The English Countryside as a Reflection of Economic Power: Perceptions by Hungarian Travellers in the First Half of the 19 th Century Kristof Fatsar Abstract: The British Agricultural Revolution gradually but dramatically changed the face of the English countryside by the turn of the 18 th and 19 th centuries through a series of Enclosure Acts. New methods of farming backed by achievements of the Industrial Revolution were also responsible for the transformation of the landscape. These advancements were well known in the Continent and attracted many professionals and reform-minded individuals to Britain. Among them were many Hungarian intellectuals whose struggles to make the feudal society of their homeland more similar to that of Britain is clearly expressed in their writings. For them, everything was connected: While English landscape gardens referred to the freedom and equality of all citizens, the overall cultivated English countryside expressed 'good society' where those free citizens were able to experiment and develop various farming methods and implement them to improve productivity. And finally, good society can lead to the common wealth of the nation. The state of a society and its economic power is therefore well expressed in the landscape. This research explores Hungarian public thinking on designed and evolved landscapes of Britain in the first half of the 19 th century, through the eyes of Hungarian travellers. Diaries, journals and travelogues were used, with numerous previously unknown manuscripts among them. The research has revealed that the perception of the English countryside had a serious impact on Hungarian agricultural development and landscape evolution. Keywords: Hungarian travellers, England, agricultural revolution, English landscape garden Introduction: From the late 18th to early 19th century, Britain had a key role in agricultural improvements that also dramatically changed the face of the English countryside (Harman 2009: 6). Enclosure Acts helped large agricultural estates to come into existence and landowners also emphasised their wealth and the extent of their estates through plantations of trees in the form of avenues, belts, clumps and screens (Daniels 1988: 43-47). The landscape expressed the economic power of the individual landowners, and the embellishment of private properties culminated in an appealing face of large sections of the English countryside. Other parts of England experienced very different changes in the landscape: advancements of the Industrial Revolution heavily and unfavourably intruded on the countryside. Nevertheless, these landscape changes also represented the wealth of the British nation (Trinder 1982). The achievements of the British Agricultural Revolution attracted nobility and professionals from all over the Continent as well as from Hungary to study farming theory and practice (Barta 2004-2005; Brigovátz 2007). Agricultural improvement went hand in hand with the development of the English landscape garden, which attracted similar interest from foreign visitors. Travellers were just as interested in landscape gardens as in industrial machinery. They intended to import new ideas back to their homeland to improve their estates and the nation alike (Gerics 1820-1825; Sisa 1992; Sisa 1994; Sisa 1999; Szakály 2003). The first Hungarian gardens influenced by the English landscape gardening movement appeared in the 1770s. English gardening constituted a noteworthy element of the liberation movement of Hungary from the Habsburg monarchs as well (Galavics 2003); just as much as the idea of freeing trees and shrubs from scissors was so appealing both morally and aesthetically in the beginning of the 18 th century in Britain, the English landscape garden was considered a handsome representation of prolific agriculture, common good, social equality and national independence in Hungary by the 1820s. Despite the geographical and political distance between Britain and Hungary, during the end of the 18 th and in the first half of the 19 th centuries Britain had a continuous influence on