Magyarország történeti helységnévtára. Árva megye (1773-1808) by Mihály HajdúReview by: Martyn RadyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), p. 774Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210494 .

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774 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Union. Thus, an item on alcohol-production in Brazil may share the same page as references to the history of Hungary's gyula-sausage and to the cotton industry in Uzbekistan.

The Agricultural Museum has a distinguished reputation in Hungary because of its three separate series of scholarly journals and monographs. This painstakingly composed bibliography, which serves as its flagship abroad, deserves to be better known. School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY University ofLondon

Hajdui, Mihaily (ed.). Magyarorsza'g torteneti helysegnevta'ra. Arva megye (773- i808). K6zponti statisztikai hivatal, Budapest, I989. 95 pp. Tables. Maps. Indexes. No price available.

ARVA was the northernmost of Hungary's counties and, by reputation, one of the 'hilliest, poorest and grimmest' places in the lands of St Stephen. Only 2,ooo square kilometres in extent, Arva was populated almost entirely by Slovaks. Owing to its raw climate, the county yielded few opportunities for agriculture and years of poor harvest could, as in I 892, lead directly to famine. Where possible, therefore, the inhabitants either supplemented their income by woodcarving or migrated to the south for work. At least, according to John Paget, the roads on which they set out were good.

It is Paget also who in the first volume of his Hungary and Transylvania (London, I839) gives what has since become the accepted description of landownership in Arva. county. The Thurzos acquired the massive lordship of Arva in 1556; half a century later, George Thurzo, who had been blessed only with daughters, erected a land-trust to keep the lordship in his family's possession. According to Paget, as late as the I830s, Thurzo's descendants still owned eighty-two of Arva's ninety-seven towns and villages, exercising seigneurialjustice with a brutality which shocked even this seasoned observer.

In fact, as this latest addition to the Hungarian place-name series suggests, the Thurzo land-trust was by no means as enduring and successful as contemporaries believed. Plainly, by the close of the eighteenth century, the Thurzo properties were scattered amongst a medley of collateral branches, and the bulk of the estates had passed or been escheated to the crown. Thus, of the I 34 pagus, oppida and portions listed here, eighty-four were royally owned and fell under the supervision of the treasury. -

It is this type of vital information that the Hungarian place-name series yields by way of the patient research of its editors on the extant land-registers and tax rolls. Although it has so far only reached its third volume, the Torteneti helyse'gne'vta'r already obliges a substantial re-evaluation of much that has been taken for granted about property relationships in old Hungary. School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY University ofLondon

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