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HRVOJE VOLNER
division of labor” or “colonial development produces a cultural division of
labor: a system of stratification in which the objective cultural differences
come in front of the class benchmarks. Occupations of higher status are kept
for those from metropolitan culture; members of the local culture are ranked
at the bottom of the stratification system”.’*
The example of the early industrialization of Slavonia in the period from
1873 confirms the thesis of internal colonization. The exploitation is dominated
by one type of raw material, in this case wood (initially red oak, but with the
improvements of the transport equipment and saturation of the market, sessile
oak, beech, and others were used as well). The dependence of the nobility on the
financial centers of the Monarchy caused their political orientation, which was
manifested in the preservation of the minimum autonomy under the auspices
of the crown of St. Stephen. The circle of the elite in the area of the periphery
expanded with the arrival of new people, the industrialists. A question about the
type of property involved in the exploitation of the Slavonian forests (whether
domestic or foreign-owned) already came up at the turn of the century. The
always liberally optimistic report by the Trade Chamber of Commerce in Osijek
responded saying that a domestic property was in question, because most
newcomers remained living in the area of the chamber and paid taxes where
their factory plant was located as well. This was a half-truth, since newcomers
paid taxes and in other parts of the Monarchy, even more, depending on the
capacity of the products they sold. The Gutmann family from Nagykanizsa has
to be pointed out as the messengers of modernization, since they would become
one of the largest forest landowners and industrialists in Croatia. This family’s
profit was not invested nor, to a significant extent, consumed in the country of
occurrence, but in Budapest and Vienna (except for the exceptions of Edmund
and Alfred Gutmann).!
In 1937, when Biéanié spoke of foreign capital invested in 1873 in Croatia,
he called it a colonial-capitalist sector. This refers to the part of the national
economy, which dealt with the exploitation of forests, mines and the like. It was
characterized by a large concentration of capital, which could not be found in
a poorly developed and young-capitalist country. In such countries, this type
of capital, according to Bicani¢, showed the same phenomena as found in the
exploitation of colonies. He stated the following examples: the destruction of
the wealth of nations, without a plan and without care for the future, drawing
material goods from the earth without leaving the equivalent in it. The
country remains without profit, while labor becomes exhausted and falls on
18 Smith: Nationalism and modernism, 60.
1% Gross: O poloZaju plemstva u strukturi, 126-130; Hrvoje Volner: Drvna industrija Slavonije
s posebnim osvrtom na obitelj Gutmann do kraja 1918. godine, Historijski zbornik, LXV,
2, 2012, 464-473; Kerencsenyi (ed.): A nagykanizsai Gutmann-család felemelkedése a
nagyburzsoáziába, Zalai Gyűjtemény 12, Zalaegerszeg, 1979, 147-149.
* 142 +