Some French Contributions to the Industrial Development of Germany, 1840–1870

Germany in the 1830's gave few if any indications of its great industrial potentialities. The population was overwhelmingly rural and agrarian; Berlin was the only city containing more than 100,000 inhabitants, and the great majority of “cities” (in the legal sense) numbered less than 10,000. Nonagricultural production was carried on for the most part in the home or in small shops employing the old handicraft techniques. The pattern of foreign trade was that which has since come to be associated with “underdeveloped” agrarian nations: exports of agricultural products (grain, wool) and the output of artisanal industries, imports of manufactured goods and exotic wares. In those industries that were to lead the way in Germany's industrialization there were as yet no signs of growth. The few spinning factories that were set up in the 1820's and 1830's employed mainly English and Alsatian machinery, and sometimes foreign capital as well. Coal production lagged behind that of tiny Belgium, and was no greater than that of mineral-poor France. The small, dispersed iron industry was still almost universally conducted with the ancient charcoal technique, and the famed chemical industry was still to be born. The Zollverein was just beginning its great work of economic unification; the effective realization of its promise had to await more adequate means of transportation and financial institutions to provide capital; but by 1840 there were only a few short, isolated lines of railway and no modern credit facilities.