Landscape Reconstruction of the Southern Transdanubian Puszta (1683–1735) Based on 18th-Century Border Litigations
Landscape Reconstruction of the Southern Transdanubian Puszta (1683–1735) Based on 18th-Century Border Litigations

Summary/Abstract: Puszta is a widely known phenomenon that primarily denotes a deserted countryside and not the flat areas, vegetation, cattle grazing and some picturesque landscape items that are usually associated with. In Southern Transdanubia, a borderline during Ottoman rule for 143 years, settlement desertion became a crucial and overwhelming factor from 1543 to 1686. My paper addresses the age of reorganization (1686–1720), right after the Ottomans were defeated, and focuses on land use and the general appearance of the land. There are two major views on this situation. Some historians hold that the elaboration took place in a scarcely populated and “wild,” natural area, thus the process of colonization was inevitable. Meanwhile, other scholars who worked with local archival sources have pointed out that plenty of families survived there whose livelihood changed during the Ottoman occupation but they filled the land with human activities. This resulted in a different type of land structure, which was far from the so-called medieval landscape. In my paper I follow the second theory and depict the landscape in a minor area on the basis of archival data. I analyze the practices of land use in order to show the way the “puszta” did and did not exist. I also investigate the key factors that affected a new landscape shift, which brought about the colonial landscape.

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