Habsburška politika naseljavanja ugarskog dijela Monarhije u 18. stoljeću s naglaskom na Slavoniju i Srijem: pravni akti
Authors:   Institut za istraživanje migracija, Zagreb, Lazanin Sanja 
Published: February 2025

Demographic development and migration played an important role in Central Europe in the 18th century, during the period of building state institutions. The Central European history of that period was marked by the role of the Habsburg dynasty. After the anti-Ottoman wars in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Slavonia and Srijem, along with parts of Hungary, Bačka, Transylvania, Banat, and other territories, came under Habsburg rule.
Considering the border position of Slavonia and Srijem relative to the Ottoman Empire, especially in the years after the Vienna War, the military government played a significant role in those areas in addition to the civil one. During the 18th century, parts of the estates in Slavonia under the jurisdiction of the Royal Chamber were sold or given away to private secular or church owners, and large estates with dependent serfs were created. The belt along the Sava River was organised as the Military Frontier, which, in the mid-18th century, was divided into regiments and maintained by free peasants and soldiers, following the model of other military frontier regions in Croatia.
Using original archival materials, published sources, primarily the edition of Quellenbuch zur Donauschwäbischen Geschichte by Anton Tafferner, and historiographical research, the article presents the most important governmental and other legal acts on which the demographic and migration policy of the Habsburg Monarchy in the newly acquired regions was based. The paper aims to reveal the most important guidelines of the Habsburg settlement policy in the eastern and southeastern areas of the Monarchy and show the change that occurred in that practice through state policy and the prevailing economic doctrine.
To gain insight into the demographic and economic situation in the newly conquered provinces, the Habsburg authorities conducted various types of censuses. Since depopulation and economic devastation in Slavonia and the entire newly acquired eastern part of the Monarchy were huge, the state, having a cameralistic economic orientation, sought to solve this problem by encouraging migration and organised settlement of these regions. According to the cameralists, the success of the state, the exploitation of natural resources, the circulation of goods, and the amount of taxes collected depended, among other things, on the number of inhabitants. A systematic demographic policy began only under Maria Theresa. Before that period, demographic measures were mostly spontaneous and unsystematic, primarily relying on the settlement of population groups that sought protection or better living conditions, such as the Orthodox and Catholic populations from the Ottoman-ruled regions.
The first in a series of royal acts concerning population settlement was the Patent of Settlement. It was based on the Instructions on the Organisation of the Kingdom of Hungary (Einrichtungswerk) by Cardinal Count L. Kollonich, issued in 1689. It explicitly stated that all people of any class, nationality, or religious affiliation who were willing to settle in the Kingdom of Hungary and its adjacent lands should be accepted. The condition for emigration was obtaining permission from the previous authorities, the so-called Los-Brief. The patent intended to attract the rural population, given the large uncultivated areas, as well as members of various professions and craftsmen. Settlers were promised a range of privileges.
Kolonić’s 1689 plan for the organisation of Hungary remained unrealised. At the Hungarian Parliament in Bratislava during the session of 1722/1723, the Hungarian estates placed demographic policy, closely related to mercantilist principles, at the centre of the discussion. Several parliamentary conclusions from that session are important in the context of immigration and settlement, especially Article 103, which emphasised “impopulation” as a state need, thereby providing a legal basis for all future settlements.
Although Catholic populations were preferred for settling the eastern regions of the Monarchy, Emperor Charles VI sent a letter in 1722 to the rulers of Protestant lands within the Holy Roman Empire, urging them to facilitate emigration from those lands to the Kingdom of Hungary. He addressed the Protestant princes, as he was related to some of them, and they had supported him in the Empire during times of dispute.
In the first half of the 18th century, the state sought to meet the need for a systematic increase in population by attracting immigrants from abroad, primarily from the Holy Roman Empire, and by increasing the natural growth rate of the domestic population. The main carriers of settlement in Hungary during that period were domestic and, to some extent, foreign landowners. The organised settlement of the German population in Slavonia during that period was not of significant proportions, the exceptions being cities and sporadic settlement on some estates such as Vukovar and Valpovo. In addition to settlements organised by estates, Christian populations from areas under Ottoman rule also migrated to Slavonia and parts of Hungary. This population most often moved on their own initiative and settled in areas under military or civil administration.
The main actors in the colonisation of the Hungarian part of the Monarchy during the late 17th and first half of the 18th centuries, under the reigns of Emperors Leopold I and Charles VI, were the estates of ecclesiastical and secular landowners. However, under the reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, colonisation was carried out mostly by the state. In the latter period, efforts were made to attract migrants from beyond the borders of the Habsburg hereditary lands, especially from the Holy Roman Empire. The religious affiliation of the migrants played an important role in the colonisation process, with Catholic migrants being given priority.
The paper analyses the most important decisions regarding the settlement of the eastern and southeastern regions of the Monarchy made by Maria Theresa and Joseph II. During the earlier phase of the reign of Maria Theresa, the colonisation activity of state authorities and private estates was directed towards well-off emigrants who were able to establish economies in the place of settlement with their own resources. Special focus is placed on patents issued by Maria Theresa that introduced certain innovations in settlement policy. These are primarily the Colonisation patents from 1759 and 1763, and the main instruction on the settlement of Banat from 1772. The Patent of 1763 was issued on a statewide basis and was intended to gain support from military personnel discharged after the Seven Years’ War for the Monarchy’s demographic policy. The goal was to move the demobilised population, which lacked a secure existence in the Austrian part of the Monarchy, to the Hungarian part, especially Banat and Bačka. Protestants could also settle, but not in Banat. During this period, settlement from the Holy Roman Empire or Habsburg lands was significantly less prevalent in Croatia than in Banat and Bačka.
Furthermore, the paper analyses two emigration patents (Auswanderungspatent) issued by Joseph II. The 1782 patent concerned the settlement of Hungary and Galicia and introduced two innovations in the Habsburg settlement policy. First, complete religious freedom was declared, allowing members of any religion to settle in these countries. Second, emigrants to Hungary and Galicia were generously subsidised, encouraging even the less desirable poor population to move to the eastern regions. The 1784 patent aimed at promoting immigration to Hungary and Transylvania, but it also provided for the settlement of Protestants, mainly craftsmen, in Bačka. The largest wave of emigration from the Empire to Hungary occurred around 1785. At that time, Slavonia was also settled by people from the northern regions but still remained much less populated than parts of Hungary, Banat, and Bačka.
The paper also provides an overview of various announcements of provisions prohibiting emigration from the Habsburg hereditary lands, which became more frequent in the 1750s and 1760s. The aforementioned ruler acts aimed at punishing those who encouraged the population to emigrate, as well as those caught or denounced as intending to emigrate without permission. The ban on emigration to foreign countries was in line with the principles of the “populationist” and cameralist policies of the Habsburg rulers. The recruitment of colonists to settle the sparsely populated eastern parts of the Monarchy was specifically targeted at German lands that were not under Habsburg rule.
The presented analysis of published royal decrees on the settlement of the newly acquired eastern regions of the Monarchy and archival sources shows that, during the 18th century, the Habsburg state sought to meet its population needs through immigration and planned settlement. By providing a normative framework for these activities, the Monarchy sought to achieve its demographic, economic, and state goals, considering the current geopolitical circumstances.