The Crown and the Diets of Hungary and Transylvania in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

At the end of the Middle Ages Hungary lay on the periphery of Europe, not only geographically, but in respect of her economic, social and political development too. This does not mean that she was left out of European developments, but that she followed these tendencies more slowly and incompletely, mostly because she exported products of agriculture and mining to the emergent world market and imported industrial goods from there. Therefore her degree of urbanisation and her merchant-capitalist layer were too weak for Hungary to evolve unaided from the regime of estates to the more modern system of absolutism. During the sixteenth century the Hungarian diet continued to represent the interests of the landowning nobility: its intention not only of maintaining, but of extending the power of the estates could only intermittently be held in check by the absolutist velleities of the ruler.