British Technologies and Polish Economic Development 1815-1863 Simon Niziol Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy London School of Economics and Political Science University of London December 1995 UMI Number: U084454 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U084454 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 "Theses . F 9555 . 12586 2-5 Abstract After the restoration of peace in 1815, several European countries sought to transform their economies by the direct borrowing of British technologies. One of these was the semi- autonomous Kingdom of Poland. The Kingdom's technology transfer initiatives have been largely ignored by foreign researchers, while Polish historians have failed to place developments in the Kingdom within a wider context of European followership. The varying fortunes of Polish transfer initiatives offer valuable insights into the mechanisms and constraints of the transfer process. A close study of attempts to introduce British technologies in mechanical engineering, metallurgy, railway construction, textile production and agriculture contradicts most Polish scholarship by establishing that most of the transfer initiatives were either misplaced or at least premature. The thesis also reexamines the relationship between the Russian empire and the Kingdom of Poland, and suggests for the first time that general Russian attitudes towards industrial development per se were as much a hinderance to the Polish economy as the more familiar Russian hostility to the Poles, although it was Russian interference which suppressed the most promising initiatives in agriculture. The Polish case offers excellent illustrations of supply driven transfers resulting in inappropriate technological choices, premature initiatives and technologies bearing little relation to the size and nature of the markets they were designed to satisfy. At the same time, demand driven transfers in the Kingdom's textile industries resulted in successful diffusion of end user technologies, particularly among cotton producers. However, even failed initiatives witnessed a successful transmission of skills and knowledge, suggesting that technology transfer is a far more complex issue than most historical case studies allow. Furthermore, nineteenth century Poland offers an excellent example of a case study where economic performance was heavily distorted by complex political factors. In such a case, theories of economic development or technology transfer are rarely sufficient to explain the course of history. In the absence of a satisfactory conceptual framework within available scholarship on historical technology transfers, the thesis utilizes concepts from contemporary developmental economics, concepts which allow a much more sophisticated and coherent analysis of transfer case studies. 2 Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 List of Tables 4 List of Maps 5 Currency conversion table 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Chapter 1 The Evolution of Technology Transfer 15 Chapter 2 The background to Polish transfer initiatives 52 Chapter 3 British technologies and Polish industry 96 Chapter 4 British technologies and Polish agriculture 140 Chapter 5 Aftermath and alternatives 196 Conclusions 221 Bibliography 235 3 List of Tables 2.1 Population of the Kingdom of Poland and city of Warsaw 54 1816-1870 2.2 Polish exports 1817-50 66 3.1 Polish machine production and imports by value 1855-1876 103 3.2 British input into Polish engineering plants 105 3.3 Warsaw & Vienna Railway: Freight carried and coal linkages 125 3.4 Value of output of cotton and wool industries 1829-1864 136 3.5 Gross value of output of Polish industry 1847-1863 137 3.6 Some international indices 1860-61 138 3.7 Value of output of selected Polish industries 1847-1862 139 4.1 Levels of debt of Polish estates in 1824 143 4.2 The crisis of Polish wheat exports 1819-1825 145 4.3 Output of major grains 1810-1870 170 4.4 Yield ratios 1822-1864 170 4.5 Estimated area under selected crops 1822-1864 171 4.6 Estimated percentage of total arable area under selected crops 171 1822-1864 4.7 Wheat and rye exports 1811-1863 172 4.8 Estimated annual grain consumption 1810-1870 173 4.9 Livestock cultivation 1808-1862 175 4 .1 0 Diffusion of selected tools and machines 1815-1863 189 5.1 Estimated value of gross industrial production 1862-1913 197 5.2 Spindles (all types) and power looms in the Polish cotton industry 199 1862-1900 5.3 Polish textile industry: output by value 1860-1913 199 5.4 European cotton spindlage 1912-13 200 5.5 Population of the Kingdom of Poland and city of Warsaw 205 1863-1913 4 5.6 Livestock in the Kingdom of Poland 1862-1910 206 5.7 Crop yields in the Kingdom and Posen province of Prussia 206 1890-1912 5.8 Average European crop yields 1909-13 207 List of Maps 1 The Kingdom of Poland and the partitioning powers 53 2 Major towns and industrial areas of the Kingdom of Poland 56 3 Engineering factories and workshops 106 4 The Dqbrowa Basin 113 5 Railway construction up to 1863 127 Currency Conversion Table £1 = 4 0 - 4 2 Polish zlotys £1 = 6.3 silver roubles 1 silver rouble = 6 zlotys 20 groszy (1 zloty = 30 groszy) 5 Acknowledgements Above all I wish to thank my supervisor, Professor Alan Milward, for his encouragement and seemingly infinite patience, support and ability to keep a straight face while reading earlier drafts of my work. I am also very grateful to other members of staff at the department who gave priceless moral support at crucial moments, particularly Dudley Baines, Paul Johnson, Bob Edwards, Max Schultz and Theo Barker. I would also like to thank Linda Samson for all the help and encouragement she has given since I arrived at the department. I wish to thank British historians outside the School for their help and support, particularly Patricia Crimmin at Royal Holloway and Gillian Cookson at York. I am extremely grateful to several historians in Poland, particularly Jerzy Szczepahski and Wiestaw Caban at Kielce, and Jozef Smiatowski at Lodz, for the valuable opportunities to present my ideas to staff and students at those universities. Finally, I wish to thank Alexis and Bella for everything, all my fellow students in the department, and all my special friends: Liz Waller, Richard Challoner, Valerie Wall, Julian Duffus, Joy Hemmings, Vivienne Hemingway, Virginia Bainbridge, Lesley and Jonathon Delamont, Delyth Keane and Brenda Lees, for their goodwill and vibrant humour, and for putting up with me during many exhausting and turbulent times. I also wish to acknowledge the financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council, without which this thesis might never have appeared. 6 Introduction The contribution of British technologies to the industrialization of Europe and the United States has attracted much attention in recent decades. However, historical case studies of technology transfer have tended to concentrate on the successes, while paying little attention to initiatives which failed to live up to initial expectations. The formidable difficulties which continue to confront less developed economies seeking to benefit from advanced technologies in the twentieth century suggest that our understanding of the conditions of success is far from complete. A widening of the range of historical case studies to include unsuccessful or partly successful initiatives should contribute to a fuller comprehension of the issues involved. One such neglected case which deserves to be rescued from obscurity is that of the Congress Kingdom of Poland after 1815, a semi-autonomous state within the Russian empire. The lack of Polish political independence between 1795 and 1918 has meant that economic developments in the Kingdom have been ignored by most non-Polish researchers, at best earning sporadic references in works devoted to Russian economic history. This is an oversimplification which ignores a large measure of economic autonomy enjoyed by the Kingdom for half a century after 1815, during which several Polish groups including the administration, the Bank of Poland and the landowning elites all sought to transform the Kingdom's economy by the direct borrowing of British technologies, with the minimum of reference to St. Petersburg. While there was little that was unique about the Polish initiatives, and nothing remarkable about the modest degree of success they achieved, the Polish case proves valuable in many respects by offering many insights into the mechanisms and constraints of the transfer process. The thesis aims to fill several gaps in the historiography of Polish economic development and of nineteenth century technology transfer. At the crudest level, the thesis should fill the geographical gap alluded to above, by drawing the attention of English language researchers to numerous initiatives in the Kingdom which predated the industrialization of Russia proper by several decades. The thesis also seeks to address different misunderstandings on the part of historians in both Britain and Poland. For Polish researchers, the Kingdom's early economic development has been treated as just another episode in Polish history, with almost no attempt to place it in a broader European context. The thesis will use other European examples to challenge many assumptions of Polish historiography. Many British historians seem to assume that 7 Polish development owed much more to German influences than British. While there were particular reasons why certain Polish institutions and initiatives assumed a peculiarly Germanic flavour, it is important to stress that it was Britain and British technologies which attracted Polish interest: a phenomenon which lasted for half a century.