Historical background
Scholars engaged in research into the history of Debrecen have long been eager to get an answer - beyond their specific research inquiries – to the question whether the development of the city had had unique features and if they had what would hallmark the unique character of development? Was there or is there a kind of’’Debrecenness”?
The topics of the economy, the social organization of the city, her special self-government and the organically related church organization and school-culture were in the focus of historical scholarship. The best-known historians – the generation made up of profs. István Rácz, Károly Irinyi, and István Orosz – all disciples of the universalist museologist Lajos Zoltai and historian István Szabó, who turned out volumes of historical literature to fill libraries, helped shape the view that there had been a unique course of development spanning several centuries although diverse features gained prevalence in different periods.
How andin what state of development did Debrecen enter the age of industrial modernization, that is, the lengthy 19th century, how did she react to the challenges of economic development, what was her attitude like to the “Reform age” programmes of transition to middle-class society, whether or not Debrecen had attributes or even intentions to cross the whirling and troubled stream of industrial modernization all the way to the other side?
To come up with a correct answer Debrecen and her scholars set out at a disadvantage. At the outset of the age, Ferenc Kazinczy labelled the civis city in paradigmatic polemics as an adversary of modern type development, modernization and intellectual elevation/progress and as the deplorable representative of backwardness and stubborn narrow-mindedness. Research in specific fields of historiography has perennially been carrying the burden of defence against the Kazinczyan accusation of an adverse “debrecenness” while they also had to fight the dominant views of modernization-reception resting on the dichotomy of backwardness – progressive development. The overwhelming majority of theories of industrial backwardness- modernization offered interpretations of modernization processes only along the axis of advanced development (Western Europe as Centre) and backwardness (East-Central Europe, as periphery), Debrecen, however, did not seem to comply with the requirements of ideal-type urbanization in Western Europe.
The best theoretically prepared urban history scholars have come to query the exclusiveness of the dichotomous paradigm (development-backwardness, centre- periphery).
Prof. István Orosz put it explicitly, in what might be considered a kind of summary conclusion of his half-century ouvre devoted to the civis city of Debrecen, that a better understanding and closer acquaintance with European industrialization processes and theories of modernization may well promote the better understanding the development of Debrecen and her course of urban development. He put forth the idea that perhaps it is premature, too to jump to conclusions and base the concept of Debrecen urban history not only on development (Western Europe) – backwardness (East-central Europe) relative value-judgements. The industrial modernization paradigm research launched in Hungarian historiography by prof. György Ránki already exerted a strong influence on István Orosz’s approach.
István Orosz’s position is imparted additional impetus by our own decade, when the depletion of resources and the drastic deterioration of our natural environment and climatic conditions are in themselves a critique of the notion that it is always following up on the central regions that will effectively lead to a developed stage. Just as the content of development is hoped to be changing, too, we think quite differently about various aspects of the economic life of Debrecen, about the unique "econostat" mode of operation of the city and its surroundings: about her development based on the dynamic balance of urban domestic trade and long-distance commerce, about the communal responsibilty rendered through crises and blunders and then organically adjusted to various recurrent challenges.
It may well be true that the modern-age development of the city is not merely a story of decline; our standards may be worth reconsidering