Description: In From Old Regime to Industrial State, Richard H. Tilly and Michael Kopsidis question established thinking about Germany's industrialization. While some hold that Germany experienced a sudden breakthrough to industrialization, the authors instead consider a long view, incorporating market demand, agricultural advances, and regional variations in industrial innovativeness, customs, and governance. They begin their assessment earlier than previous studies to show how the 18th-century emergence of international trade and the accumulation of capital by merchants fed commercial expansion and innovation. This book provides the history behind the modern German economic juggernaut.
Brief description: Richard H. Tilly is emeritus professor of economic and social history at the University of Münster.
Review Quotes: "During the nineteenth century the German economy developed into one of the most advanced in the world. Tilly and Kopsidis masterfully explain this rise to economic and technological leadership, starting with agricultural and institutional transformation in the eighteenth century and following the story through to the development, by the end of the nineteenth century, of distinctive financial institutions that supported an advanced industrial economy. Their account is lucid, creative, and well-grounded in both the research literatures and the broader sources. This volume provides an excellent entrée into the specialist literatures (in both German and English) and will serve as the standard English-language reference."----Timothy W. Guinnane, Yale University