German Industrialization Analysis

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Germany was lagging behind most European countries in its industrialization. This industrialization is referring to the Industrial Revolution where Europe saw improvements in many different industries, such as textile, iron, transportation and agriculture. This revolution was something that “all European countries, eventually experienced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” This was affecting the German economy, and with Germany being one of the larger and more influential countries in Europe (just like Great Britain, France, Austria, etc.) it needed to make changes and modernize to keep its power position in Europe. Great Britain and France were among the first to go through an …show more content…
Germany had “a skilled labour force with a strong work ethic, a good education system and good standards of living,” all things that were needed if a nation wanted to start an Industrial Revolution. However, there were a number of reasons that Germany was late into the Industrial Revolution. One cause was that at the start of the nineteenth century Germany had not yet become a unified nation. Both Germany and Italy were some of the last states to do so in the late nineteenth century. As a result of this, having a full-scale Industrial Revolution spanning across all the German states would have been almost impossible. Another difficulty that came with the anti-unification was that Germany was behind many of its European counterparts with its agricultural systems. By this, I mean that at the start of the nineteenth century, Germany was still using the feudal system to distribute and work the …show more content…
Other nations had to revolutionize what was already working in factories. Many German citizens had never worked inside a factory. This made them want to work in factories, eager to learn these new methods. Industrialization promised the Germans more money than they ever would have seen living in serfdom. All over Germany “some industries were introduced at once as large-scale enterprises”, this was beneficial for the revolution as it meant that these industries didn’t have “to wait upon slow growth and thus immediately benefited from the economic of scale.” The reason that the German State was able to fund all of this money into brand new industries was due to the fact that “not too much capital had been tied up earlier in the ‘old industries.” Another influence that helped immensely was the fact that “the excess of the rural population had not been tied back to the traditional trades.” Most rural German citizens had been working on farms, or out in the fields as serfs in the feudal system. They had not trained as blacksmiths, masonries , etc.. Consequently, they were perfect subjects to be taught the new ways of the factories that had appeared during other nations