Prof. John H. Munro
[email protected] Department of Economics
[email protected] University of Toronto http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/ 27 February 2013 ECONOMICS 303Y1 The Economic History of Modern Europe to1914 Prof. John Munro Lecture Topic No. 24: V. THE RAPID INDUSTRIALIZATION OF GERMANY, 1815 - 1914 F. GERMAN INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1850 - 1914 F. GERMAN INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1850 - 1914 1. Introduction: The Beginnings or ‘Take-Off’ of German Industrialization a) During the later 18th and early 19th centuries: i) certainly many regions of Germany experienced some significant economic development, during the later 18th and early 19th centuries. # especially in the Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne [Köln], Dresden, and Frankfurt-am-Main regions. # Hamburg and the other former Hanse towns (Bremen and Lübeck) remained important for commerce ii) German towns of the old Hanseatic League: (1) the following German commercial towns had been the most important components of the former Hanseatic League, which had dominated northern European commerce from the later 13th to 16th centuries: # the German Baltic towns, led by Hamburg and Lübeck, # and the German Rhenish towns, led by Cologne, another major former Hanseatic town. (2) their subsequent relative decline in international commerce did not mean that they became economically unimportant. (3) Hamburg in particular remained one of Europe’s leading shipping and commercial centres iii) Trebilcock: notes a long, slow, but important period of economic development, 1780-1850; and this you can read for yourselves, of course.1 b) But that economic growth was generally slow and quite uneven up to the 1850s: (1) in agriculture, industry, banking, foreign trade, etc.; (2) and thus Germany was well behind France and the Low Countries, not to mention Britain.