The Industrial Revolution in Germany 1700-1914 [antikvár]

The Industrial Revolution in Germany 1700-1914 INTRODUCTION We cannot expect to establish for the Industrial Revolution in Germany a more precise set of dates than has been possible in other countries whose historians are engaged in vigorous debates about this problem. Unlike W. W. Rostow with his period of 'take off' we are not here attempting to propose simultaneously a concept and an enveloping hypothesis: the term industrial revolution will demand rather less precision in the determination of chronological limits. In Germany intimations of industrialisation may be discerned towards the end of the eighteenth century: a mechanised cotton spinning mill was set up at Ratingen near Düsseldorf in 1784; a coke blastfurnace began to operate in Upper Silesia in 1792 and several copies of Newcomen and of Watt steam engines were constructed. Any account of the industrial revolution in Germany must begin with these events. But the transformation of these early beginnings into a solid advance, a 'forward leap' for modern eyes, took much longer here than in Britain. Experts still disagree whether this spurt started about 1834, 1842-3 or even 1850. For reasons which should be made evident below I have decided to place the break in my account of industrialisation in 1850 and to describe as 'preliminary' the first period from the end ofthe eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. This leaves open the question as to the end of the industrial revolution in Germany. It may well be true that the institutions thrown up by economic growth between 1850 and 1873 more or less guaranteed its continuation: nevertheless this cannot be regarded as terminating the German industrial revolution. Indeed there is much to be said for directing attention to the subsequent period of expansion, especially from 1896 F.E.H.E.-A2 [5]