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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Eduard März
Affiliation:
University of Linz

Extract

Austrian historians owe Richard Rudolph, Nachum Gross, and David Good a great intellectual debt for their repeated attempts to apply quantitative methods to the study of intricate economic developments in the last century of the Habsburg monarchy. In his present paper, Rudolph gives us a résumé of the results thus far attained by the trio of scholars and broadens the scope of his own research somewhat by extending the period of investigation to include what Franklin Mendels has called the phase of “proto-industrialization.”

Type
Economic and Social History
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1975

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References

1 Richard Rudolph has taken issue with my point of view on Austrian economic development on two previous occasions. See his “Quantitative Aspekte der Industrialisierung in Cisleithanien 1848–1914,” in Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. I: Die wirtschaftliche Enlwicklung, edited by Alois Brusatti (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), pp. 234–235.

2 See März, Eduard, Österreichische Industrie- und Bankpolitik in der Zeil Franz Joseph I., am Beispiel der k. k. priv. Öslerreichischen Creditanstall für Handel und Gewerbe (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1968).Google Scholar

3 Throughout this paper the term “Austria” is used as a synonym for the Cisleithanian part of the Habsburg monarchy.

4 In my paper on Schumpeter I explicitly state: “The process of industrialization in ‘old Austria,’ which started with full force only after the revolutionary year 1848, proceeded, as is well known, at a much slower pace than in the western parts of Europe.” See “Zur Genesis der Schumpeterschen Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung,” in On Political Economy and Econometrics. Essays in Honour of Oskar Lange (Warsaw, 1964), p. 370. The well-known historian Hans Mommsen has noted: “The disparate political, cultural, and social development, which endowed the Austrian territories with far more than a national individuality, was only partially leveled out before the end of the monarchy. It is a prime cause for the late beginning as well as for the relatively slow progress of the modern factory system in Austria.” See his Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1963), p. 20. The italics are mine. Similar passages from earlier works could easily be added.

5 Nachum Gross, who believes that by the middle of the nineteenth century Prussia had already outdistanced Austria in some areas, nevertheless goes on to say: “Apart from some exceptions, German products of finer quality were better and cheaper, whereas Austria was capable in a number of branches to outbid Germany, especially in the range of poorer-quality products.” Gross, Nachum Th., “Die Stellung der Habsburgermonarchie in der Weltwirtschaft,” in Wandruszka, and Urbanitsch, , Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. I, p. 4.Google Scholar

6 See my “Zur Genesis der Schumpeterschen Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung,” p. 370.

7 See especially the following chapters: “Die erste industrialisierungswelle 1855 bis 1860;” “Die Stagnationsjahre 1861 bis 1866;” and “Wirtschaftlicher Aufstieg und Krach 1867 bis 1879.”

8 März, , Ösierreichische Industrie- und Bankpolilik in der Zeit Franz Joseph I, p. 373.Google Scholar

9 See my detailed report on the slow recovery in the 1880's in ibid., pp. 213–221.

10 Tremel, Ferdinand, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichle Österreichs. Von den Anfangen bis 1955 (Vienna: Deuticke, 1969), p. 267.Google Scholar

11 Hassinger, Herbert, “Der Stand der Manufakturen in den deutschen Erbländern der Habsburgermonarchie am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Lütze, Friedrich (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Situation in Deutschland und Österreich urn die Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1964), pp. 111112.Google Scholar

12 Habakkuk, Hrothgar J., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1962), pp. 190191.Google Scholar