Csaba Lentner - East of Europe, west of Asia

2.2 Economic aspects and effects of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 | 29
million forints would have been needed. On the contrary, however, the noble-owned
estate system was charged with a debt of 200 to 300 million forints.
The lack of “technical” input resource resulting from the liberation of the
serfs, i.e. the double deficit in the production factors, was also affected by the
lack of capital to be calculated as another production factor, which has now
created a threefold production factor shortage and forced with elemental
power a political constellation in which agriculture and then industry could
have started to develop.
In other words, an estate system that was capable of carrying out diminished
reproduction processes could have get access by capital to technical
input resources, such as wage labour and means of production, for which loan
capital was needed as a catalyst. The money capital is willing to “move” only
in calm political conditions, in consolidated social circumstances and in a
clean property situation, which has laid the foundations of and economically
supported the demand for compromise from the Hungarian side. Factors
pointing to the compromise on the part of the imperial court can basically be
explained by military-foreign policy. Even the suppression of the Hungarian
War of Independence was only possible with the help of the tsar, moreover,
the war between Austria and Prussia and Italy that broke out in the summer
of 1866 also raised the risk of a reviving freedom fight. The Königgrätz defeat
clearly showed Austria’s weaknesses, the decline of its role in Europe, which
accelerated the search for an internal ally, with the intention of easing political
debate within the empire. Ferenc Deák – the wise man of his home
– was called on 18 th July 1868 for reconciliation with the emperor. Deák had
already expressed his willingness to compromise in his “Easter Act” in 1865,
even admitting that the military and foreign affairs and finances should not
be separate Hungarian powers, but should be part of a total empire. “One of
the goals is therefore the solid existence of the empire, which we do not want
to be subordinate to any other issue. Another concern is the preservation
of the constitutional existence, rights and laws of Hungary, which the sanctio
pragmatica also solemnly proclaims, and from which to consume more
than what is required by the imperative survival of the empire, is neither
right nor expedient.” 91 Deák’s attitude ready for a compromise has played a
significant role in accelerating the process of reconciliation and in the creation
of Act XII of 1867. He also did this by recognizing that in 1864 it was
clear that Bismarck wanted to unite the German states on the basis of the
principle of the so-called small German unity, which meant for Austria that
regarding power she has moved from the centre of Europe to the periphery
of Eastern Europe. As a result, in the imperial court, more and more people
thought of creating a dualist state.
All in all, the intellectual and effective achievements at the beginning of the
19th century, and afterwards, in the 1848-1849 War of Independence, and the
adoption of the modern Austrian administration (tax and economic administration)
in the era of neo-absolutism and the accompanying economic progress