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

Author

Daniel C. Colligan, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

6-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Sociology

Advisor

John Torpey

Committee Members

Charles Post

Benjamin Hett

Jeff Goodwin

Subject Categories

Agricultural and Resource Economics | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Politics and Social Change | Rural Sociology | Sociology

Keywords

Germany, Prussia, Development, Capitalism, Landschaften, Industrialization

Abstract

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 (Landschaften) 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.

Recommended Citation

Colligan, Daniel C., "The Origins of German Industrialization: The Transition to Capitalism in Prussian Agriculture" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6197