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The Unification of Germany, c1840–71

Economic and social developments in the 1840s

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 2

Overview

Recall questions on regional economic divisions, Prussia's growing dominance, railway building, the social question, the Silesian weavers, and why economic change favoured unity.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What economic divisions existed among the German states?

Key term

What social problems accompanied early industrialisation?

Numbers

What was the Silesian weavers' revolt?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How did industrialisation affect the German states before 1848?

    Model answer

    Growing railways, industry and trade, especially in Prussia, created a rising middle class and an urban workforce receptive to reform.

  2. 2

    What economic divisions existed among the German states?

    Model answer

    An industrialising Rhineland, Saxony and Silesia contrasted with agrarian east Elbia and the largely rural south, and each state kept its own tolls and currencies.

  3. 3

    How did Prussia come to dominate the German economy?

    Model answer

    Through the Zollverein it led, the Ruhr coal and iron it acquired in 1815 and the Silesian resources it had held since the 1740s, and its banking and railway development.

  4. 4

    Why were railways so important in this period?

    Model answer

    They cut transport costs, created demand for coal and iron, moved goods and troops across state boundaries, and made a national economy imaginable before a national state existed.

  5. 5

    How fast did the German railway network grow?

    Model answer

    From under 500 kilometres in 1840 to nearly 6,000 by 1850 and 11,000 by 1860, much of it centred on Prussian territory.

  6. 6

    What social problems accompanied early industrialisation?

    Model answer

    Rural overpopulation, the collapse of handloom weaving, urban overcrowding and pauperism, summed up in the contemporary term the social question.

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