Industrialization and the Social and Economic Structure of Europe 433The word capitalismwas coined during this mid-century
generation, and Karl Marx published his famous cri-
tique of industrial capitalism, Das Kapital.The British
celebrated their new society in a spectacular world’s fair
in London, known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition
(1851), which showed the world the latest technical
and mechanical wonders. Not surprisingly, some histo-
rians call this period the “age of capital.”
Industrialization did not spread evenly across Eu-
rope, and the great powers did not industrialize in the
same ways. Nor did the take-off phase mean that conti-
nental production caught up to Britain in a single gen-
eration. Between 1851 and 1869, British heavy industry
continued to grow at a steady rate; iron production in-
creased by 20 percent and coal production by 119 per-
cent (see table 22.7). The French growth rate in iron
production tripled British growth and nearly doubled it
in coal. However, in 1869 French iron production re-
mained barely one-fourth of the British rate and coal
production one-eighth. Prussia and the smaller German
states of the Zollverein increased iron and coal produc-
tion at rates that suggest the terms industrial revolutionand
take-off phase.Both iron and coal production nearly
quadrupled within a generation. German rates did not
yet threaten British leadership, but the Zollverein had
passed French production and the rate of production
portended a future Anglo-German rivalry.
The continental industrial take-off can also be seen
in the expansion of railroad networks. The midcentury
was an age of railway construction across the continent.
Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Spain all built large national
systems. Russia remained backward; in 1850 tiny Bel-
gium had a larger railroad network. By 1870 a Russian
building program had added more than ten thousand
kilometers of track, but that meant that a country of
more than twenty-two million square kilometers was
served by half as much railroad as Great Britain, a coun-
try of 300,000 square kilometers. France and Germany
both neared the size of the British network in 1870, but
they, too, were much larger.
Such data show that France industrialized at a sig-
nificant pace but never experienced the exponential
rate of change that characterized the British industrial
revolution or German industrialization. No population
explosion occurred in France, and the government
never completely abandoned the mercantilist tradition
of a centrally directed economy. The mid-century gov-
ernment of Napoleon III encouraged the industrial
take-off with institutions such as the Crédit Foncier,
which provided low-interest business loans. A Railroad
Law of 1857 guaranteed the interest payments of pri-
vate railroad bonds, so investors could not lose. This
law so stimulated railroad building that a system with
2,915 kilometers of track in 1850 grew to 16,465 kilo-
meters before 1870.
German industrial development varied regionally,
with the greatest strength concentrated in Prussia and
the Rhineland. The German take-off was rapid. Be-
tween 1851 and 1857, the number of Prussian joint-
stock companies, and their total capitalization, tripled.
Prussian legislation encouraged British-style laissez-
faire capitalism. New mining laws, for example, endedThe data in this table show that Britain was already heavily industrialized in 1851, but none of the other great powers were. The data summarize output
in millions of metric tons and show growth in percent. Note that the huge growth in iron and coal output in France and the Germanic states of central Eu-
rope—their industrial take-off—still left them far behind British production. Note also the comparison between French industrialization and German in-
dustrialization, which is much more rapid; this contrast had great implications for the balance of power on the continent.
Output in Output in Output in Growth Percentage(^1851) (^1860) (^1869) 1851–69
Country Iron Coal Iron Coal Iron Coal Iron Coal
Austria .5 1.0 n.a. 3. 2.7 6.6 40.0 560.0
Britain 9.7 50. 28. 2 81.3 11.7 109. 2 20.6 118.9
France 1.8 4.4 3.0 8.3 3.1 13.5 72.2 202.3
Zollverein .8 7.8 1.3 16.7 3.1 34.3 287.5 339.7
Source: Compiled from data in B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970(London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 360–61, 387.
TABLE 22.7
The Take-Off of Heavy Industry in Europe, 1851–69