGARY

Summary/Abstract: The possession or usage of arable land according to family was widespread in Europe from the Middle Ages onwards. For this reason one also finds in Hungary the communal use of those disparate and not easily manageable pieces of woodland and pasturage. This occurred within the organizational context of the commonage. With the benefit of his ethnographical and historical research in Northern Hungary the author looks at the commonages of the nobility that emerged during the feudal period; the workings of the commonage of the former serfs, and the woodland and pasturage associations that came into being following the emancipation of the serfs in 1848; and the various forms they took right up until the end of the 20th century. The commonages managed the undivided common property, and regulated the usage of woodland and pasturage. The commonages of the nobility were guaranteed regular income by the leasing out of the rights they had obtained from the crown (regale) to hold markets, and run inns and slaughterhouses. Commonages of the nobility abided by common law. Although peasant woodland and pasturage associations became subject to state regulation during the 19th and 20th centuries, they never became uniform on account of being subject to varying local traditions.

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