Suchergebnisse

Among "the bad years" of the 18th century that affected the city of Arad, 14 of it were because of the floods, the most severe overflows taking place on July 1771. The devastations were considerable and due especially to the fact that the city wasn't protected and the bad weather lasted full days, the waters retracting only after about 7-8 days.
The authorities were interested in stocktaking the effects of the overflow and as a cause they organized charts in which were totalized the losses suffered by the inhabitants of the city in the summer of 1771. The data from these charts permit us to realize the immensity of the disaster: 252 completely destroyed houses, 9 dead, about 8500 florins losses due to the overflowed and devastated gardens, the inundation of the agrarian fields from the proximity of the city, 200 animals drowned, 88 hives destroyed by the waters etc.
Even though the authorities realized along the time works meant to regularize the flow of the river Mureş, and the urban policy thought about the danger of the floods, the city of Arad kept to be endangered by the river in the decades that followed until the waters overflowed again in: 1772, 1774, 1779, 1780, 1783, 1785, 1793 and 1799.

This study submits to our attention some qualitative and quantitative aspects related to urban and semi urban habitat from the former Arad County in the eighteenth century. If in 1715 there were 6 market towns, at the end of the century were already 15. Based on the conscriptions, urbariums and census, I have tried to detect the evolution of market towns during the entire eighteenth century. Reform policy of the Habsburg absolutism has determined even an economic and demographic increase in the market towns of Arad County. Between those 15 market towns of the county existing in 1787 only Arad had obvious urban characteristics. Here was concentrated 6.15% of the county population. By comparison with other counties from Transylvania and Hungary, I have pursued to dignify and quantify different aspects of the urbanization degree in the Arad County registered in the eighteenth century. The development of market towns in Arad County has had the same evolution with those of Central and Eastern Europe, because the agrarian character of these localities was predominant. The evolution towards urbanization was evident along the eighteenth century both in terms of population growth and a great social mobility and also in light of the economic and municipal development. The transformations in the direction of modernization registered during the eighteenth century were the basement of the future process of urbanization of Arad County in the century that has followed.