Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Introduction
This chapter is concerned with the economic history of the countries east of the Elbe and along the Danube (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria) with special consideration of the social and economic policies of their states. Their different levels of industrialization show a marked west to east-south-east gradient. Only Czechoslovakia's development did not conform to that of the other relatively economically backward Central and south-east European countries but progressed on a pattern similar to Western European economies. Under the Habsburg monarchy the western regions of Czechoslovakia – Bohemia and Moravia – had already undergone an industrial revolution essentially of the nineteenth-century type, starting with the textile industry, then penetrating to the agricultural industries (sugar, brewing, distilling), to heavy industry (iron and steel, coal), and to engineering (agricultural and textile machinery). In all its phases the industrialization of the Czech Lands was supported by a continuous inflow of labour and by a fairly substantial level of domestic capital accumulation derived mainly from a relatively advanced agriculture which had developed simultaneously. Such a gradual rise of industrial development permeating the whole economy was largely bypassed in the other countries as they were faced with the need to industrialize in twentieth-century conditions alongside and in unequal competition with high-powered industrial nations.
The main obstacle to modern economic development remained the overwhelming weight of agriculture in the economies of that region, and any assessment of economic growth can only be made by taking into account the basic relationship between agriculture and industry.
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