PECULIARITIES OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AUSTRO-HUNGARY AT THE END OF THE XIX - BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY. FROM THE REPORTS OF THE NAVAL AGENT

In order to obtain the most complete information about the processes taking place in other states, the capabilities of intelligence units were used quite a long time ago. At the turn of the century, the Russian Empire had an institute of naval agents, whose more familiar name for us are military and naval attachés. Officers with knowledge of foreign languages, savvy in technical and military matters, served seconded to consulates in foreign countries. Of particular interest on the eve of World War I were the states that met later on the battlefield on land, in the air and at sea. The tasks of naval agents were not to obtain information concerning only the activities of the navies of foreign countries, on the contrary, they were instructed to cover socio-economic, political and demographic features as much as possible. Already in those times, they relied on the possibility of cross-checking information by obtaining it from different sources. It is all the more interesting to consider in this research article the intelligence data obtained by naval agents and data from unique publications concerning the development of the agricultural sector of Austria-Hungary and other related features.