The Social and Economic Structure of Contemporary Europe601tively few regions—such as Ireland, eastern Europe, and
the Balkans—still had such rural economies. Some of
those areas remained strongly agricultural long after
World War II. In Ireland, nearly 50 percent of the pop-
ulation was engaged in agriculture as late as 1960, but
the European trend was clear: In Russia, where 75 per-
cent of the population had been employed in agricul-
ture at the beginning of the century, less than 25
percent were employed there by 1960; in Britain, a
scant 3.6 percent of the population lived by agriculture
in 1960.
Although agriculture was no longer at the center of
the European economy and employed comparatively
few people, late twentieth-century European agriculture
was neither weak nor unimportant. In France, where
the agricultural economy was especially persistent,
peasant farmers still formed 35 percent of the labor
force at the end of World War II, declining to 13
percent in 1970 and to 8 percent in 1980. Three mil-
lion people left French farming between 1945 and
1980, but French agricultural production increased dur-
ing that period, because of modern machinery and
farming methods. When 35 percent of the French labor
force was engaged in farming, fewer than 30,000 trac-
tors were in use; by 1967, there were more than 1.1
million. With less than 10 percent of the population en-
gaged in agriculture in the 1980s, France was nonethe-
less the second largest food exporter in the world.
Continuing Industrialization
The decline of an agriculture-dominated economy in
twentieth-century Europe corresponded to continuing
industrialization. Most of Europe was highly industrial-
ized by the late twentieth century, even if compared
with the most advanced economies of 1900. In 1980,
for example, industrial output in Czechoslovakia,
Poland, or Spain far exceeded the British standard of
1900; Italian output more than tripled that standard.
The data on industrialization also reveal the
strength of the European great powers. The British,
who had the dominant economy of 1900, continued to
expand their industrial output during the twentieth cen-
tury despite the century’s multiple catastrophes. British
industrialization increased by 27 percent from 1900 to
the eve of World War I; by more than one-third from
1900 to 1928, despite the consequences of World War
I; by more than three-fourths from 1900 to 1938, de-
spite the Great Depression of the 1930s; by more than
double between 1900 and 1953, despite World War II;
and by more than fourfold by the late twentieth cen-
tury. Germany, which had been challenging British
leadership in 1900, surpassed British output before
World War I and remained the dominant industrial
economy in Europe until World War II. Although the
divided and devastated Germany fell behind in the
years following World War II, by 1963 West German
industrial output matched the British and within a
decade far exceeded it; and the combined
output of West and East Germany in the 1980s doubled
British production. France, whose industrial output had
never approached British levels during the nineteenth
century, did not reach the Anglo-German levels of
1900 until the mid-1950s. A French industrial resur-
gence after 1960, however, brought France close to
British levels: French industrial output had stood at
41 percent of British output at the beginning of World
War II, but it reached 82 percent of British output in- Italy achieved a comparable industrial boom ex-
panding from 18 percent of Britain’s production in 1913
to 72 percent in 1980. Put differently, Britain had be-
gun the nineteenth century with a dominant lead in Eu-
ropean industrial production, and then Britain and
Germany had begun the twentieth century with such
dominance, but by the end of the twentieth century,
many European states had industrialized to competitive
levels with Britain and Germany (see table 30.5).
Industrial data also underscore the change in Euro-
pean political and military power during the twentieth
century. Imperial Russian industrialization had been
meager before World War I; in the late 1920s the USSR
still managed only 53 percent of British output, or 46
percent of German output. Before the death of Stalin in
1953, however, the Soviet Union had significantly sur-
passed the industrial production of either Britain or
West Germany; by 1963 Soviet output was more than
Britain and Germany combined, and by 1980 it nearly
equaled Britain, Germany, France, and Italy combined.
Similar economic data provide a different perspec-
tive if historians seek to illustrate the standard of living
instead of political and military power. Combining agri-
cultural and industrial output into a figure for gross na-
tional product and then considering population to
determine the GNP per capita, neither the Soviet
Union nor the west European powers can match the ac-
complishment of Sweden. Although the Swedes had
only 52 percent of the per capita GNP in Britain at the
start of the twentieth century, they had surpassed the
British by 1950 (partly by avoiding participation in the
world wars) and had become 20 percent more prosper-
ous than Britain and 17 percent more prosperous than
West Germany in 1980.