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NATIONALISM, MODERNIZATION AND SOCIETY IN CROATIAN LONG CENTURY the end of the 19" century saw modernization as the progress of trade and industry, which were considered to be the cause of wealth. Ihese were mainly members of the old feudal stock, the clergy, the nobility and bourgeoisie, with a lesser degree of intelligence, and industrialists. This was a group “which was renewed for a certain period of years with every parliamentary election, but it was actually guaranteed in advance especially for this purpose, in a tailored electoral order. Peasantry and workers would rarely get to speak when it came to those elections.”'* Clearly trying to enhance the unfavorable social structure of the country, the growth of tax revenues reached a whole 100% in the first era of agrarian crisis. “The impact of the crisis can be best judged by the declining state revenues of salt. Salt was considered to be one of the primary human needs, and therefore the most elastic expenditure. Despite that, its consumption fell in the first phase of the crisis by almost 20%, even though the population increased ... for the same amount of salt, two and three times more wheat had to be given." In the best case scenario it was about cohabitation, a collaboration of the new rich and the old elite, if not about the domination of the old aristocracy in the application of modernization achievements. Before the abolition of feudalism, the Habsburg Monarchy had already begun the process of the transformation of feudal landowners into capitalist entrepreneurs. Compared to the centers of modernization, feudalism based on the serf economy dominated for a very long time in Croatia. The latifundia of foreign nobility in Slavonia did well; they overcame the crisis caused by the abolition of feudal relations by taking advantage of that by leasing and also selling forests. According to the statistics from 1895, only 8.48% of properties in Croatia and Slavonia exceeded the size of 11 ha, and only 0.28% of properties covered more than 57 ha of land (with 27.68% of arable land in total). The share of small rural holdings up to 5 ha of total arable land accounted for about 44.3%, but in 1946, the ratio rose to 76.890." According to the model of internal colonization stated by Michael Hechter, the periphery became the object of exploitation by the industrially developed core. Investments conditioned the economic development of the periphery, making it dependent on the foreign market. Export from the periphery had always been in the form of raw materials (agricultural, forest or mineral), at best of semi-finished products. Modernization, in this case, lead to “cultural Bicanic: Agrarna kriza u Hrvatskoj, 17. (quotes Vinko Kriskovic: Dokle smo dosli, Zagreb 1925, 31.) 15° Biéanic: Agrarna kriza u Hrvatskoj 1873-1895, 4, 7-11. 1° Bicanic: Agrarna kriza u Hrvatskoj 1873-1895, 11-12. Ivan T. Berend — György Ränki: The European Periphery and Industrialization 1780-1914, Zagreb, Naprijed, 1996, 50; Mirjana Gross: O poloZaju plemstva u strukturi elite sjeverne Hrvatske potkraj 19. ina pocetku 20. stoljeéa, Historijski zbornik, No. 31-32, Zagreb, 1978, 123-139. * 141 +
