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Rethinking “Great Commerce” and the Hometown Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2014

Robert Mark Spaulding
Robert Mark Spaulding*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
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Extract

This essay examines home towns in the “Third Germany,” and suggests that important assumptions about the insularity of the hometown economy might need revision. Ironically, a revised understanding of hometown economies that sees them as active participants in long-distance trade networks can help to confirm Mack Walker's core insights about the resilient strength of German home towns.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 513 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2014 

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References

1 Walker, Mack, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, 24 ff.

2 Ibid., 18.

3 Ibid., 26.

4 Ibid., 151.

5 Ibid., 26.

6 Ibid., 18.

7 Ibid., 151.

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14 Walker, German Home Towns, 26–31. Unless otherwise noted, population figures provided for cities and towns mentioned in the text are taken from Franke, Wilhelm, “Die Volkszahl deutscher Städte Ende des 18. und Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift des Preußischen Statistischen Landesamts, LXII (1922): Table 1a, 112–14Google Scholar.

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36 Ibid., vol. 2, no. 746; Rachel, Handels-, Zoll- und Akzisepolitik, vol. 1, part 2, 483–84.

37 Scholz-Babisch, Quellen, vol. 2, no. 757.

38 Ibid., vol. 2, nos. 800, 805, 812.

39 Rachel, Handels-, Zoll- und Akzisepolitik, vol. 2, part 1, 90.

40 Scholz-Babisch, Quellen, vol. 2, no. 818; Rachel mentioned the toll increases being “somewhat reduced.” Rachel, Handels-, Zoll- und Akzisepolitik, vol. 2, part 1, 90.

41 Few historians would dispute the scathing assessment of the electorate's administration offered by Thomas Simon and Markus Keller in their introductory essay “Kurköln,” in Repertorium der Policeyverordnungen der frühen Neuzeit, vol. 1, Deutsches Reich und geistliche Kurfürstentümer, ed. Härter and Stolleis, 439–42.

42 The following depiction draws on Kuske, Bruno, Die Bonner Schiffahrt im 18. Jahrhundert, Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 81 (Cologne, 1906), 1–16Google Scholar.