Strossmayer’s colonisation of Josipovac: the economic and legal aspects

The Dakovo area in the second half of the 19th century was rich in forests, fully grown and ready to be exploited, but the number of people to cultivate the cleared land and bring it to its new purpose was insufficient. For this reason, the Bishop Strossmayer, as the lord of the Episcopal Manor, stimulated the colonisation of the clearings and founding of new settlements in the nearby of Dakovo: Josipovac, Jurjevac and Krndija. A thorough research of the archival documents on the founding of these villages was conducted by Andrija Suljak, but because of his sudden passing he never completed and published his paper. This paper, based on the documents he came by, deals with the economic and legal aspects of colonisation of the village of Josipovac and the contracts between the settlers and the Manor. The archival documents give the significance even to the oral tradition on the initial contacts between Strossmayer and the colonists, recorded by the parish priest of Punotovci, Josip Lukic. The plan of cultivation of the clearings was impossible to implement without leasing the aforesaid land. Thus the initial contact, according to Lukic, between the Slovaks and Strossmayer came in the ideal moment and results in colonisation of Josipovac in 1881. Strossmayer’s plan was conducted in agreement and with permission of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities: Cathedral Chapter of Dakovo, Royal Provincial Government in Zagreb and Royal Subcounty in Dakovo. The first conditions of colonisation, kept in the Archiepiscopal Archives in Dakovo, were modified in part, in order to be adjusted to the needs and interests of both the settlers and the Manor, before the Sale Contracts were signed with each of the settlers in 1889. Strossmayer provided the newly founded villages with common land for the needs of their rural districts and the local Church communities (subsidiaries). The effect of the economic and legal measures and actions taken by the Episcopal Manor and the settlers were concluded in 1894, when the Royal District Court in Dakovo, as the land registry authority, confirmed the registration of the new villages, that is, the registration of the transfer of the land to new legal and natural entities based on the legal effects of the contracts and donations