520Chapter 26
had no such population boom and numbered only 39
million people. Much of the economic history, and the
political history, of the nineteenth century is contained
in this demographic data: France was 45 percent larger
than Germany at the start of the century, but Germany
was 45 percent larger than France at the end of the
century.
This population trend was especially vivid in the
urbanization of Germany. In 1880 Britain remained the
only country in the world where a majority of the pop-
ulation lived in towns and cities. Belgium, which had
led early industrialization on the continent, was draw-
ing close at 43 percent urban, but both France and Ger-
many remained merely one-third urban. By the early
years of the twentieth century, Germany had changed
into an urban society. In 1800 Berlin’s 172,000 people
had made it the largest city in the German states; in
1910 unified Germany contained seventeen cities larger
than Berlin had been, including the industrial cities of
Essen and Duisberg in the Rhineland that had grown
from sleepy villages of 4,000 people into capitals of
heavy industry with populations over 200,000.
As in Britain, the continuing population explosion
and urbanization in Europe were made possible by dra-
matic improvements in the food supply. For most of the
continent, the historic epoch of subsistence and peri-
odic famine had ended. A significant part of the in-
creased food supply was the result of the success of
industrialization. The development of inorganic fertiliz-
ers greatly increased food production in countries—
such as Germany—that possessed a strong chemical
industry. The revolution in farm machinery also ex-
panded European production. French farmers, for ex-
ample, were conservative and slow to accept new
machinery. Yet between 1888 and 1908 French agricul-
ture changed from a national total of two hundred reap-
ing machines and fifty harvesters to fifteen thousand
reaping machines and twenty-five thousand harvesters.
The European food supply also profited greatly
from importation. Vast tracts of rich virgin soil were be-
ing plowed in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Russia, and
the United States. The acceptance of food in tin cans,
the invention of ammonia-based refrigeration, and the
availability of quick and inexpensive steam shipping
brought the harvest of the world to the tables of Eu-
rope. Grain from the American Middle West cost 53¢
per bushel to ship from Chicago to London in 1870; by
1919 that price had fallen to 16¢ per bushel. The price
of wheat in Europe consequently tumbled from $1.50
per bushel in 1870 to 85¢ per bushel in 1900.
The greatest stimulus to the second industrial revo-
lution came from new materials, new energy, and new
industries. Steel became the symbol of the new indus-
trialization (see table 26.2). The making of steel—dis-
tinguished from iron by a higher carbon content—has
been known since ancient times. It was preferred for its
hardness, its strength in relation to weight, and its plas-
ticity, but the process required to adjust the carbon
content in steel had been too expensive for widespread
use. In the 1850s a British metallurgist named Henry
Bessemer invented a simpler process for making steel.
By sending a blast of air through molten iron, Bessemer
was able to heat iron to the point where it obtained the
desired carbon content. By the 1870s Bessemer’s “blast
furnaces” were being widely adopted in industrial coun-
tries because governments craved steel for heavy ar-
tillery, railroads, and warships. In 1871 the total
European output was less than 1 million tons of steel; in
1913 tiny Luxembourg alone produced 1.3 million tons
of steel. Britain had entered the steel age with the con-
tinuing advantage of plentiful iron and coal plus the pi-
oneering role in blast furnace development. But Britain
did not start with an insurmountable lead. Germany,
which also possessed abundant iron and coal, closed
the production gap in the 1880s and passed Britain in
steel production in the 1890s. By the start of the twen-
tieth century, Germany produced 20 percent more steel
than Britain. In 1911 Germany produced as much steel
as Britain, France, and Russia combined, and on the eve
of World War I, German steel production stood at
eighteen times the European total of 1870. The second
industrial revolution had broken the industrial domi-
nance of Britain.Output of steel in tons
Country 1871 1891 1911
Austria-Hungary 36,000 495,000 2,174,000
Belgium n.a. 222,000 2,028,000
Britain 334,000 3,208,000 6,566,000
France 80,000 744,000 3,837,000
Germany 143,000 2,452,000 14,303,000
Italy n.a. 76,000 736,000
Luxembourg n.a. 111,000 716,000
Russia 7,000 434,000 3,949,000
Spain n.a. 90,000 323,000
Sweden 9,000 172,000 471,000
Source: Compiled from data in B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statis-
tics, 1750–1970(London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 399–401.TABLE 26.2European Steel Production, 1871–1911