Civil Servants of the Hungarian Counties and Political Transformations in
the Nineteenth Century

In the Hungarian historiography, the theory of passive resistance was built in connection with the Hungarian county officials' history after 1849; according to this theory, the elite of the Hungarian nobility withdrew or was driven out of the leading positions of the county administration and tided over the years of absolutism retiring to their estates.

Thus the official elite of the period from 1849 to 1867 separated from Hungarian society and consisted of "Cisleithanian" officials. Being in office is the only segment of passive resistance that can be documented by real, numerical data. The investigation of this issue is the aim of the present research, in which six counties in the territory of present day Hungary are examined. The choice of counties is determined by their role in the Reform Age and during the freedom fight of 1848-49, although regional position, relations between nationalities, religious affiliations were also taken into consideration. The research covers the period from the end of the Reform Age to the year 1868. Conclusions published in this paper are based on the results of database analysis. In the statistical measuring, the examination of the various hierarchical levels of the officialdom was also considered to be important. In the course of the analysis, the clerks' previous career, further services of the officialdom, characteristics of personnel categories (place and time of birth, qualification, knowledge of languages, official career) were examined.

On the basis of statistic results it can be verifiable that continuity was more typical of the official administration than discontinuity. Consequently the theory of passive resistance can be revised.