The Origins of German Industrialization: The Transition to Capitalism in Prussian Agriculture

<p>This dissertation seeks to explain the origins of German industrialization. Historical accounts of German industrialization often chronicle the process of its development but leave reasons for its initiation unexplained. Theories that have attempted to locate the roots of rapid German economic growth have been found to be empirically unsatisfactory, and thus the accepted story has defaulted to a gradualist narrative which conceptualizes economic behavior as fundamentally unchanging throughout German history. This dissertation challenges this reigning view, attempting to provide an explanation for why Germany embarked on a rapid economic growth trajectory in the nineteenth century whereas many other similarly situated countries of Europe did not. The explanation proposed here centers on agriculture, the overwhelmingly dominant sector of the German economy prior to industrialization, and Prussia, the largest and most important of the polities that would unite to form the German nation-state in the late nineteenth century. The study argues that Prussia experienced a discontinuity in its economic history in the form of a transition to a capitalist agriculture when certain classes in the countryside experienced a qualitative change in their relation to the market. This switchover to market-dependence infused the agrarian economy with a new incentive structure, such that rural landlords and workers were spurred to more innovative and productive economic behavior. The transition was initiated, unintentionally, by the introduction of rural credit institutes (<em>Landschaften</em>) in the late eighteenth century, as well as the unprecedented demographic growth of land-poor subpeasants. In aggregate, this epochal transformation laid the basis for an agricultural revolution which propelled Prussia’s, and then Germany’s, later prosperity.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Colligan, Daniel C

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John Torpey

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Charles Post
• Benjamin Hett
• Jeff Goodwin

• Agricultural and Resource Economics
• Demography, Population, and Ecology
• Politics and Social Change
• Rural Sociology
• Sociology
• Germany
• Prussia
• Development
• Capitalism
• Landschaften
• Industrialization

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6197

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-7320