KRETANJE STANOVNIŠTVA JUGOISTOČNE BARANJE OD 16. DO POČETKA 20. STOLJEĆA U SVJETLU OPĆIH POVIJESNIH PROCESA I POVIJESNODEMOGRAFSKIH IZVORA
POPULATION OF THE SOUTHEASTERN BARANYA FROM THE 16TH TO THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses demographic dynamics of southeastern (or Croatian) Baranya from the 16th to the (early) 20th century. The first period (16th-17th c.) corresponds to premodern, cyclical demographic patterns (reign of periodical „ups“ and „downs“). Between 15th and mid 18th c., southeastern Baranya’s demographic „ups“ had probably never breached a treshold of 15.000 inhabitants. On the other side, „downs“ were more dramatic (down to 9.000 souls after Ottoman invasion in the 16th, and to 3.000 after Austrian in the late 17th c.). From the 16th c. onwards, continuous source od Baranya’s demographic regeneration had been imigrations of South Slavic settlers from the south (which gradually changed it from Hungarian to predominantly South Slavic ethnic space). Because of the Slavic (and German) immigration – so mostly mechanical growth of the population – during the last third of the 18th c. most expansive era of southeastern Baranya’s demographic history had began. Between 1767 and 1828 its population grew from ca. 15.000 to 36.000 people (for 140%). However, the population „boom“ of the 19th and 20th c. bypassed it, as the area belonged to Transdanubian regions known for their one-child system. From 1869 to 1910, while whole of the Hungary grew from 11 to 18 million people, population of the southeastern Baranya increased for mere 6.000 people, or 13% (from 45.500 to 51.600). After reaching an absolute population peak in 1971 (56.000), from the 1990s a dramatic downfall began. In 2011 Croatian Baranya counted 39.400 inhabitants which, in terms of population, reverted it back into the early 1830s. Therefore, in its final conslusion, the paper implies that contemporary policies and cultural practices based in a conviction that successful rural regeneration equals demographic regeneration, (re)traditionalisation, etc., are questionable, since it is obvious that changes that have happened so quickly and abruptly cannot simply be undone, nor can former, „anthropocentric“ socio-demographic ways be restored.

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