The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

Military-Industrial Interaction, 1884–1914 301

The French invasion of foreign arms markets was of serious concern

to Krupp and to the German government, for economic as well as for

military-strategic reasons. Krupp had always depended on foreign

sales to keep its machine shops and arms manufactories busy. In the

year 1890–91, for example, before French competition had begun to

affect sales significantly, no less than 86.4 percent of Krupp’s arma­

ments were sold abroad, whereas the German government took only

13.6 percent.^69 After that date, the published figures for foreign sales

break off, but it is certain that new French (and British) arms sales to

foreign powers came largely at Krupp’s expense. As a result, Krupp’s

foreign sales shrank to less than half the firm’s total output of arma­

ments by 1914. Schneider likewise exported about half of its arms

production on the eve of the war, whereas Vickers sold less than a

third of its output abroad.^70

In case after case, price competition, in which Krupp excelled, gave

way to political economics. After 1903, Krupp could no longer finance

sale of its arms by inducing French banks to subscribe to new loans

to Russia and other impecunious governments. This had previously

been possible, owing to the way investment capital traditionally pur­

sued maximal returns, regardless of political frontiers or alliances.

But after 1904 French lenders required borrowers to buy French

arms and other goods more and more strictly.^71 As a spokesman for

Schneider-Creusot put it some years later: “We consider ourselves

collaborators with the Government and we engage in no negotiations

and follow up no business which has not received its concurrence.”^72

This sort of collaboration allowed French arms exports almost to dou­

ble in less than twenty years, from 6.6 million francs annual average

prunts russes et investissements français en Russie, 1887–1914 (Paris, 1973), pp. 435–44,
536–40; Herbert Feis, Europe, the World’s Banker, 1870–1914 (New Haven, 1930), pp.
212–31; Rondo E. Cameron, France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800–1914:
Conquests of Peace and Seeds of War (Princeton, 1961), pp. 494–501; Trebilcock, “British
Armaments and European Industrialization,” pp. 254–72.

69. W. A. Boelcke, Krupp und die Hohenzollern in Dokumenten, (Frankfurt am Main,
    1970), Appendix.


70. Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, Vita Rathenau, Grand Master of Capitalism
    (forthcoming) corrects looser estimates of Krupp’s export of arms in the prewar decades
    to be found in Gert von Klass, Krupps, p. 308, and Boelke, Krupp und die Hohenzollern,
    pp. 178–84. For Schneider’s foreign sales see Roy, Histoire de la famille Schneider et du
    Creusot, p. 89; for Vickers see Trebilcock, The Vickers Brothers, pp. 20–22.


71. Cf. the excellent and detailed study by Poidevin, Les relations économiques et fi nan­
    cières entre la France et l’Allemagne de 1898 à 1914, which dates the definitive expiry
    of the apolitical market in international loans to 1911.


72. Paul Allard as quoted by Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments,
    1:57.