Abstract: The paper presents an effort to determine the territorial distribution of factories in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1938, according to branches of industry using the data based on the list of industrial enterprises published in Statistics of the Industry of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1941). The paper also gives a brief overview of the source material on industry statistics and the very definition of an industrial enterprise.

Keywords: industry, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, statistical historical data, factory, industrial enterprise

Summary

The article shows the territorial distribution of factories based on the list of industrial enterprises from the Statistics of Industry of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the address list of industrial enterprises published by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1941. Industry statistics represent the only systematic and methodical presentation of Yugoslav industry in the narrower sense, i.e. only factory production, without mining. The basis for the research is a list of 4,280 factories according to branches, types and subtypes of industry. The analysis of the distribution of factories confirmed the existing theses that the industry in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was extremely unevenly distributed and that regional differences were present in every segment of the industry. The northern parts of the country were economically more advanced, not only in quantitative terms and due to a larger number of factories, but also due to more modern factory capacities. The second conclusion, to which the analysis of the Factory Directory points us, is that the industry was based on the processing of easily available raw materials (grain and wood), while the dominance of specific types of factories in industrial branches indicates the existence of technically weaker and cheaper companies (grain mills, lathes, weaving mills, brick factories, etc.).