István Gaucsík: Economy and credit organisation – Hungarian banking situation in Slovakia (1918-1923) (II. part)

The study tries to answer those questions that arose in relation to the integration of Hungarian nationality banks from the point of view of the development of the Czechoslovak credit bank system between 1918 and 1923.

Disorganisation in public law and politics in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy influenced the territory’s economic relations, too. It resulted the economic nationalism of successor states and autarky of economic policy. Czechoslovakia preserved the most important development results in economy of the Czech-Moravian-Silezian territories before the First World War.

Czechoslovakia inherited significant economic capacity (approx. 70 per cent). Only 8.5 per cent of industrial capacity remained in Slovakia. Those regions of Slovakia and Sub-Carpathia that were lived by Hungarians found themselves in peripheral position from economic point of view. The Hungarian economists of that time in Slovakia (László Hantos, Lajos Jócsik, Ödön Tarján) dealt with the economic under-development, industrial and agricultural crisis of these territories.

The rest of the book deals with the problems of unifying credit system structures. The bank system of Czech territories, that was more professional and had a more developed division of labour, had a dominant position within the forming credit organisation.

The study focuses on examining general economic policy, banking issues. Later, the study deals with the processes of nationalisation and nostrification, compares the Czech and Slovak examples. The professionals of that time thought that fusion are one of the important conditions of the recovery of nationality banks.

Between 1918 and 1923 in Slovakia and Sub-Carpathia (with smaller structural modifications) the Hungarian nationality banks were integrated to the Czechoslovak financial system.