Military Border in Austrian Politics in 1848-1860

From the class meeting in Bruck in 1578 to Berlin Congress in 1878, i. e. from the very beginning till the end of its fundamental function, Military Border goes through various and very complex processes. Its problems in the 1850-ies are the topic of this paper. In spite of clear demands of political circles in Zagreb concerning the Military Border, the Monarchy in Vienna tries to protect it as a distinctly military institution that will not act against Hungary only but against national integration on the Balkan and Apenine Peninsula too. After the revolution in 1848/49 military and court circles in the Austrian monarchy invest special labours to turn the Military Border into a corpus separatum where military tradition will be further cherished, with corporal strictness, waiting for the development of events on the East, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With the presence of Vienna and Budapest, especially after 1849, solving of the Military Border question is affected strongly by the impulse coming just from Zagreb. Trying to gather around itself the separated Croatian territories as soon as possible, Zagreb supported in the Military Border question up to Austro-Hungarian agreement in 1867 the opinion about the need of administrative integration of military and civil territories of Croatia. But, because the administrative integration does not put in the first plan demilitarization of Military Border, there appear due to such political conception in Zagreb some fundamental prerequisites for the collaboration between military and royal circles in Vienna and Croatian politicians. However, this collaboration left no deeper traces in the Croatian politics. The last \u27\u27Basic Law of Military Border", accepted in 1850, rejects all the projects of political representation of Croatia about the future of Military Border. The project has been saved as Jelačić’s "Military Border Foundation" from 1849. In spite of expectations of Croatian politicians the last "Military Border Foundation" from 1850 tries to contribute to stabilization of Military Border mechanism and to its preserving. This new Military Border\u27s constitution, contrary to demands of Croatian representatives formulated in the "Military Border Foundation" in 1849, declares the whole Military Border to be a part of the imperial army. Although the basic intention of that Law was to subordinate social relationships in Military Border to its main task, i. e. to supply the Monarchy permanently with cheap army, still it did not succeed to stop the process of social differentiation and destruction of outlived forms of traditional Military Border society, In this paper are analyzed first of all those social phenomena in Military Border which point to the movement of the social structure and the crisis of traditional military-rural society. Besides problems of disharmony between legal superstructure and social reality there are analyzed the efforts of Croatian business circles to hold back - by means of concentrating merchants and craftsmen in Croatia under the ban and in Military Border - the Austrian capital existing for centuries in Military Border, that important part of Croatian territories