William Otto Henderson - The Zollverein

Routledge Revivals

W. O. Henderson

W. O. HENDERSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD NO. 5915514

QUADRANGLE BOOKS INC., CHICAGO 1

Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London W.C.1.

It is in no way necessary for an Editor writing in October 1938 to explain the significance of any study of how nineteenth-century Germany came together out of a loose bundle of states, each with its own economy and fiscal policy, into Bismarcks Second Reich. The story of the unification, and of the part that the Zollverein took in its attainment, are in general very familiar: no historian has neglected them. There have also been close studies in English of various episodes in Zollverein history; but we have no connected and fully documented account of that history as a whole. This is what Mr Henderson offers.

The material available is almost overwhelming. It is not the least merit of Mr Hendersons study that anat first sightunwieldy mass of German work has been mastered and put in order. German archives had already been pretty thoroughly ransacked by his German predecessors; but he has been able to make important contributions to the story of Zollvereinand anti-Zollvereinplanning and diplomacy from the archives of Vienna and London. More useful still, he has placed the actors and actions of his story against a lightly but clearly drawn background of nineteenth-century German agriculture, industry and commerce in evolution.

To-day it looks as though the welding of Germany, at least of old Germany, into an economic whole were all but complete, But very recently traces of the old divisions and their imperfect welding were visible. Throughout a great part of Mr. Hendersons narrative, for example, Hamburg the Free City, Harburg its Hanoverian neighbour, and Altona the port of Holstein appear as rivals. The last traces of rivalry based on distinct trade policies disappeared just fifty years ago. But the three towns were only united quite recently, by the present German Government, into the one greater Hamburg of a Third Reich.

J. H. CLAPHAM

Page 6 (n) For Oldenberg read Oldenburg.

Page 32 For 1796 read 1786.

Page 118 For Giesheim read Griesheim.

This book was written when a number of German scholars were engaged in research on various aspects of the history of the Zollverein. At that time interest in the rise and expansion of the German customs union had been stimulated by the celebration of the centenary of the founding of the Zollverein. Three important volumes of documents concerning the negotiations which led to the establishment of the customs union were edited by Eisenhart Rothe and Ritthaler and numerous monographs and articles appeared which investigated both the origin and the development of the Zollverein.

My purpose was to provide English readers with a concise account of the history of the German customs union based not only upon theseand earlierinquiries but also upon my own researches in the archives of London and Vienna. In the last twenty years little new material on the Zollverein has become available. A survey by Rogge of Lists attitude to the Zollverein appeared in 1939. Anglo-German commercial negotiations in the 1830s and early 1840s are discussed in Lucy Brown, The Board of Trade and the Free Trade Movement 183042 (1958).

My account of the Zollverein endeavoured to show that the establishment of the customs unionand other economic developmentshelped to prepare the way for the subsequent political unification of Germany and that it would be a mistake to describe the founding of the Reich purely in terms of the diplomatic skill of Bismarck and the military achievements of Moltke. The statesmen who made and developed the customs unionmen like Motz, Pommer Esche and Delbrckshould also be numbered among the founders of the united Germany of 1871. Moreover the Zollverein was a factor of great importance in promoting the economic expansion of Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not merely after 1871 that coal and steel, cotton and wool, chemicals and electricity, shipbuilding and shipping, banking and insurance expanded rapidly in Germany. Earlier progress in the days of the Zollverein also contributed to making Germany the leading industrial state on the Continent. The work of industrialists such as Harkort, Krupp and Mulvany and of statesmen and officials like Beuth, Rother and von der Heydt had laid the foundations of the future economic greatness of Germany some time before political unification was achieved.

Today a study of the history of the establishment and growth of the Zollverein has a new significance. In the middle of the twentieth century Western Europe is trying to do what Germany accomplished over a hundred years ago. It is widely appreciated that high tariffs, rigid quotas and exchange restrictions seriously impede international trade and that the establishment of a customs union would actively promote the expansion of the European economy. Having successfully set up the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952 Western Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg have proceeded to found a Common Market.