which the first settlers were subjected were particularly harsh: because of the swamps surrounding the settlement and the unsanitary conditions, 168 people died in the first year of establishment alone. A plague epidemic ensued in 1770 that killed no less than 553 people. In 1781 Hatzfeld was leased to , then sold to him. Later, the began to colonize the town with Hungarians. Modern period After the 1848–1849 revolution, the region became part of the Austrian Crown Land of the Serbian Voivodeship and Temeswarer Banat. Jimbolia began to develop in the second half of the 19th century, with the rise of industrialization that swept all of Banat. In 1857, the railway between Timișoara and Kikinda was completed, which also passed through Jimbolia and connected further with Szeged, being the main route from Timișoara to Budapest and Vienna. Access to this railway allowed it to develop rapidly, slowed only by the cholera epidemic of 1873, which killed more than 1,000 people. During this period, the brick factory (1864) opened, attracting agricultural workers from all over southern Banat, especially Hungarians. Thus was born the Futok district (of the "fugitives", from the name given to the Hungarians fleeing from the agricultural estates). In 1861, Emperor Franz Joseph I decreed the renewed validity of the Hungarian state constitution (Austro-Hungarian Compromise), whereby the town once again belonged to the Hungarian part of the country, as it had before 1848. Under Hungarian administration, more and more Hungarians moved to the town, which was officially called Zsombolya from 1899. In 1895 the Jimbolia–Ionel railway was put into use. In 1906, the railway from Jimbolia to Grabaț, Lenauheim and Lovrin was completed, built with the help of workers from Țara Moților, some of whom settled in the south of the town. At the turn of the century, Jimbolia was three-quarters German and one-quarter Hungarian, with only a few Romanians and Serbs. Jimbolia disputed by Romania and Serbia World War I radically changed the configuration of the area within which Jimbolia played a central role. From an important town in the economy of Banat, it becomes a border town. After the withdrawal of the Serbs from Timișoara and the unification of Banat with Romania, Jimbolia remained in the provisional borders of Serbia. At the Paris Peace Conference, Prime Minister Ion I.C. Brătianu demanded the recognition of the borders of a Romania that included the whole of Banat, with the