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Population Changes in the Region of the Great Bačka Canal in the second half of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century
Authors: Milan Lalić, Milka Bubalo-Živković
Number of views: 294
Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in geographical terms, includes the northern part of Serbia, northwards from Sava and Danube. Vojvodina covers one quarter of Serbia, and about 27 % of the population of Serbia lives on its territory. It consists of three mesoregional units: Banat, Bačka and Srem.
The subject of this paper is the analysis of population changes in the central part of Bačka – the region of the Great Bačka Canal, comprising the areas of municipalities through which this canal flows. At the end of the 17th century, around 40 % of surfaces in this region were covered with ponds and swamps. With the digging of Great Bačka Canal, drainage has increased the surfaces of fertile land and living conditions have been improved, which lead to mass immigration of mainly Germans, but also of members of other ethnic groups.
The Great Bačka Canal region is a constant migration area, with extremely high percentage of agricultural land, with a sharp decline in the share of economically active population engaged in agriculture, an industry that was not adaptable to the transition processes and the time of disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, with deterioration of the quality of water in the Great Bačka Canal down to the level of endangering living conditions, it has been a depopulation area for more than three decades. The paper contains a comparison of changes in the number of inhabitants in the region of Great Bačka Canal, Bačka and Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.