Talk:Demographic history of Bačka

1715 census

Please, what is the problem with the use of the census numbers? The sources (a Prof. dr. by the way) uses them just fine. Since this is clearly a reliable source, there should be an equally reliable rebuttal of the factual accuracy of the numbers provided before they get deleted in a snap. Wladthemlat (talk) 10:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The accepted proposal

Since there seems to be confusion I copied here the accepted consensus proposed earlier. Everything is copied from above but some are bolded for better visibility because it was hard to find

PROPOSAL A. The intro is only 1 sentence (suggested by Rjecina) "The first modern census with reliable data was the 1860 Austrian census." After this comes all the census data as now but without ANY commentary, the first census will be the 1860 census if we find it's data and after that every census comes, with no other comments. These include the following censuses (more can be added if found) 1910, 1921, 1931, 1941, 1948, 1953, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001.

• Well, if no one else opposes, I'll support this solution PaxEquilibrium 14:11, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

  support Hobartimus 20:06, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

  support Rjecina 8:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

  support Fcsaba 07:30, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Even if these 4 users agreed about something two years ago, Wikipedia articles are open for new edits and improvements and new consensuses could be achieved after new arguments are presented. These users that you mentioned are no longer active, so, Hobartimus, it is me and user Wladthemlat with whom you have to reach new consensus here. Here are valid arguments: title of the article is not "List of modern censuses conducted in Bačka" but "Demographic history of Bačka", which mean that any data from any census and population estimation could be presented and thus 1715 and 1720 census results are valid info to be presented here (or you have any reasonable argument against this?). I also do not understand why you reverting improvement of content table or demographic maps for 1868 and 1880. Please explain yourself here. PANONIAN 10:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Wladthemlat's revert was a simply wikistalking here and he has recently been riding his 4th block out in the last period of 30 days, of which the expiration time is a whole week, so if i were you i wouldn't count on his help.

I think it is understandable that you have been requiring if anybody revert your edits, give an explanation to you, why he is doing so. But you shouldn't be astonished at Hungarians mistrustful in connetion with all your edits. You have been declared your opinion about Hungarians which is not too flattering towards them / us. And it is also well-known that you often make misleading maps. I couldnt tell another one example for it, exclude yours, whose map was deleted from wikimedia commons and then i didn't even mention your message at Hobartimus' talk page. Thereafter i do not understand your aim is what with those census records. May you want to prove that Serbs have more right to live in the Bácska than that of Hungarians? Likewise, i do not know Andrija Bognar and Jovan Pejin are who. With Serbia having recently lost its wars, its historians might have been making sources from political reasons. And even if every word they have written is true, are you sure your addition

was made in proper format? Just because i do not think so. It is obvious that those census records could not have been very exact at the time. They would be better in a table format, highlighting remarking that they aren't exact. They are showing just a tendency.--Nmate (talk) 17:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Nmate, first, would you be so kind to try to improve your English since I have problem to understand you. Second, why yo reverted just ALL my edits? - with what exactly you do not agree in my edits? if you do not agree with adition of census numbers, why you reverted improvement of content table, improvement of categorization, addition of historical ethnic maps, etc, etc? this is clear example of vandalism from your side - it is one thing if you revert something with which you do not agree, but if you revert article in the way you did, it is vandalism. Can you at least try to explain why you reverted just all my edits? other things: where exactly I "declared my opinion about Hungarians" and what that opinion might be according to you? - it would be nice that you quote where and when I "declared" such thing and if you cannot do it please refrain yourself from such accusations. Also, which of my maps is considered misleading by you and which one was deleted from commons? - if you raise those questions, you should provide detailed elaboration of your claims, so that I can give you an answer. As for my aim with census records: my aim is to improve Wiki article and to present historical data to Wiki readers. What is your aim for not allowing to readers to see that historic data? As for Andrija Bognar, he is actually Hungarian historian, and he has clear anti-Serb attitude in his work that I used as Internet source, and exactly the fact that such Serb-hating ultra-nationalist like him did not alowed to himself to lie and falsify census results is the proof that such results are correct. As for table format, it is not good idea since censuses do not show same data, i.e. some censuses show ethinicity, some show language and those are different subjetcs that could not be easy incorporated in one single table. PANONIAN 20:29, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

My English has been improving. However, if you are getting at, i have also to tell you that your English isn't always correct even if I understand your sentences well. Because that you keep using the simple present and the simple past tenses! But it is not an issue here right now.

Is he Andrija Bognar?[1] Because if so, this source would be acceptable to me since he is an outsider member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. --Nmate (talk) 11:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, here is the source: http://hic.hr/books/seeurope/011e-bognar.htm - title is "Prof. dr. Andrija Bognar, THE STATUS OF HUNGARIANS IN VOJVODINA FROM 1918 TO 1995" and in the middle of the article there is this sentence: "According to the censuses conducted by Austria in 1715 and 1720, Serbs and Croats comprised of 97.6% of the Backa population. There were only 530 or 1.9% Hungarians and 0.5% Germans (Kocsis K., 1989)." - i.e. author of the article is Andrija Bognar and he claim that his source for these census numbers is Kocsis K, another Hungarian historian. So, is this source acceptable for you then? PANONIAN 19:21, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Until we get a new agreement, the old consensus presumably holds. If someone wants to propose something new and discuss it, go ahead but discussion happens here not in the article body. There was a lot of information that was removed after the old agreement, if consensus will change after discussion, a lot of things will be needed to added. For example material, concerning the mass murder of more than 40 000 Hungarians, committed by Serbs exactly in this area and many other topics. These will all have to be inserted if there is a new consensus that says research by Serb and other historians and commentary can be inserted. Hobartimus (talk) 18:22, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I have started a discussion that got completely ignored and you have not replied to the messages I left on your talk, I assumed the issue is solved.

The mass murder doesn't seem to fit into the article, it is demographic history and I think the current form of the article (i.e. listing the censuses and thus documenting the demographic and etnographic development) should be preserved, but the pre- 1860's censuses should be added. There is no reason for them to be excluded - reliable sources use them, they are presented as they are with the methodology mentioned, so no confusion can arise. I also do not understand why you bind one change to another into a package stating if something gets added, then something else must be added as well, which is a complete nonsense. Each issue gets discussed and decided upon, to pre-establish an interconnection between them is a bit dishonest. The issue I have been trying to discuss for some time now are the censuses and their inclusion has not yet been refuted. Wladthemlat (talk) 19:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

if something gets added, then something else must be added as well as far as I see it there is a consensus version of this article until it gets changed by a new consensus of editors. The current text (at the top of this thread) states that only reliable census data is listed and everything else is not, this means that speculation based on people's names by Serbs, commentary and other stuff is not included, all of it. This includes all information, things that could be missing from the article etc etc. If this consensus gets changed and inserting research of Serb historians is possible then obviously findings of non-Serb historians can be inserted as well. The main point of that consensus was stability and stopping constant arguing over what gets included. Hobartimus (talk) 22:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a consensus version, but that doesn't mean it cannot be slightly modified by a new consensus. It doesn't necessary mean, that the article will need complete overhauling. Each change that you'd like to introduce can be discussed here, they can be decided upon separately, however.

The problem is, that it is not up for this talk page to decide whether certain census data is or is not reliable. As far as I can tell, the results are listed in a reliable source (that's the criterion that should be discussed here), they do not include any commentary and are not a result of a research, they are factual data gathered in the time period. I am not insisting on including commentaries or interpretations, just the data as it is. It is relevant to the article an could be interesting to the reader. It is not an issue of Serb vs. non-Serb historians, it is an issue of pre 1860 censuses or no pre-1860 censuses, regardless of nationality, the substance and prinsciple is what we should be talking here. This moreover has nothing to do with any other change you would possibly like to make to the article.

The data can be rendered unreliable only by an expert opinion, I have not seen anything like that in here. Moreover, you still did not eplain why the data is indeed unreliable, as it does not in any way state the percentages of the ethnic groups, only the percentages of the names and lets the reader to decide. To quote yourself:

This is one of the core principles of Wikipedia, everyone can decide for themselves wheter to beleive (sic) a census or not. You simply cannot put unreliable there as per wikipedia basic rules. [...].

You are doing way more than adding a commentary stating, that the census was unreliable. You are outright censoring the data not giving the reader any chance for the decision. Wladthemlat (talk) 14:03, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Censuses pt II

Could you please explain what is the problem with censuses that, whilst not operating with exact data, are clearly labeled as such and properly sourced? Wladthemlat (talk) 17:37, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

If you had any interest at all in really editing this article you'd already know from the discussion above that a consensus of editors agreed that there were no reliable census data from before the 1800s, and as such none will be added and also to keep the article from speculation etc. Also if estimations and such were added, then all of them would have to be added and not selectively i.e data from 1500s 1300s etc etc. Hobartimus (talk) 19:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

If you have any sources on the previous estimations, go ahead and add them. And please, do not point to the previous consensus already, it bears little weight. Debate to the point.

I.e. - what's unreliable on the censuses, who declared them unreliable and what is wrong with the wording you keep deleting? Wladthemlat (talk) 19:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

History declared them unreliable because censuses in the modern usage of the word didn't exist before a certain date. At certain point someone came around and wrote up the people who had to pay taxes. Didn't touch anyone who didn't have to pay, didn't ask them any questions as they started doing later on, about religion nationality etc. Hobartimus (talk) 19:40, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Again - who declared the censuses unreliable? You have any source that disputes the information or the methodology of the book they are taken from? If not, I'm sorry, but your theories on the matter are irrelevant. The section also clearly includes the info about the fact, that the censuses did not gather information on the ethnicity but that it can be deduced liguistically - fair and scientific.

The source is moreover academic, from an author that's an expert in the field, thus any deletion constitutes removal of reliable sources.Wladthemlat (talk)

You seem to have a problem of understanding. No serious person ever argued here that reliable censuses existed in 1700, and it wouldn't even help you as you are not even trying to insert 1700s data. What you are trying to insert is not census data created in 1700s so you seem to be stonewalling here by pretending to not understand. As you yourself explained the data is not from the 1700 because as you say some Serbs "fairly and scientificly deduced" something in the 1900s. It's not from the 1700s its not even close, so why are we arguing about something like this? When you insert the 1700s hard data that was created in 1700 (your not trying to do this) then It would matter. Of course if you looked at that data you would realize it's not anything close to what we are calling "census" in English currently. If we start inserting estimates and other such "deductions" then all estimates and other research going back to at least 1100 should be inserted. Hobartimus (talk) 08:32, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I have never said that i do not understand, but all you present here is your personal opinions and deductions and that's irrelevat. Either you have some sources disputing the data or you don't delete it. Wladthemlat (talk) 09:53, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Problem with the term 'colonization'

That the territory of Vojvodina was 'colonized' between 1715 and 1820 is entirely false. It was resettled, repopulated by Austrian authorities whose chief concerns were to make the land productive again so they could gain revenue, both from taxes and trade, and to create a bulwark against any future Turkish attack. As such they settled whatever people they could to repopulate it, Slovaks, Hungarians and Ukrainians from Upper Hungary which was among the least devastated regions during the Turkish Wars, Hungarians from Western Hungary which was also mostly spared, Germans from Alsace, Austria, Badan, Bavaria, Lorraine and Wurttemberg, Romanians from Transylvania and Wallachia and Serbs from Serbia, then in the Ottoman Empire. Their nationality didn't matter to the authorities in Vienna, only their productivity and loyalty to the crown.

Ethnic based settlement only came into play in the 19th century, and only after Hungary both got power in 1867 and managed to both get through the cholera epidemic of 1872-73 and establish a working financial system in 1875. The cholera outbreak was so severe as to cause the population of the Kingdom of Hungary to increase from 15,240,300 in 1869 to 15,642,100 in 1880 or by only 401,800 or 2.64%, compared with the roughly 10% per decade following 1880 up until WWI (11.65% from 1880-1890, 10.25% from 1890-1900, 8.48% from 1900-1910).

If anyone wishes to speak of colonization, one had Magyarization of increasing intensity from 1880-1918 (Hungarians gaining 5.5 percentage points for Vojvodina as a whole), mild Serbianization from 1920-1941, strong Magyarization from 1941-1944 and a large wave of 80,000 Serbian colonists planted in the region from 1944-1948 (Serbs increasing from 188,809 in 1931 to 303,664 in 1948 or by 60.83%, compared with the 18.95% growth between 1921 and 1931). Prior to 1880 and after 1948, one had natural processes of assimilation and emigration take place, while the settling of Serbian war refugees is a refugee issue, not a colonization one unless they are purposely being settled in Hungarian areas. Prussia1231 (talk) 05:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, mister Prussia1231, I see that you moved to Wikipedia from Balkan Forums. Anyway, I cannot agree with some of your claims. Firstly, one have to take into account that land of Bačka (and entire Vojvodina) was not "empty" in the time of Habsburg conquest. Two kinds of sources should be used for data about pre-Habsburg population of Vojvodina: 1. Ottoman tax records and 2. literary sources, especially the work of famous traveler Evliya Çelebi. Ottoman tax records are only partial sources since they mention only Christians who paying taxes to Ottoman authorities. Christians who are not paying taxes (for example those who served in Ottoman army) as well as Muslims were not mentioned in the tax records. So, if one read only Ottoman tax records, he would gain the wrong impression that land did not had many inhabitants. However, work of Evliya Çelebi can show us that land was in fact very populated and that it had some sizable Muslim or mixed Muslim-Christian cities (and there is info about Muslim peasants as well). Therefore, land was obviously not "empty" or "depopulated" in the time of Habsburg conquest. The problem with depopulation emanated only during and after Habsburg conquest when entire Muslim population was "ethnically cleansed" from the region and many local Serb inhabitants were killed during Habsburg-Ottoman wars, since they were soldiers who served in both armies. Therefore, the Habsburg censuses from 1715 and 1720 showed that land had low population density, but they also showed that it was populated by 97.6% South Slavs. O course, I can agree that one of the goals of Habsburg authorities was to "make the land productive again" by settling more people there, but ethnic and religious engineering was also important Habsburg goal. According to Habsburg plans, Serbs were encouraged to resettle into Military Frontier, while lands under civilian authority were planed to be populated with mainly Catholic population (not to mention plans of forcible conversion of Serbs into Catholicism, which were not implemented because of simple fact that Habsburg Monarchy needed Serb soldiers and therefore it had to gain them religious rights). Germanization and magyarization of the land were also among political goals (depending of which administrator or landowner conducted colonization) and there is info that Hungarian noble Gražalković (himself a magyarized South Slav) aimed to magyarize Bačka by colonization in the middle of the 18th century. It was him who settled Slovaks and Rusyns in Bačka, thinking that they will be more easily assimilated into Hungarians if they are separated from their ethnic core. Therefore, claim that ethnic and religious engineering did not existed in the 18th century is simply not correct and sources that I have are claiming quite opposite. Also, Serbs who settled in the area after 1918 done that largely because of economical reasons since Vojvodina was economically more developed than southern parts of Yugoslavia and there is no evidence that they settled there mainly in the name of "serbianization". Especially note that many of 1944-1948 Serb settlers were also refugees whose homes in other parts of Yugoslavia were destroyed by German occupational forces. So, the Yugoslav authorities decided that this refugee issue could be solved by giving those refugees the houses that were taken from local Germans. As for areas where Serb refugees from Yugoslav wars settled, it is questionable what we can describe as "Hungarian area". There are no many settlements in Vojvodina which are populated almost entirely by Hungarians and some settlements which are populated by more than 50% Hungarians are also populated by sizable Serb communities that comprising 20%, 30% or 40% of population of these settlements, not to mention that some of those were cousins of those refugees who came to the region during Yugoslav wars. Every citizen of Serbia, refugee or foreign immigrant is free to chose in which part of Serbia he will live and there is no law in Serbia or in other democratic countries that could regulate this differently. PANONIAN 10:00, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I did not say that Backa was empty or uninhabited, I said it was depopulated, that it's population was low as a result of war, famine and disease, lower than it would have been had there been no wars. I am not disputing the 1720 census data about the number of inhabitants, I was simply setting the pretext for why the Austrian authorities wished to settle people there--to repopulate it, much as they later did in Bukovina, which like Backa was sparsely populated, though I know of no wars in its vicinity to have caused that (though that's another topic entirely).

I also know of the religious issues, of the Hungarians and Slovaks initially having converted to Calvinism during the Protestant Reformation, and how the Austrians 're-converted' the majority of them to Roman Catholicism. At the same time, the Austrians backed the founding of the Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania with regard to around half of the Romanians as well as the Ukrainians of Transcarpathia. They even went so far as converting virtually all of the Czech population to Catholicism and trying to convert the Protestant population of Silesia to Catholicism, however that was only half successful and stopped after Protestant Prussia took de-facto control in 1742 ( confirmed 1748), so the religious plight of the Serbs was not a unique one, as it effected all other nationalities of the Austrian Empire.

As for the ethnic/nationality issue, I did not say it did not exist, I said it was not a part of the imperial policy until the 19th century, after the re-settlemt had been completed. The Austrian government had no 'goal' to make Backa a Hungarian territory, especially given the 'balancing' done by the Austrians up until 1867, doing so would have eliminated one of the forces they played off each other and made the Serbs an enemy in the process. Proof of that can be seen that despite Backa's close proximity to less devastated lands which still had their Hungarian populations, the Germans were initially settled in numbers nearly as large as the Hungarians, perhaps out of a lack of trust towards the inhabitants of Hungary by the Austrians due to the Kuric Wars (inhabitants of Hungary counting Slovaks as well given their allegiance) and due to an abundance of Catholic German inhabitants on which to draw from, given that until 1806, the Austrian Empires were Holy Roman Emperors, even if in name only. Furthermore, according to the 1880 census data which I'll post below after this, the overwhelming majority of the Hungarians were Catholic (just over 10% Calvinist), moreso than if one were to take a 'random sample' of the entire Hungarian population.

Given that Hungary was basically an Austrian province during the 18th century, Hungarians had little power to do anything, only the nobility wielded any power to speak of and even that was limited, mainly to economic grievances (taxes, estates, old freedoms, serfs). Not to mention that nationalism, although having sprung up repeatedly throughout history (French in the Hundred Years War, Czech during Hussite Wars, Polish during the Deluge and so on), never lasted any length of time until the 19th century, and even then, the Hungarians had no power until 1867, were without a pro Magyariazation leadership until 1871, and had to cope with both financial ruin and the cholera epidemic as I mentioned above.

Given the level of nationalism during the interwar period, there was obviously some Serbianization that accompanied the Hungarian flight (replacing public officials, teachers, merchants and so fourth), hence the using of the term mild. It was not as pronounced the assimilation flooding of the mainly Hungarian municipalities of Slovakia with Slovaks (comparing 1921 census data with 1930 census data shows a 3 fold Slovak increase, perhaps 2.5 fold if one counts Jews listing themselves as Slovaks in 1930 who listed themselves as Hungarians in 1921), nor was it akin to how the Romanians would view the Ukrainians of Bukovina in the mid to late 30s as 'Romanians who forgot their language.' Demographically speaking, there is no major 'boost' to the Serbian population between 1921 and 1931 which again shows that there were few to no signs of colonization, unlike what happened in Kosovo.

As for colonization, I only used that term for the 1945-1948 settlement because the inhabitants were virtually wholly Serbs, despite the fact that there are refugees from any sort of despotic dictatorships and occupation (Croatia, Romania and Slovakia all being nearly on par with Nazi Germany during WWII), which surprised me that there were no Croatian or Slovenian refugees, driven from their homes who were likewise settled there.

Currently speaking, I was saying that the refugee crisis should not be counted as colonization unless there are coordinated efforts to settle Serbs in the mainly Hungarian municipalities. Since I have heard of no such actions I'm saying it is not colonization, and the only colonization I'd speak of referring to the 90s was the Croatian colonization of the Krajina (the history, location, everything that happened with the Krajina and its population reminding me of the Sudetenland and it's population) and the colonization by all three parties of Bosnia given how it's borders were not drawn according to pre-war settlement patterns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prussia1231 (talk • contribs) 06:13, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

1880 Census Data

According to 1880 Hungarian census data that is broken down by county, district and municipality, the population of Bacs Bodrog county broke down as follows:

• 234,352 Hungarians or 36.73%
• 177,081 Serbo-Croats or 27.75%
• 162,894 Germans or 25.53%
• 24,761 Slovaks or 3.88%
• 7,294 Ukrainians or 1.14%
• 31,681 Others or 4.97%
• 638,063 Total

• 407,033 Roman Catholics or 63.79%
• 121,982 Greek Orthodox or 19.12%
• 57,238 Lutherans or 8.97%
• 24,227 Reformists or 3.80%
• 17,141 Jews or 2.69%
• 8,552 Greek Catholics or 1.34%
• 1,890 Others or 0.29%
• 638,063 Total Prussia1231 (talk) 06:23, 6 March 2012 (UTC)