PROKAPANJE KANALA DUNAV-SAVA: ZAMISAO S KRAJA 19. STOLJEĆA
DIGGING THE DANUBE-SAVA CANAL: AN IDEA OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The revival of the idea of digging through a Danube-Sava canal was stimulated in Hungary at the end of the 19th century by the powerful rise of Hungarian trade and transportation, which sought the best transportation links in the east-west direction (Danube area – Adriatic and Mediterranean). By getting parts of the Drava, Sava and Danube rivers into this transportation system, Croatia and Hungary, and the whole of the monarchy, would have obtained a better link between central, eastern and western Europe. With respect to the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, a typical transit country, this Danube river transport system and its links with the Adriatic represented a transportation axis of exceptional importance for the whole of Croatian development. In this period it was already very clear that the idea to dig a canal from the Danube to the Sava could not be put into practice without the procurement of capital. In an averagely developed country like Hungary, which at that time was still occupied with building up the railway network in the north – south direction, i.e., to the Adriatic and the Balkans, it was impossible to bring about the modernisation of yet another kind of transportation infrastructure (i.e., canals, rivers). This would, however, in the east – west, horizontal direction, have speeded up the integration of the Croatian market. In addition, it would have been used in the Hungarian part of the monarchy not only by the Hungarian but also (even more) by the domestic Croatian economic forces, and this would have strengthened Croatian autonomy as a whole. Ultimately this would have made control by Budapest more difficult, and Croatia would have got a more equal position in the Austro-Hungarian political and economic system. For this reason, events and/or the passage of time showed that this time too, as in earlier periods, the idea about digging a canal stayed at the level of idea or proposal.

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