Claim:
Foreign capital has always tried to exploit and ruin Hungary throughout history
Rebuttal:
Capital was brought here in search of profit, but whenever it did, it brought prosperity.
There is a historic rumour getting more and more widespread that says the disastrous Hungarian defeat at Mohács against the Ottomans was the making of the Fuggers and the Jewish Imre Szerencsés. Also, the Rotschilds are assigned responsibility for the failure of the 1849 war of independence from the Habsburgs. That is, background financial powers are to blame for Hungarian failures. It is only natural that capital goes somewhere in search of profit – few financiers are altruistic. This, however, doesn’t mean that whatever brings them a profit is automatically bad for the local people.
As for the Fuggers, they were running copper mining operations in Upper Hungary and extracted large profits, most of which, however, had been locally produced by them. The technology required for the extraction of copper and silver were provided by János Thurzó, while the capital came from Jacob Fugger, and the two split the profit 50-50. They build foundries and other infrastructure in Banská Bystrica and elsewhere in the region, without which these mines would have been left unexploited. This means the two investors couldn’t possibly have syphoned out money much needed for the anti-Ottoman fights, because the money wouldn’t have been there without them in the first place. After the company left in 1548 due to political instability, cpper mining, far from prospering, got into a crisis precisely because of the lack of capital. (On the role of contemporary financiers see: A házelnök, a zsidó bankár és az áltörténelem.)
As for the Rothschilds, they were not at all influential in Vienna at the time of the stifling of the 1848 revolution, and besides, they had no reason whatsoever to work against the Hungarian cause. (More about this in: A Rothschildok parancsolták meg a magyar szabadságharc leverését?)
On the other hand, the positive role of imported capital is undeniable in the 19th century. When the Chain Bridge of Budapest was being built, many were saying what marvellous extra profit will be pocketed by foreign investors (mainly Georgius Sina and the Rothschilds) from the crossing fee. To which the contemporary Pesi Hírlap paper, run by Kossuth replied, ’since home-grown investors were not exactly queuing up, the bridge could only come to be the way it did – built like this or not built at all’. Without western capital we would never have had railways, steam ships, a flour industry known all across Europe, machinery manufacturing industry, electronics industry or a banking network. Even the post-WW2 economic consolidation model was based on loans from the League of Nations. In the Kádár-era joining the IMF saved the country from banktrupcy. (Which is not to say that the earlier, crazy amount of loans would have been useful for the country, but the responsibility for those rests with those taking the loans out in Hungary, not those providing them.) If we look at other parts of the world, countries isolating themselves from the outside world have never been more successful than those who let in foreign capital.
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